“There are three kinds of men. The one that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” - Will Rogers
“In archery, we have something like the way of the superior man. When the archer misses the center of the target, he turns round and seeks for the cause of his failure in himself.” Confucius
The okra is still pumping out fried potential.
The second planting of bush beans are pickable. Bush beans and copperheads are synonymous to me. Synonymous because of two people I know that were bitten by snakes while picking in a patch of bush beans. September beans and snakes just seem go together for some reason.
Old “Cockeye” Crockett told me about the September he was enslaved in his Granny’s truck patch. It was his twelfth year. That was the year of the biggest mess of bush beans Granny Crockett had ever grown; and she pulled every grandchild she could find out of school that year to get her cash crop to market.
Cockeye said he never even saw the snake. It hit him on the back of his hand and slithered through the beans, instantly setting off a stampede of Grannie’s young bean pickers that is still talked about at family reunions to this very day.
Cockeye said by the time they hauled him into the back of the flatbed, out of the beans and to Grannie’s most trusted root doctor, his arm was the size of his leg. We all assumed that the fact that one of his eyes looked over here and the other eye looked over there was just another strange side effect of copperhead’s venom.
When asked if this was the case; Cockeye assured us that his first ex-wife adjusted his vision with a number ten cast iron skillet after he came home “knee walking” drunk from a “union meeting.” He said he had some random red head’s lipstick all over his white shirt collar. He went on to claim that he laid in the front yard all night until the milkman found him still out “cold as a fish” the next morning.
In seventh grade study hall, I sat next to a jet black haired, dark eyed, one quarter Cherokee maiden. She had one long leg that was significantly smaller in diameter than the other leg. She caught me studying her legs one day and angrily asked just what in the world I thought I was doing.
Being anything but suave and debonaire, on top of being functionally and fundamentally stupid about how to approach most delicate situations when it came to the opposite sex, I just blurted out the truth; “Looks to me like you’re got one fat leg and one skinny leg.”
It didn’t stop there; I blindly blundered into the abyss with; “How’d you manage to pull that off?”
She looked me in the eye with her piercing, dark, fierce, smoldering eyes and it instantly became intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that I had messed this conversation up profoundly.
Then, she took a lengthly deep breath and smiled. She told me about picking bush beans and how the long copperhead had struck; in missing her foot, how one fang hung up in the lace on her tennis shoe. She continued with the description, in terrible detail, how as she ran screaming, the snakes fangs kept bouncing in and out of her pants, making numerous punctures in her leg. She said her leg was full of holes by the time her mother chopped the snake off of her shoe with a hoe.
I asked her if I could touch it. I don’t know exactly why this seemed like an appropriate question given that I had just called this young woman both fat legged and skinny legged. But, I did it, and miraculously, she let me. I’ll leave the rest of this story to your imagination.
So, if you’re picking beans and okra about now, and you have plans to suspend yourself in a tree during the latter part of September; in an attempt to harvest some fresh venison, you should be practicing with your bow.
Ben Pearson and Fred Bear made good money off of my obsession with the bow and flinging arrows. That was a simpler time. No bow sights, no fancy releases, no range finders, no fancy climbing stands to fall out of. You just pulled the string back, held it for somewhere between two and five seconds, guessed at the distance, held your breath until you started shaking violently and let the arrow fly. Simple and easy, only four or five moving parts; the bow, the arrow, your fingers, your eye and your ever elusive target.
Times and technology for archery have changed exponentially since man walked on the moon. Now just to practice with a bow you have to have at least struggled and failed to get a master’s degree in quantum physics.
There are simply too many moving parts for the fundamentally and functional stupid among us to comprehend, much less become fundamentally proficient with all of this wondrous new technology that has invaded the age old art of archery.
Now we have feet per second to comprehend, anchor points to calculate. cam length to digest, release tension to micrometer, break points and draw length to measure. The astounding list of items related to the study of the physics of modern day archery seems to stretch out to infinity and beyond.
There’s another physical dimension to all of this new archery. That’s the part of this obsession that is anatomical. Can you even pull the bow string; pardon my old school vernacular, it’s no longer called a string, it’s now known as a cable. Can you even manage to pull the bow to full draw without dislocating or ripping some muscles, ligaments or tendons? Anatomical features that you failed to remember the name of the last time you failed that class in anatomy?
Practice can be painful, especially if you’ve let the bow get dust covered all summer. Maybe it’s not too late. Let’s hope that the old shoulder, wrists, and forearms haven’t yet turned to mush. Maybe the weed eater and the bean picking have kept the old muscles in tune. What the hell, let the practice begin!
