Hunting in Virginia

Saturday early archery hunting season began. My brother and I woke up at 5am and headed out into the Virginia woods about an hour south of Washington D.C.. Sometime after 7:30am I saw a small deer approaching. I was sitting on the ground with my feet in a dugout pit. It was as if I were sitting in a chair where my butt was level with the ground.

The deer was approaching from the side that had almost no cover. The hunting blind was set up for the deer to come the other direction. When I saw it, I slowly leaned over and laid my chest on the ground with my bow extended in shooting position. The deer continued in my general direction, but was starting to angle away.

Mentally, I called to her and told her there were acorns by me which there were. She turned and came closer towards me. At one point she was about 12 yards away. There was absolutely nothing between her and me and yet she hadn't seen me. I had a perfect broadside shot.

I let her walk on. Why didn't I shoot? It didn't feel right. I wasn't confident that I wouldn't just injure the deer. I was laying in a awkward position, with a shirt draped over one eye, using an arrow that shoots crooked about 3 yards outside the range I practice shooting from at a smaller than expected deer. This was also the first day of hunting. I thought I would surely have better opportunities.

As it turns out I went hunting four more times over the next 3 days and saw that same deer again, but no others. We think that the rest of the deer are hanging out closer to the river at this time of year.

It was exciting and having a deer so close with nothing between between her and me was a thrill. I learned a lot from each time in the woods. I saw a fox and heard him barking. I heard lots of different birds including two barred owls squawking at each other which is pretty funny to hear.

This is my first all natural arrow. The point is dacite stone. It was hafted in using pitch and sinew. The shaft is viburnum and the fletchings are sinew and turkey feathers.


Her you can see the shirt I wore on my head. I did this because the mosquitoes were pretty bad. Here I have the side tucked tightly to my head. The first day I didn't so they draped in front of my eye. To get this look I first dabbed on white ash to dull my skin. The black is charcoal and the lighter color is clay.


One day my brother showed me how to make a carrying case for my bow. This is made from braintanned deer skins. I cut long thin strips to sew it all together.


8 days till I start my journey out west.

Open Season

Hunting season starts tomorrow. I write this as I'm about to head out the door to drive to Washington D.C. My brother, his roommate and I are going to hunt at a friend's property in Virginia. We will all be hunting with primitive self made bows and arrows.

The point on the left I'm hoping to haft into and arrow. It is the first point I've made that is good enough to hunt with. The notches are kind of bad, but the width is almost an inch at the greatest. I'm hoping to make the piece on the right look like the one on the left tomorrow.


I finished my bow string made out of yucca fibers, but when I shot with it, it broke. You can see at the top right where it broke. For now, I'm going to hunt with a nylon string.


Hopefully the next time I post something it will be a picture of me with a deer.

Flint Ridge Knap-In 2007

Last weekend I met my brother at the Flint Ridge Knap-In in Ohio. It is one of the biggest flintknapping gatherings in the country. It's special because it takes place at a historic flint quarry. You may be able to read the words in the picture below, but in summary, the site was used to quarry and make flint arrowheads and spear points for 10,000 years. Looking at an overhead map of the area, you can see thousands of small quarries that are mostly filled with water now.



I bought 40+ pounds of dacite and obsidian rock to tide me over for awhile. The following day the guy I bought it from bought a hickory stave for bow making from me which basically gave me half my money back. It worked out beautifully. I spent most of my time knapping. I'm still a beginner and haven't made an arrowhead suitable for hunting. I'm trying to finish at least one before I go hunting in a week.

The is one piece of obsidian I was working on. I haven't been able to make this into a point yet.


They had an atlatl (spear-thrower) range set up and allowed anyone to try it for free. They also had a competition where you threw three darts at five different distances. I didn't do very well, but my brother did. It was fun though. I'm going to have to makes some darts for the atlatl I made.


My brother and I had to make an unexpected trip to Iowa following the knap-in, so we stopped by my viburnum patch on the way out of Indy. We each harvested some gorgeous shafts. Today I'm going to start working on a bowstring made of yucca fibers. If I can do that and make a stone arrow head, I can hunt with completely primitive gear in a week.

More Shafts and a Basket

I took a trip to Eagle Creek Park on Saturday to visit my favorite spot for harvesting arrow shafts. The Last time I went was during the late summer. At that time there was more sap in the wood. The arrow shafts shrank as they dried. This time more of the sap is down in the roots so I don't think they will shrink as much.

