titleby Paul Sylvain

Anyone who spends time in the Maine woods hiking, fishing, or hunting knows that the experience can be almost spiritual, especially if your normal workday gig confines you to the concrete canyons and asphalt-covered fields of Boston. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to like about Beantown, but walking the Public Garden and Boston Common aren’t quite the same thing as trekking through the woodlands of downeast Washington County, Maine.

For one thing, the streets of Boston with their muggers, gang members, and thieves are probably more dangerous than Maine’s woods—there just isn’t much that can kill you in Maine. It is one of just two states without poisonous snakes and where bobcats tend to be reclusive. I’ve stumbled on an occasional black bear alongside the Blacks Woods Road, where towns in the so-called “unorganized territories” have numbers and not names, but the bears always dropped and retreated.

tylerNow, I’m neither a fisherman nor a hunter, and truth is, I can’t get past the smell of fish to swallow it without gagging. Hunting? Well, you’re looking at a guy who shirked away from high school biology because I couldn’t quite bring myself to dissect or grope about the innards of once-live critters without wanting to throw-up. I admire those folks who can gut out a kill without retching and I enjoy a piece of venison as much as the next guy, I just can’t do the slice ’n dice thing myself.

So what is a guy like me, who loves to spend time in the woods and who enjoys the thrill of bow shooting, to do? Well, why not stalk the deadly tree stump?

I certainly enjoy reading the hunting yarns in these pages. But I’m guessing I’m not the only non-hunting soul who loves shooting traditional “primitive” bows. That’s where stump shooting comes in. Let’s face it, throwing arrows at a static backyard target is okay, but after a while it gets a bit boring. The target doesn’t move, and your shooting angle remains largely unchanged. Certainly it has its place in keeping your eye and arms and mechanics in shape, but it ranks low in the “challenging” department.

Enter stump shooting. This is where you shoot at targets of varying widths and heights, sometimes throwing arrows uphill or downhill, or trying to hit that skinny little bugger in the narrow gap between two larger trees. Often there are twigs, brush, or leaves in the flight path of the arrows, and clip one of these and your arrow will defect as surely as a bullet will ricochet off a rock. Just like in real hunting, it’s all about making adjustments to changing distances and conditions to make the “kill.”

I was introduced to this form of target shooting by David Green, my long-time friend and musical brother in Maine. Unlike me, he does hunt with firearms and bows and managed to fill his deer tag with a primitive bow three years ago. That’s no small feat in far eastern Maine where deer hunting has been limited to bucks only for many years and to only one deer per season for as long as I can remember.

tylerWhile my own bow was being made by a mutual friend, Richard Longbow, Dave would tell me, “Man, you’ve got to go stump shooting with us when that bow is done. It’s just a lot of fun.” I picked the bow up over New Year’s weekend two years ago, and Dave, Longbow and I spent the next two hours shooting at dead and dying trees in the woods near Longbow’s Mildbridge home. We were fortunate, too. The weather gods blessed us with bare ground and mild temperatures at a time of year where it can dip to 20 below zero and leave us buried in a foot or more of snow. It’s a good 300 miles or so from my home in southernmost New Hampshire, but I manage several trips to eastern Maine each year; my white ash bow and judo-tipped cedar and Ramon wood arrows always made the trip with me.

Longbow is Lakota of Minneconjou descent. Stumping with him is a highlight of my visits north, and I always leave with a sense of renewed spirit and a greater appreciation for the natural wonders around us. Longbow is so in tune with his surroundings that he seems to sense when an eagle is soaring overhead—strong medicine, when that happens—or can detect the scent of a deer bedding site long before my nose can.

This past fall, I had the pleasure of introducing my son, Patrick, and 9-year-old grandson, Tyler, to Longbow and the joys of primitive archery. Neither had ever shot a bow before, yet Longbow had them both throwing arrows and hitting a backyard target like pros in about 20 minutes. With a few basics under their belts, we set off down a trail leading into the woods near Longbow’s home for some serious stump shooting.

The coastal woodlands in far eastern Maine are thick with dead and dying softwood trees. Even the woodland floor is littered with rotting wood, heavy brush, and mossy undergrowth, and your feet can easily get tangled in this muck. Much of this is the product of plentiful amounts of annual rain and snowfall but also the result of the moisture-laden fogs that seem to visit and linger here much of the year. It all combines to make walking difficult at times, with few wide-open and relatively clear areas to maneuver in. Compare this to the northern reaches of New Hampshire and Vermont, with their predominantly hardwood forests that are fairly easy to trek through. Well, if nothing else, the conditions in Maine merely add to the challenge. As we walked along one of the trails, Longbow stopped and looked at Tyler. “Do you smell that?” he asked. Tyler didn’t, but Patrick did.

