Legendary PBS painter Bob Ross never made a mistake while painting during his long-running “The Joy of Painting” show. He only had “happy accidents.”
A 5-point buck finally fell to my recurve bow, and it was a combination of 51 years of patience and a happy accident.
Although the hunt itself was a short one, the journey to kill a whitetail with simple string, fiberglass-and-wood bow and a single arrow is the life story of one simple bowhunter. Maybe like you.
I started bowhunting as a child, getting my first Plyflex fiberglass recurve bow for Christmas when I was about 8 or 9. I used to chase rabbits with it at an abandoned railroad tracks. I got my first real hunting bow, a Bear Grizzly 45-pound recurve, from Kmart for $24 in 1974. They were closing them out.
Fred Bear, owner of Bear Archery Co. and legendary bowhunter, was my idol. His “Fred Bear World of Adventure” short TV movies captivated me and hooked me on this challenging sport.
I hunted for years with my older brother, Brian, in northern Illinois near my hometown of Fulton, and he managed to kill two deer with a longbow. I had a few shots over the years and a hit or two but never managed to kill a deer with that Grizzly. I used a different Grizzly from my small recurve collection to kill my 110-pound buck.
I shot my first deer in Illinois with a shotgun in 1978. The next year, I shot my first deer with a compound bow, an old Browning Nomad, using the mechanical advantage of pulleys and cables for a lighter, longer hold for a more accurate shot. With a recurve bow, you hold the full draw weight of the bow and it never gets less. Most compound bows have a letoff of about 80%, meaning you hold 20% of a 60-pound draw weight, or 12 pounds, at full draw.
Over the decades I have shot deer in Iowa and Wisconsin with revolvers, single-shot pistols, shotguns, rifles, muzzleloaders and crossbows. This also includes deer shot with Martin and Elite compound bows.
I bought my last compound bow in 2013, the year before crossbows were legalized for everyone. I shot a doe with that bow, an Elite Hunter. Wisconsin legalized crossbows for everyone in 2014, so I set the bow aside and bought a crossbow, then shot a few deer with that. More early-season hunters now use crossbows than compound bows because they shoot like a gun and don’t require the deer-spooking motion of drawing a string back.
But new compound bows have drop-away arrow rests, $400 lighted sights, letoff up to 90% and so many gadgets that I just didn’t enjoy shooting them anymore. A beginner can quickly learn to hit a Ping-Pong ball at 20 yards after shooting a compound bow with release aid in a few minutes. That’s fine for hunting but not much of a challenge.
The long recurve bows (the Grizzly is 58 inches long) don’t work too well inside a fabric ground blind, my preferred hunting method. So this year, I put up my ground blind for gun season, but also set up a little open ground blind with some 3D camo fabric clipped to some stakes. I was right by a dirt road at the Fox Valley Muzzle Loaders Club in New London, and there was a fresh scrape, too.
On Friday morning , Nov. 14, I sat in the open blind. A doe crossed the dirt road, far out of range. A hunting friend of mine had lost his glasses nearby a few days earlier, and I was getting bored, so I almost got up to go look for them but decided to sit a bit longer. At 8:45 a.m., a buck suddenly appeared in the woods northeast of me. Instead of walking directly on the road for an open shot, he decided to walk toward me but just inside the woods. When he got about 18 yards away, I grunted to stop him but he kept walking. I drew and threaded the needle through the brush.
At the shot, he ran into a pine grove and started crashing around. If I had missed, he would have pranced away almost silently. I did not want to push him, because arrow-struck deer usually lie down and bleed out if not pushed. I waited an hour before looking, although I did walk to the road and glanced for my arrow. There was no sign of it, and that was good.
I noticed the nocking point from my bowstring was gone. It had come off at the shot and that could have affected the arrow flight.
I made a large circle around the pine grove and began walking through the trees, looking for him bedded down. I soon found his lifeless body. I said out loud, “I got ‘em! I got ‘em!” I have to admit the emotions were strong, and I pinched back tears. It was 51 years since I had first started deer hunting with a recurve, and I could finally claim a whitetail “hunting the hard way,” as bowhunting legend Howard Hill put it.
I was shocked to see blood only on the deer’s rear and back legs. The shot struck the deer in the hip and passed through, catching the femoral artery. Friend Scott Krebs and I followed the massive blood trail, and he soon found my arrow, which had blood up to the nock. The two-blade, single-bevel Magnus 150- grain head had done its job well. I shoot carbon arrows, which rarely break.
I am now 66 years old, and this is probably one of my most memorable hunts. I can’t help but feel the Great Provider and the legends of traditional archery, including my hero Fred Bear, had a hand in this.
The buck has a unique rack, with four points on one side and a broken stub about an inch long on the other. Deer racks don’t do much for me, as I am mostly a meat hunter, but this one certainly has character, and I will definitely mount the antlers with my arrow.
If you haven’t tried old-school archery, give it a try. It’s not only a challenge but fun, too.
Ross Bielema is a freelance writer from New London and owner of Wolf River Concealed Carry LLC. Contact him at Ross@wolfriverccw.com.