I carefully selected eight branches from various shrubs. Before cutting each branch I first checked with inner vision to determine whether I should take it. Using inner vision is something I learned at the Tracker School. It is a way of spiritually communicating with all of nature. It is useful for many things, but in this case I can use it to determine whether removing the branch will help or hurt the environment. The great benefit is that I don't have to rely on my knowledge of the ecosystem to determine this.

I could have easily harvested a dozen or more shafts if I wasn't doing it in a caretaking manner. There were many very nice straight branches that I passed on because removing them would have hurt the shrub. It's also worth noting that by limiting the number of shafts I harvest, I can give each one more attention as I straighten them over the coming weeks.

Before cutting I also gave thanks to the branch and shrub for giving its life for me. After I made my cut, I spread mud over the cut. The main reason I did this is so that it wasn't easily visible that someone cut a branch. The bright cut of the branch stands out in the dull brown of the landscape at this time of year. The shrubs were on a main path so people may walk by them often. I don't think it is exactly legal to cut branches in the park. I have no regrets because I am caretaking, leaving the woods better off than I found them.

The shafts I have are pretty straight, but I'll be bending them each night as they dry to make them straighter. I don't feel guilty watching tv if I spend that time straightening arrow shafts. They are a little thick, but after they dry, the bark is removed and they are sanded, they should make good arrow shafts.


With the excess branch parts that aren't going to become arrow shafts, I made a basket. I started the basket with the refuse from my earlier harvest. Last night I was able to finish it. It is made completely from leftover Arrowwood Viburnum branches. The handle is a little small so I probably won't be carrying anything heavy in it. I may either add a stronger handle or remove it entirely.

Arrow Fletching Close Up

I fletched another arrow tonight. I think it is twice as good as my first two. My brother told me to try peeling the feathers instead of splitting them with a knife. It definitely made the feathers nicer to work with and took a lot less time to prepare them. A peeled feather has little to no quill which makes it less bulky and hopefully less noisy in flight.



I've been practicing shooting in preparation for the hunt. I have some rifle targets that have 8 inch diameter black circles in the center. This is the approximate size of the vitals of a deer. I've been practicing hitting within the circle from various distances, positions and with various arrows. So far I'm best from the sitting position. I like this position because it is comfortable, stable and I think it will be easier to stay hidden.

My New Arrow

Over the weekend I fletched my first arrow. Besides a little glue, everything on the arrow is natural. The shaft is Autumn Olive. It is one of three my brother sent me from the D.C. area. It is an invasive species there that outcompetes other native plants and trees.

The feathers are from a turkey. I used elk and emu leg sinew to bind the feathers to the shaft. The dark brown substance near the middle of the picture is pitch which is mostly made of tree sap. I used it to prevent the sinew from unraveling. I burnt in rings around the shaft for style and so the whole shaft wasn't so bright. I have yet to haft a point into it. I shot it and it was pretty accurate so far.



This is the finished bark cordage that I wrote about in my earlier post. You may notice that the cordage is thicker than the picture in my earlier post. I ended up reverse wrapping it all again, which basically doubled the thickness and halved the length. This was necessary because it was too thin to be much good and I didn't do a very good job of keeping the strands of even thickness. This is now a little over 22 feet of 1/4 in rope. I'm amazed at how much I got out of the materials I gathered.

Jackpot: Arrow Shafts

In my last post I mentioned a class I'm taking at the end of April. The class is called The Sacred Hunt. I will actually be hunting deer the way the Native Americans did. This means I'll be hunting with all natural gear. I already made a bow, but I don't currently have natural arrows. I've never made any before. I'm most worried about the arrow shafts.

The first problem is getting them. I don't really have any idea where to find them. The second problem is timing. Being summer any shafts I find now will need to dry out for many weeks before they are ready to shoot. I only have till the end of October to have them fully prepared. Another problem is making sure the spine or stiffness of the shaft will match the strength of my bow.

Last weekend I went to Broad Ripple Park (where my sit spot is) and looked around and didn't find any shafts. So yesterday (Saturday) I drove over to Eagle Creek Park to have a look around. It is a far bigger park so I figured I'd have a better chance. I ate lunch in a picnic area that was next to a wooded area. Afterwards I walked into the woods keeping my eye out for potential arrow shafts.

