Annual Spring Turkey Camp

The words of my drill instructor at Ft. Benning echoed in my head, “Pain is just weakness leaving the body”. I had to laugh as I watched the mature Tom fly away down the valley. My pain was all mental at this point, and I thought I must be becoming the strongest turkey hunter on the planet…..at least mentally. It was another classic encounter that ended up in favor of the bird in my 9th year of trying to connecting with the elusive eastern turkey on public land in the mountains of western Maryland. Each year a small group of us take an extended weekend and traverse into the near 48,000 acres of wildlands in Allegheny County, Maryland to camp and chase the wild Tom turkey with stick and string.

I arrived Thursday afternoon to register, establish camp, and perform initial reconnaissance before darkness and cooking duties pulled me back to the camp chores. I found myself noiselessly hustling down a well worn dirt road toward the trailhead when I suddenly caught movement in my peripheral vision in the treetops. A turkey was already roosted and took flight a short distance to the front of me. I watched it sail for a bit and heard it hit the ground at a trot. I mentally marked this area and proceeded to the trailhead to listen for evening gobbles from the roost. As it turned out, nothing answered my calls.

  Over the years of hunting pressured elk from excursions out of state on public land in New Mexico, Colorado, and Idaho I know how call shy those hunted animals become from years of hard hunting pressure and human presence. I have heard folks state that elk hunting and calling is very similar to turkey in their reactions and I keep finding that analogy to be accurate. These birds were no exception. I have come to know that birds in this area do not gobble very much, if at all. They come in silently and check things out and once they get pushed they are not coming back. I headed back to camp knowing there was at least one good bird in the area.

The next morning found me with longbow in hand and heading to the valley that the sighted bird was heading toward when last seen. I snuck along as the morning dawn broke through a woodland scene that was just beginning the process of spring green up. The temps were mild and I was enjoying the light feel of the bamboo longbow in my hands as I made my way to a deadfall located on a small plateau overlooking the valley below. I felt this was a good spot for game movement and perhaps I could get a bird to come check out my decoy. I inflated the lone hen “love doll” and set up my stool nestled in the junction of the trunk and root ball. I took a deep breath and concentrated on staying perfectly still as the morning woods began to come alive with the hustle and bustle of songbirds, squirrels, and insects. In near meditation mode I looked around using only my eyes. Shortly I began a brief calling sequence with the mouth call I had stored in my cheek. Nestled under my ghillie head cover movement was again kept at a minimum. I heard no reply…… but that was expected here. Over the course of the next few hours this scene repeated itself over and over, but to my chagrin nothing presented itself sans a few chipmunks and the close passing of a hawk that was undoubtedly looking for a quick breakfast.

  I stood up and tried to stretch out my cramped stiff legs. Even with the tall stool I utilize for bow-ground clearance with my 66 inch Howard Hill longbow, the body can only spend so long perfectly still. Edging my way down the small plateau’s edge I spotted two very large whitetail scrapes still evident on the forest floor. The soil was dark with urine and both scrapes were merely several feet apart. I paused to mark this area on my GPS for a fall deer hunt sometime in the future and continued to still hunt back toward the vehicle road.

I emerged from the forest onto the main access road and came across the wood signpost at the intersection of the dead end our camp was located along. I had chosen the campsite because it was off the main road and away from vehicle traffic, but I could not help to notice that “Howard Road” might bring about some needed luck as I carried my Wesley Special. I paused for a very cool picture, and continued on toward my destination.

Since my morning sit was over I was heading to a spot where I had collected several black morel mushrooms over the years. It was a little early this season, but I was hoping to find something to help accompany my elk steak dinner plans. I wasn’t having much luck until I found this little beauty nested amongst the leaf litter.

I searched for nearly another half hour circling my marked area. Every now and again I would sound out a few soft yelps and cuts because of the mouth call I still had clenched in my teeth out of habit. I shuffled along with my eyes glued down directly in front of my feet. I was about to call it quits when I spotted a dead tree that I decided may be a good spot to find mushrooms. I took a step toward the tree when almost directly behind it, not more than 12 yards away, a gobbler exploded into flight! Completely unaware and without an arrow on the string I struggled to reach back to extract an arrow from the backquiver as I watched the Tom quickly flap out of range and away from me. The mental anguish and pain of being so close and yet so far sunk in as I described at the beginning of this story. Weakness was leaving my body! I realized that my morel slow shuffle accompanied by my soft calling was the ticket of bringing in this pressured bird in bow range. Learning from our pain is something that continues throughout life. Being aware and taking the good from a hard lesson is what separates the knowledgeable and experienced from the unconscious participant in life. Perhaps next time my hunting partner and I will team up and try to work the morel shuffle into a calling sequence…..who knows…..it just might work!

