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.

Pebble Tools

Today my house was being shown to some potential buyers so I had to get out for awhile. I decided to go to the park for another barefoot run. It was a great day. There was light rain so almost no one was at the park. I pretty much had the place to myself except for a couple custodians. I felt quite wild running in the rain with no one around.

After I finished I had some more time to kill so I started into the woods to my usual spot. As I crawled in on all fours a pile of pebbles caught my eye. I recalled the newsletter I got from Practical Primitive. The skill of the month was Pebble Tools. It's a skill that was taught to me a couple years ago in the Advanced Standard class at the Tracker School. I hadn't really used the skill since then.

The technique is called Bipolar Percussion, but as Tom says, "Bash two f***ing rocks together!". Simply put, you place the object rock on top of a larger rock known as an anvil and then hammer it with another big rock until it breaks.

You end up with pieces like those in the picture below. I'm hoping to try to carve up a fireboard for a bow drill with these pieces. I also grabbed a couple stones for burnishing. Those are the smooth round ones in the bottom right of the picture.

This is an easy but important skill to have considering that you may not always have a knife and it can be hard to find knappable rock. It's usually easy to find pebbles.

For a full lesson with picture on how to do this, check out Eddie's page.

Backpacking the Smokies

Last week I went backpacking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park with my family. My brother and I were surprised when we heard that our mom was coming. She has never really wanted anything to do with camping let alone backpacking. In all there were 7 of us including my parents, brother and his girlfriend, two nieces and me. In summary we covered about 30 miles in 4 days and 3 nights.

Left to Right (Natasha, Brianna, me, mom, Andrew, dad)


My mom and nieces had no experience at all. We planned a route that would be mostly downhill and also along rivers a lot of the way since the temperature was in the 90s. Our route took us from Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the park at 6,643 feet about sea level, to the trail head at Tremont in Tennessee.

We got off to a rocky start. Because we had to drop a car off, we didn't get started till 2:30pm the first day. A couple hours into it my niece Brianna sprained her ankle on a rocky downhill portion of the trail. My brother and I traded off carrying her piggyback while the other carried both backpacks. This went on for a mile or so until she was able to hobble at a decent pace. We made it to camp with enough light to put up our tents, eat and get settled in.

Although struggling and complaining a lot, she was able to hike the rest of the trip (with a lightened backpack) which is pretty impressive especially for a first timer. My mom did very well and never complained.

Another scary moment was when my brother got stung by a bee. He is allergic and nearly died once. He had epi-pens on hand, but we were probably 5 miles from a car at the time. He applied his homemade plantain salve and we waited to see if he was allergic to that particular sting. Thankfully he didn't have a major reaction. His arm did swell up pretty big though.

4 out of 7 of us got stung by some form of flying insect over the course of the trip. I took one upside my head. They were everywhere. There is no worry of CCD in the Smokies!



Laura, my brother's girlfriend


Here you can see Brianna hobbling along using two walking sticks.


The weather was pleasant while we were there. It was supposed to be really hot, but we only really felt the heat a few times. There was of course a lot of sweating on uphill sections, but not so much from the heat or sun. 95% of the trails we were on were shaded. Being a temperate rain forest, the vegetation is very lush even in a drought year. It rained but a few drops while we were there.

My brother and I thought it would be a pretty nice place to be if/when TSHTF and MZBs (Mutant Zombie Bikers) are running a muck. A month ago I happened to be looking at population density and precipitation maps for the US to see what places would be good for this scenario.

On this US precipitation map I noticed a circle of area around Tennessee and the Carolinas that got a lot more rain than most of the country. I didn't investigate further to see what cities were in that area. As it turns out, the Smokies comprise the northern portion of that rainy spot.

On the same map you can see the brownish-red area in southern California where I will be spending 8 months starting at the beginning of October.