I didn't take long before I spotted a large shrub with a very long and straight sapling shooting up. I couldn't believe how straight and free of branches it was. I looked at the leaves and berries so that I could later identify it. I took a few moments to think and feel whether the sapling was really what I needed and when I felt confident I cut it. I continued walking around the area and found many more of these shrubs. I ended up harvesting six shafts. I cut them down to size on site. To make the most use out of the sapling, I kept the excess material to make a basket.

When I got home from the park I tried to look up the shrub in a book, but couldn't find it. Today I was in Bloomington at a Tracking Club gathering and showed my friend Kevin a picture of the leaves from the shrub. He didn't recognize it, but mentioned the possibility of Arrowwood Viburnum. Once he said that I remembered the email my brother sent me about Arrowwood a week earlier. I had the feeling that my shafts might be Arrowwood. Tonight I looked up Arrowwood and the leaves and berries both matched exactly.

So to recap, I've never harvested arrow shafts before. I went to Eagle Creek Park where I've never been before. I chose a random place to eat lunch and then wandered into the woods. There I stumbled upon shrub after shrub of Arrowwood Viburnum, a plant so good for making arrows, that it was named as such. Jackpot! The best part is that I can return there in the future and harvest more.

My six super straight shafts and the basket I started with the excess material.


My task now is to "train" the shafts to be perfectly straight by taking out the bends as they dry. Basically each day I'll bend the bends in the opposite direction and eventually they'll stay straight.

Before I left the park I decided to stop by the Nature Center. On my way in a man was walking out with an injured Great Horned Owl. He said he thought it had been hit by a car. If you look closely, you can see the lack of feathers between his eyes. He was alive, but was pretty much out of it.

Michigan Weekend

This weekend I went to Michigan. I was able to kill two birds with one stone by hanging out with my homeboy Steve in Ann Arbor at night and going to the "Traditional Bowhunters Expo East" in Kalamazoo during the day. I hung at Steve's apartment with his friends. Here are some pictures of Steve's crew. As you can see it is was regular U.N. summit.


Steve is seen here in red.



Saturday I drove to Kalamazoo to the convention. There were probably 400 or more people there. The average person there was a fortysome year old man with a close trimmed beard and a camo baseball hat on. It wasn't really a redneck feel, just an outdoorsman feel. I went to a couple seminars. The most interesting one was about a bowhunter who is blind. He prefers this terminology than a blind bowhunter. He and his sighter were a couple of cut ups. They have been shooting together for longer than I've been alive. They basically just told stories about there hunting trips together and then showed how the shooting works.


As you can see they like to joke around. This was Lenny showing how he camos up for the shoot.


Here they demonstrated how John sights the target. Obviously this is pretty short range, but typically they shoot around 20-30 yrds or longer. They are both archery champions.

At the convention there were tons of tables full of stuff people were selling. I probably spent over $150 on all kinds of stuff. Most of the stuff I bought was for making arrows. I got a fletching tool, a tapering tool, feathers, arrow points and shafts. I also got some things for making arrow points and other stone tools. Right now I'm really more excited about that, but I have to wait till the weather is nicer before I can work on it.


The rocks are both obsidian and together cost about $25. Obsidian is one of the easiest rocks to work with. A neat thing about it is that it fractures to the very molecule which is 1000 times sharper than a surgical scalpel. You can expect some posts about this in the future.

Skill: Nail Arrow

Alright, so you heard me gripe about breaking arrows. Tonight I repaired one of them. Here's the story. Two days ago I was reading a book of mine called "Making Indian Bows And Arrows The Old Way" when I saw a picture of an arrow that had a nail as its tip. I thought it was pretty dope so I decided to make one with one of my busted arrows.

It was actually very simple. The first thing I did was drill a whole in the shaft.

Sorry for the out of focus picture.

After that, I prepared the nail by sawing it in half and filing down the non-pointy side so it would fit into the hole.

On top is an original nail and the bottom right is the finished tip.

Then I inserted the nail and wrapped it all up with artificial sinew. This will keep the nail from splitting the shaft or coming out. The last thing I did was put some beeswax over the sinew to keep it from unraveling.


I shot the arrow a couple times and it is pretty nice. It is definitely heavier at the tip then a normal hollow tip. I'm not sure yet how the arrow will handle on a longer distance shot. I'll probably make some more of these at a shorter length. Shooting it is kind of like shooting a nail gun, except this baby can go about 200 yards.

My bow is still coming along. I'll probably have another post about that soon.