My first foray into traditional archery ended abruptly, when a brutal swing of sharp-edged axe cut my bow in half.
As a young boy, I spent at least one of each weekend day at my uncle’s place, where my cousins and I did our best to find trouble and often were successful. My uncle owned a swimming pool, a large vegetable yard, a small orchard and a piece of wooded land that backed onto many square miles of fields and pastures. The neighbour’s property was likewise wooded and even had a few wild apple trees that produced small rock-hard green apples. The edge of those woods was home to a healthy population of rabbits, that burrowed under the roots of century-old trees.
Given those circumstances it doesn’t take much imagination to see how we were in desperate need of tools that would allow us to reduce some of those rabbits to possession. We tried spears without success. Obviously a bow would give us the striking range we needed. A saw was quickly borrowed from my uncle’s shop and sisal rope was lying around in big bundles everywhere. Hazel nut bushes provided long and straight and bendy sticks, and bamboo sticks from the vegetable garden made for pretty good arrows.
I don’t recall that we ever killed a rabbit. But I do remember that it didn’t take long for us to tip those bamboos with small rock-hard green apples. Soon we were flinging arrows at each other, pretending to be Robin Hood, or a tribe of warring indians. Most arrows were crooked and after given flight rarely followed a straight path. One lucky arrow however left my bow, and after an impressive arc, landed square on my cousin’s leg. He did not take kindly to that, and made an equally impressive run into the house, wailing like a banshee. Which led to the unhappy scene described earlier.
However, this early success planted the seed deeply in my being, where it lay dormant for forty years, waiting for the right circumstances to sprout and find fertile ground.
Sometimes all it takes is a little misfortune. Like the cone of the jack pine will not release it seeds until a fire rages, it took a time-out in my working life to create the right circumstances for the next step into traditional archery. I mean, how many hours a day can you really be looking for a job. I was in dire need of a keep-sane project, and building a bow seemed like the right combination of manual labour and research into the how-to. It started the journey that will be documented on these pages.
If you are a newby you might learn something, if you are old hat you’ll probably shake your head over all the mistakes made. In summary, I built a bow, learned to shoot, bought another bow and went hunting. In the process I corrupted the mind of my hunting partner, so I didn’t have to suffer alone. Follow along, if you please.
Frans Diepstraten