It’s funny how you remember things. The past few weeks I have been moving items to my girlfriend’s house. It was a long time coming mainly on my end rather than hers but here we are. Anyway when I saw the curved stick I smiled.
In the mid 90’s I had an addiction to sinew backed Osage but found myself worried about harming their durability with rain/humidity. Some time in ’98 I built this bow with that in mind. I wanted a bow that I could hunt regardless of the weather conditions. I chosen a white wood (hickory) primarily due to a recent re-read of Comstock’s “The Bent Stick “.
It was a hurried affair, over built and no considerations made to moisture content, a full 2” wide at the fades, 67” long and coming in at 45#@ 28”. It took a fair amount of string follow at first and then slowly settled in at 3.5 “of set. That is not a typo, look at the pic. She had the trajectory of a rainbow, with my max range set at 20 yds.
I named it “Simplicity” which is evidently a rite of passage among self bowyers, as I see several each year, each bowyer as creative as the last. It was a shootable bow, not too pretty or efficient but it shot. Overall it was not my best effort. The funny thing was on several occasions the weather went south and I would grab “Simplicity”, this would be the day the planets would align and I would get my shot.
Over the years I would kill 5 deer with this bow, more than any other single bow.
I bring this tale up because I have been see a lot recently of bowyers saying “ I would like to hunt with a sellfbow but my latest came in light or too much string follow, etc. , etc maybe next year I can ”. What I am trying to say in this drawn out example is: If you want to hunt with a bow you built then do it. If you can only shoot to 10yds then so be it, be diligent and hunt. It will happen. Build a better bow for next year but hunt what you have this year.
You may just be surprised!
Sean
