Activities Since December

It's been awhile since my last post. I've been on two more hitches since then and tomorrow I will start my next one near Yuma, CA. I also got to spend two full weeks back in Muncie, IN for winter break. While there I got to do some bow shooting with my brother, cousin and her husband. We found an old basketball and used it to do moving target shooting. It was fun.

While there I also continued tanning the deer hide I started back in March of last year. After saturating the skin in egg yolk for a day I began to dry it. First I rang it out to get as much moisture out as possible. In the picture below I'm stretching the skin as it dries out.

Stretching the skin



The skin has to be stretched until it is completely dry so that it does not become stiff. To speed the drying process I used a fan to blow hot air from the space heater onto the skin.

The skin ended up drying too fast and became stiff in parts. I bagged it up and took it back to California. While back here in California I soaked the skin and did the drying and stretching process again. This time the skin was mostly softer but still somewhat stiff in areas.

I haven't decided if I will soak and dry it for a third time or just smoke it.

The skin starting to dry


A bunch of the SCA folks spent a day and night in Joshua Tree National Park last week. We had a good time rock climbing. Below is a montage of one of the cooler boulders I climbed. The following day a few of us drove and hiked to a hot spring in the San Bernadino National Forest. It was beautiful soaking in a natural hot tub in the desert next to a creek.

Climbing montage


I've started working on a few other projects I hope to post about in the future. For one project Rosy and I collected clay and hope to fire some pots in our backyard. Four of us are also going to make moccasins soon. We received a nice piece of buffalo skin in the mail today for the soles.

My Second Baltimore Bowman Event

Last weekend I attended the Baltimore Bowman Traditional Classic for the second year in a row. Like last year I rented a car and drove from Indy to Washington D.C. and then to Baltimore. I hung out with my brother and some other friends. The focus of the weekend was shooting 3d targets. I didn't take pictures of shooting because it was basically the same as last year.

Learning wild edible and medicinal plants was an added bonus of my trip. My brother taught me many. All of them were ones that could be eaten raw. To me there is something cool about being able to feed yourself on plants as you're casually walking through the woods. I think it's the instant gratification. It's food that's free and the energy exerted is just that of grabbing a leaf. There is also a scout aspect to it. You can travel long distances without stopping. You don't need a fire that could give away your location.

I took pictures of some of the plants I tried out last weekend. Each name is linked to a external reference for more information.

Wood Sorrel - This has a lemony taste. According to the reference, it is more a medicinal plant than an edible. I guess you wouldn't want to eat too much of this at one time.


Black Locust - According to the reference all parts of the tree are very poisonous except the flowers. Luckily the flowers were the only part I ate. They are very good. They have a slight sweet taste to them. I ate many handfuls of these throughout the weekend.



Cleavers - I ate the whole stalk. The link says that the seeds of this plant often end up in cereal grains because they are hard to filter out so you may have already eaten this plant and not known it. It also says that the plant can be used to treat skin diseases.


Garlic Mustard - This is an invasive species. It has an effect on the soil that makes it harder for native species to grow. I ate the leaves of this plant. It tastes like it is named. The first picture is the plant in it's first year. The second picture is it's second year.



Tinder Fungus - While gathering black locust flowers, I noticed a fungus growing on the tree. This fungus can be used as tinder for making fire by friction. After reading the linked article I found out that this isn't "true" tinder fungus. When I lit it, it did burn for awhile before going out so I think it's good stuff.


Finally, I made my first quality biface on the trip. The stone is dacite which is a little bit harder than obsidian on the lithic scale. I mostly used small stones to take this from a big chunk of rock down to this form. I wanted to get a picture of this before I try to take this down to a nice point in case I make a bad mistake.

Holiday Time

I had a great holiday with my family despite catching a cold. I ended my 2-year streak without sickness. :( My brother and I took our niece and nephew out shooting one day. He made a kid's bow a couple years ago that they both shared. It was pretty cool teaching them the proper technique.


Madeline picked it up pretty well and was able to shoot a couple arrows 30+ yards which is probably close to the bow's max range.


On our little journey we took them by a patch of cattails. Over Thanksgiving we took our nieces Natasha and Brianna by the same spot. The game is to grab the sausage head of the cattail and throw it at someone. The closer you are the better because it explodes into a cloud of fluffy seeds once you release it. By the time we were done, we had seeds all over our clothes. It's also a good way to reseed the area.