“What is that?” Patrick asked.

“Deer have bedded down near here,” Longbow replied, noting the strong, musky smell of deer urine. “They mark their territory that way,” he said. “I’d say they are close, and have been bedding here a while,” he added, as we moved on.

A few yards later, Longbow pointed to a stocky, half-split remnant of a tree. “Standing bear,” he said, preparing to take his shot. The stump was uphill, but otherwise in a fairly open area. “Try for that dark spot, half-way up,” Longbow said, referring to a knot hole facing us. “Remember, if you shoot uphill, aim a little higher to get the proper elevation.”

tylerSssswiiishhhhh – WHAP! The arrow left his bow and impacted hard into the tree, about an inch off his chosen mark. Longbow was using a white ash, buffalo backed bow he had completed earlier in the year that was made from a sister stave to the one he used in making my bow. The arrow, with its judo tip, hit with such authority that the sound echoed into the woods. While you can use common target points for stumping, you run the risk of losing your arrow if you miss your intended target and the arrow burrows into the undergrowth. For that reason, it’s best to use arrows with judo points.

Judo points are typically used for hunting small game, such as squirrels and rabbits. They feature a blunt tip and four small spring arms that snag on grass, brush, twigs, or the ground on impact, causing the arrows to “spring up” instead of burrowing in and getting lost. They weigh and fly much the same as regular field tipped arrows.

Patrick went next, using Longbow’s “button-bow.” This is an unbacked, white ash bow with painted “buttons” on the back. Longbow built this bow decades ago, and uses it often. It shoots smoothly and easily, and Patrick quickly fell under its spell. Longbow watched his form, directing him to make certain adjustments. “Open up your stance,” he said. “Turn your wrist in a bit, so the string doesn’t slap your arm.” Patrick released the string and the arrow flew true and nailed the stump. He might have missed the knot hole, but at this stage of his shooting, it was more a matter of honing his technique and getting his arrows to strike somewhere in the ballpark. Hitting the tree was close enough.

tylerNext, Tyler stepped up with his junior bow that my buddy Dave loaned us for his use. Now, purists might argue that this wasn’t a real “primitive” bow, and they’d be right. But other than it not being made from wood, it looked and reacted much like our larger ash bows. And as far as Tyler was concerned, it was as “real” as the bows his dad, granddad, and Longbow were using.

Again, Longbow gently guided Tyler on where to place his feet, adjusting his body sideways, drawing the arrow, and elevating. He let his first arrow fly, and it just barely missed the tree. His second arrow didn’t, striking and sticking into the rotting stump.

“Wow, Tyler,” Longbow said with excitement. “Are you sure you never shot a bow before?” Now, you have to understand that Tyler is about as shy a kid as you’ll ever meet, and he’s anything but athletic. Still, he had been filled with anticipation since his dad had told him he could shoot “bows and arrows” with us. Any hint of shyness evaporated as soon as he met Longbow, and his confidence soared with his new teacher’s encouragement.

tylerMost days when I’m stump shooting with Longbow, I’ll take two or sometimes three shots at a target. But on this day, I was satisfied to take single shots, hit or miss, and watch how my son and grandson were doing. Very few shots went far astray, with most of their arrows striking on or near the intended target; our adventure wasn’t without humor either.

“Papa,” Tyler said to me, when Longbow went to fetch his arrows. “Does he know how to get out of here?” Of course, the question made me laugh out loud.

“What’s so funny?” Longbow asked.

“Tyler asked me if you were lost,” I said, making a face.

“I’m an Indian,” Longbow replied, feigning a look of anger, as he stared deeply at Tyler. “Indians don’t get lost.”

In all, we spent about 90 minutes before unstringing our bows and heading back out of the woods. We were exhausted but invigorated by the fresh air and exercise. Since then, Patrick has returned several times to stump shoot with Longbow; in fact, Longbow is making him a basic white ash bow, and Tyler now has his own youth bow and arrows from one of the catalog outlets.

It isn’t often three generations get an opportunity to share in something so much fun and so spiritual. I never imagined that a chance invite by my buddy Dave to stop over and throw some arrows with him would lead to my son, grandson, and I sharing in a stump shoot together three years later.

We might not be critter hunters, but as they say in Maine, stump shooting is still “wicked good fun.”