Published an Article in TradArchers World Magazine

A synopsis of my September 2012 elk hunting trip in CO was recently published in TradArchers World Magazine. Page 43 - 46. I am happy to have a piece in a National magazine.

Cover of the MBS magazine!

Looks like I made the cover of the Maryland Bowhunter's Society (MBS) spring 2013 newsletter edition. Not bad for a largely compound bow audience in Maryland. They put out quite a professional looking newsletter. I wrote a short traditional tips column and had no idea they would use one of my photos for the cover art. Hopefully this will spark some interest in traditional shooting as well.

The Romance of Wood

Catching a glimpse of my quarry through a tangle of deadfall, I moved slowly and deliberately taking care to make as little noise and movement as possible. Easing around the trunk of a large tulip poplar, and within the safety zone of my quarry, I ease the string back to anchor while fixating on the spot I intended to hit. Twenty yards away and completely unaware of my activities stood a rotten stump. In my peripheral vision I caught the perfect spiral of spinning feathers on a direct line to that spot. CRACK! …an unseen overhanging twig deflected the arrow and I watched as my arrow dead centered a granite rock half buried in the hillside. This sent the white shaft bouncing back several feet towards me. Walking up I examine the shaft and again I find that my steel blunt had become dislodged from the taper yet the wood shaft is otherwise unharmed. I found this scenario repeated time and again. I am just amazed at these wood arrows! The arrow wood was Douglas Fir. I enjoy the practice of roving during the off-seasons but the rocky terrain around my mountain home in Frederick County is tough on arrows. I had grown up shooting wood kids arrows later graduating to aluminum and finally carbon. My journey deeper in traditional archery and the desire to craft my own tackle led me back to wood. I found aluminums shafts to be too easily bent, so when I went to Port Orford Cedar (POC), I immediately struggled with the pain of seeing my painstakingly handcrafted works of art disintegrating on hard hits. I went back to aluminum footed carbons and stayed there for some time. Eventually I started reading more about Howard Hill and his exploits with wood shafts, I wanted to delve back in the “woodpile” so to speak. Mr. Hill by the way reportedly preferred wood because they “Had some life to them”. I found several suppliers that now provided the archer an alternative to the brittle and often poor quality POC shafts. The old growth POC trees have predominantly been harvested and getting good quality and straight POC is a chore. Common wood choices now available include hickory, ash, purple heart, douglas fir, and laminated birch. I found hickory to have great mass weight but hard to keep straight. Then, I discovered Douglas Fir. Douglas fir has several attributes that I find superior to POC and hickory for me. First, they have a little more mass weight than POC which aids in penetration during hunting. Another side benefit here is the extra mass makes the bow just a little quieter. Old growth fir is still widely available and I find very few in a dozen premium quality shafts require straightening, and once straightened (unlike hickory) they tend to behave. This combined with their toughness makes them pretty hard to beat in my book. Shooting these shafts more and more only reinforces my feeling of trust and confidence I have in this, “the most important component of my equipment”. Shooting wood has many added benefits. I have found more and more that simple is better. My wood arrows have 4 components; nock, shaft, fletchings, and points. My old stumping carbons had nock, nock adapter, aluminum nock footing, wrap, fletches, shaft, insert, aluminum footing, and screw in points. Now I carry a lighter, taper tool, and a glue stick and I can field repair as needed. Wood is also a lot quieter to carry in a back quiver. Clanking aluminum shafts in a back quiver is just not conducive to quiet sneaking. Even the best fitting back quiver will get some metal on metal noise when you withdraw an aluminum arrow. Finally building sharp looking wood arrows is fun and relatively easy. Cresting and capping with krylon or rustoleum spray paint can get you some pretty good looking sticks! Also a bit of stain can really pull the grain of the wood out. So if you have not tried wood in a while, it might be worth a second try. You may be pleasantly surprised! A new dozen ready to hunt. Retro looking white shafts ready to stump!