A few days after Christmas we went out shooting again. This time we took some of our friends. We had both a long and short distance shoot. The short distance shoot is pretty fun. The idea is to shoot at full draw straight up and see how close to you you can land the arrow. Part of the fun is that it is dangerous and stupid to do, but we've never had an arrow land closer than 15 yards so we're not too worried about it. As long as you keep your eye on the arrow, you're safe.

Here is my friend Steve shooting with my roommate Derik looking on.


My brother got me a Nicholson rasp for Christmas. He made the beautiful handle himself out of Osage. It's a little crooked, but it doesn't affect the performance negatively. This rasp is many times better than the one I was using before. I've been using it on the new bow I've been working on which I'll be writing about soon.


He also gave me two deer hides to tan. This is great because I've never tanned a hide before and have been wanting to learn for a long time. Chances are I won't get to them till the Spring when it is nice out, but you never know with global warming it may be nice out all winter.

I'd also like to acknowledge that I've been blogging now for over a year. I'm happy I started documenting my projects. I hope to keep it up as I delve into more skills.

My Hawaii Trip Part 3

I didn't get to go camping in Hawaii like I'd hoped, but that didn't stop me from playing with the local flora and fauna. There were so many plants with long blade-like leaves. Every time I looked at them I wanted to make cordage. You can see how I did this in my previous post about making cordage from yucca leaves. I tested a few different types of leaves. Some were definitely too weak to be much good, but I was able to make a decent piece of cordage from one type I found at the beach.

While I was in Hawaii, I finished the bow I made for Jon. It was a little difficult to get it down to it's final weight because I didn't have a scale to determine the draw weight. My target weight was between 50-55 lbs and the only way I could really tell was from comparing it to what I remember my bow feeling like. That and I also shot the 50-55 lbs spined arrows to see how they flew. I think the bow may be a little heavy, but it shot pretty well. I put 4 of 6 arrows through a beer can from 15 yards. The bow is made from Osage wood. I finished the handle by wrapping it in leather and adding an arrow rest.


We set up a little range on the side of Jon's house. It was fun to shoot unopened Diet Pepsi cans. They had a case of them and no one at the house drinks diet.


Before I left for Hawaii, I made earrings and a necklace for Carrie. All three pieces of jewelry had a knapped piece of colored glass as the focal point. Here you can see the earrings with light blue arrow heads. I don't have a picture of the necklace, but it has an orange arrow head that matches Carrie's hair.


This was a cat trap Uncle Sam had in his front yard. There are lots of wild cats on Maui. I'm not sure what he does with them when he catches them. I don't think I want to know.


My last night there Uncle Moe came by after hunting that morning. He showed us the crazy guns he has. One was a cross between a rifle and a hand gun if you can picture that. He also showed us the mountain goat he killed that morning. He said he took it down from 173 yards. It's pretty big for the area.


Sunday I will start my 7th class at the Tracker School. This time it will be the Urban Scout class. I'm not totally sure what to expect since the class has never been taught before. I'll be sure to post something when I get back.

By Request, I Give You Jim

I don't know the full story of Jim, but I'll tell you what I know and my fellow bowman can add comments. Jim parked his magic truck next to our group's camp area. We shared a firepit with him. The funny thing was that he seemed to have everything you could imagine in his truck. It was funny because someone would say, "I wish I had some sausage" and he would say, "I got some sausage in my truck." He came by himself and yet he had like 30 paper bowls and a box of plastic forks. We could rely on him for anything.

We invited him to shoot with us Saturday. He turned out to be a ringer. Sunday morning he bought himself a Robin Hood hat perhaps encouraged by our awe of his shooting skills. The Robin Hood hat didn't seem to help him when we shot Sunday. He wasn't as good with it on.

Baltimore Bowman Traditional Classic

Left to Right (Me, Bill, Andrew, Matt, Matt, Mike)

I left Friday morning around 8:30am. Tuesday they told me they reserved me an economy car, but of course when I got there they didn't have it. The dude tried to offer me a free upgrade to a truck which I imagine is the opposite of an economy car. I settled for a Chevy HHR which is the equivalent of a PT Cruiser. The cool thing was that it was brand new. It had 5 miles on it. The gas mileage was sufficient.

9 1/2 hours later I was in Baltimore. The timing was nice because I got there not long after my brother. The event was the 2006 Baltimore Bowman Traditional Classic. It was basically a gathering of people interested in bowmaking, bowhunting and archery. There were lots of vendors selling things. There were archery ranges all over the place. They had a few different shooting events.

Bill had a tent representing his organization Ancestral Knowledge. We spent a good portion of our time in the tent practicing skills. In the picture below you can see me working on a bow and Matt and Andrew in the background flintknapping. Of the hundreds of people there we were pretty much the only guys who made our own natural bows so lots of people stopped by to see our work.