Dental Floss – A Hunters Friend

A good hunter must also always check the wind to make a successful stalk or ambush. Most commercial products to accomplish this require movement to actuate a puffer or squeeze bottle. Expensive, wasteful, and not all that effective to hide you from the game you seek. Tie a 3 or 4 inch section of unwaxed dental floss to the upper limb tip of your bow instead. Fray the end and it will pick up the most delicate breeze and all you need to move is your eyeball. Since I started carrying the floss for this purpose I have found it to be one of the most versatile tools a hunter can carry. It is especially useful for wilderness backcountry hunts. I carry several lengths wrapped around a pencil in my emergency kit. You can easily carry several hundred yards of the stuff with virtually no space and it can quickly become very useful. Floss has many applications on a bowstring. A lot of traditional shooters actually prefer a lump of floss for a nocking point on their string. One has complete control of the size of the nock and tapered feel. Replacing your nock in the field is also very easy this way. In addition, you can easily repair the serving on a bowstring in an emergency to keep it from completely unraveling. You can use it to build up the string to precisely fit your nocks. It can be used to secure wool yarn silencers or cat whiskers. Heck, if you had enough of the stuff you could build an emergency bowstring! You can wrap floss through your arrow fletching to adhere a feather or quill that has come loose from the shaft. You could reinforce a selfnock or tie on a point with it. I have used it to tie on my harvest tag after a successful hunt and you can tie off the bladder or anus to ensure clean tenderloins during field dressing chores. The other main application I have found for floss is for repairs. I carry a couple sizes of sewing needles in my emergency kit and can repair torn jackets, pants, boots, and other pieces of clothing in the field as well as replace buttons. Double or triple the strands and you have a substantial heavy duty thread for making repairs. In an emergency medical situation you could even use it to administer stitches to an open wound or tie off an artery. I actually carry some silk floss in addition to my nylon floss so I could boil the thread and sanitize it for this purpose. I hope I never have to try it out though! Floss can really shine in an emergency. It can be used as rope to bind a shelter together or tie off a tarp, you can use it to make a snare or net, you can carry a fish hook and catch dinner, make a bootlace, tie on a bandage, or affix your pocket knife to a pole for a spear. As a kid I used to tie floss with a stick across a deer trail as a “Tell”. If the “tripwire” stick was pulled from the ground I knew an animal had passed through. When camping we used to catch my friends sneaking into camp by tying it to two beer cans with pebbles inside. Unwaxed nylon floss can be used for camp cooking also. Tie that trout to a stick/plank or use it to tie up the wings and legs of a grouse or hen for even roasting. Wrap it taught between your fingers and you can use it to cut biscuits or evenly and thinly slice breads. Oh, you can get jerky bits out of your teeth too!

The Bowhunter's Kit

Like many, Papa Bear holds a place of reverence in my heart. I grew up idolizing the man in the fedora who was the face of Bear Archery. Later when I learned more and read Fred Bear’s Field Notes and watched his movies I became amazed. He was such an innovator and inventor as well as promoter of the sport. To this day I prefer the Razorhead bleeder blades on my eclipse heads for whitetail deer. I always wanted a Bear Takedown and was able to get a new one a few years ago when Bear started to make them again in 2011. The one item in the old Bear catalogs that interested this practical hunter the most was the Bear Bowhunter’s Kit. Since learning to file sharpen my broadheads I wanted a sheath like Fred’s to contain the file and knife together for field sharpening as well as some other essentials. It just made sense. Finally I was able to locate a decently priced reproduction for hunting. After all, I was not going to shell out $300 for a vintage collector’s item to destroy on my hunts. I wanted one of these so badly I made my own out of one of my old Concoran military boots! I have hunted with this homemade version for 5 years now and carried it on hunts in 3 Western states. This new reproduction by Greg Merckx and available through www.crystalfallstradingcompany.com has a little more polish to it than my rough around the edges version. Made in Michigan ta’boot! I was able to buy just the sheath at a reasonable price and I could not be happier. I am also able to fill the sheath with my own customized items: My old file (partial to the larger wood handle), Glue stick, Diamond hone, Pencil for completing license, Hunting License, Zip ties for tags & field dressing, Extra eclipse with bear bleeders, Knife, And P38 can opener (kept it in there but may put something else in that pocket?). With the extra bow string I keep in my Hill quiver, I can just grab my bow, quiver, and knife kit and be ready to hunt. Gotta love that!

My Troubles With The Bitz

I recently switched up my fletching jig from a relatively non-adjustable inexpensive model and picked up a used Bitzenburger jig. This jig is very adjustable and the “gold standard” in fletching jigs. I figured it would only help my arrow making prowess. I set up the jig with a left helical clamp and went to work trying to adjust the clamp properly on my test shaft. It seemed to align perfectly. Then I started fletching my first dozen arrows and began to have problems. It seemed that when I rotated the receiver to put on feather #2 and #3 they did not make contact from leading edge to back. I ended up with a few that had gaps in the glue line. After some time I finally figured out the problem. The newer mercury speed nocks and bohning classic nocks I had been using have a fairly high indexer on them. When I first aligned the jig I made my adjustments based on the cock feather position. The indexer on the nock was making contact with the nock receiver and preventing it from being perfectly centered. Once I rotated the receiver the misalignment was magnified. I ended up taking my broadhead file to the indexer for a few swipes and my problems were solved! The picture below has a vintage Bear archery POC nock, along with my modified nock, and the original unaltered nock. Another lesson learned…. Once again I find that sometimes our “improvements” in design as not always the “best”.