One of the cooler things during the weekend was a horseback archery demo put on by a couple of guys. They demonstrated how they did drive-bys in the olden days. One of the coolest skills was shooting a moving target. They galloped by a guy who rolled a target about the size of a large pizza. I have a hard enough time hitting a stationary target, but these guys were moving and the targets were moving. In the picture below, the archer shot the target once before he passed and then again after.



The most fun during the weekend was shooting the 3d courses. Each one was a trail through the woods. Along the trail there were different 3d foam targets of all kinds of different animals. It was always interesting because each shot was unique. Different distance, animal, angle, stance, etc. To make it competitive we had teams and kept score. The diversity of animals was pretty amazing. All the standards were there like deer, bears, turkeys but there were also exotics like a mountain lion, panther and even a lion.


I wish I could say I hit either of these targets, but I didn't. They were a little out of my range.


Here is my brother Andrew sighting in on a deer.

I left Sunday around 12:30pm and made it back late. It ended up being worth the drive. This morning I was happy to give the rental car back with about 1250 miles on it. Maybe they'll reconsider their unlimited miles weekend special.

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.

Christmas Time Skills

I had a great Christmas break. Because the weather was so nice I got to spend a lot of time outdoors. My brother made me a new bow from Osage Orange wood.
It is quite an awesome gift. With two bows my good friend Jon and I spent 2+ hours shooting together. It was a blast.

I also had some time to do some tracking around the area. I found a heavily used dear trail. Right before the trail exited into open area, I found a kill. I determined it to be a rabbit on account of finding the cottontail at the kill site. There was also a big patch of torn off skin left behind. Little did I know at the time that this was a foreshadowing of what was to come on Christmas day. I looked for a long time on several trails but I could not find any tracks besides deer. In the end I had to assume that the predator was a coyote. I know they are in the area and my mom said she heard one a few nights before.

On my way to church Christmas morning, there was a roadkill rabbit a few houses down the road from my parents' house. It was easy to tell that the kill happened that morning. After church I picked it up. Last night I skinned it. The skin is so thin that I ripped it in several places. I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish tanning it.

As you can see, I wasn't able to get all the fat off of it yet.

Stay tuned. My next post will be an update of the progress of my bow.

Shoot Happens!

First, sorry for the corny title. I've been thinking a lot about shooting my bow these days. As I think I said in an earlier post, it is ironic that I finally finished my bow just in time for cold weather when it is uncomfortable to practice shooting. That's what I get for procrastinating for so long. I was lucky enough, however, to get in one good session over Thanksgiving. My brother and I went on a roving practice session. Our parents live in an area where there is still some pseudo-wilderness area. There are some wooded patches, a river and some open grassland not yet developed. We each carried our bow and a quiver of arrows. Basically, we would pick some target and see who could shoot it or get closest to it. Being near civilization, there were lots of objects to shoot like trash and tennis balls. The fun of roving around is that you can try so many different shots. A few of the fun ones were:

• a lob shot trying to hit a patch of grass 50 yds. away.
• a western movie style shoot out where we were facing away from our target and had to spin around and shoot two arrows through it.
  
• a long range shoot to test the max distance of our bows. Mine is ~190 yds.
• a shot at an object protected by brush.

I'm dying to shoot like this again, but will have to wait till the weather is nicer. In the mean time I bought a target and put it in my basement. I know you're thinking this is dangerous, but it isn't. First, the shot is only 20 ft. which makes it pretty hard to miss. Second, as you can see from the picture, I have some protective cushioning surrounding the target.
I shoot 4-5 days a week because it is so fun even with the same 20 ft. shot everytime. To keep it interesting I usually play a game. I start with 12 arrows and my object is to get at least one in each of the four white spots. Of course it isn't that plain. I always make it into a movie moment with dialogue:

Dr. Evil: "Ok Mr. Bond, you have 12 arrows with which to save your family. Each spot you hit will release one of your family members. Good Luck, Mr. Bond".

Bond: (Sean Connery accent) "I'll play your game Dr. Evil and when I'm done I'll save my last arrow for you!"

So far I've only saved my family once, but I'm getting better.

I was just thinking about how much fun it would be if there was a way to have a non-lethal bow fight. It would be like paintball, except you would use bows. There'd need to be some kind of arrow or arrow tip that is padded. I probably wouldn't go as far as using paint. The trick would be making an arrow that would fly true but not hurt. If it were a cartoon, it would be an arrow with a boxing glove on the tip. Does anyone have any ideas?