Let’s go over the moving parts necessary in today’s practice session. First, there is the practice target. You have to locate this expensive piece of equipment in an area where, when you miss it entirely, you are hopefully able to find your expensive arrows buried in the dirt. This implies that you have prepared a good landing zone for your arrows, which happened to be traveling at hundreds of feet per second into rock free, truck free, house free and dog free, landing sites. Some archers have to use a garden tiller, or better yet a bull dozer, for constructing such necessarily expansive projects.
Next, comes the assistance of an overly expensive device known as a range finder. This marvelous piece of technology replaces the tape measure or yard stick of old. Now you will be able to decipher, to the inch and angle, just how far away you are from your target that you just managed to miss. The range finder is also handy in a tree stand. You can range the distance of every tree in the forest in case a deer happens to walk by that particular tree. In the heat of the moment you will likely forget every distance you just measured. But, it’s still a fun tool to have when you’re bored, even if it often manages to get tangled in your bow string at full draw. This device also complicates the next piece of technology on your bow, your sight pins.
Sight pins are, more often than not, little glowing dots for us to gaze upon. And, they are obviously designed by those of us who do not wear bifocals. The little glowing dots are designed to be a focal point on the target. If you possess the dexterity of a dentist they’re devilishly arranged so you can adjust them for arrow impact at various distances. Normally, these pins are set at various increments of distance where you think you may be skilled enough to hit your target at that particular range.
The problem with this particularly complicated piece of glowing technology is that it moves up and down, left and right. By the time you manage to get your sight moved up and down, left and right, and you can actually become somewhat accurate at hitting any target, you have managed to either rip your shoulder to shreds, or you’ve buried half of your new arrows all over the practice field.
Arrows can no longer be allowed or trusted to sit on the bow handle. They now have to sit on a little complex device that has more moving parts. It’s appropriately called an arrow rest. This device is designed to flop up and down at the right times, thereby ensuring that the arrow is completely unimpeded as it flies off the cable. Improved arrow flight characteristics is the novel concept being sold here. I find this piece of technology sometimes helpful in eliminating the arrow falling out of the tree stand. This routinely happens in the heat of the moment when I fail to adequately affix the arrow to the bow somehow. Other than that, it’s just another piece of movable technology that seems to constantly get out of whack every time the bow gets dropped on the ground.
That takes us to the bow release mechanism. The release is also a piece of technology that’s adjustable to pressure from your trigger finger. Too tight, and it causes a phenomenon known as target panic. Too light, and it causes arrows to fly like a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile into target areas you’ve never even imagined.
You wouldn’t think that a piece of foam, called a practice target, would make you panic, but I’ve seen it happen. Deer can sure make you panic. But, it’s simply an astounding thing to witness when a piece of foam causes shear panic. Nearly everybody I know who has been panicked by a block of foam blames it on their old release. That explains why all my ‘bow shooting buds’ are always trying to give me used releases.
Then, there’s the peep sight, not peep show, but the peep sight. Like the name implies, this is a little piece of round plastic with a super small hole in it that, once again, was designed by some genius who never wore bifocals. This ingenious little dot of plastic is supposed to be imbedded in the bow string where if can’t move around. I find this not moving part of the design technology, to be pure myth on the majority of the bows I attempt to hunt with.
You pull the bow string back to full draw, put your dominant eye in the little peep hole until you can focus on a multitude of glowing little dots. These pulsating, dancing dots, are your sight pins. Then you have to pick out the pin that you think will send your arrow near your target. Line up your sight pins with your target and if you think you’re ready, and you’re not shaking too awful violently, it’s time for target panic to set in.
After you’ve suffered through all of the mechanics of cams, sights, arrow rests, releases, panic and hunting lost arrows, it’s time to get seriously mental. Panic aside, now you have to focus on anchor points on your face. When you finally get your bow to full draw, where exactly do you touch your face with the trembling hand, that is going to squeeze the finger, that’s going to release the arrow, through the little mechanical shelf, that the arrow is sitting on.
If you’ve managed to remember where you put your anchor points, you have to additionally concentrate on how you breathe. When you’re breathing correctly, you additionally have to pay attention to what you are doing with your hand that is trying to hold the bow steady, while all this other stuff is going on. Grip is a big thing, too much, and things go astray pretty fast, too little, and the bow jumps around like it’s an out of control goat.
So let’s recap a little because all of this new technology has gotten just a little too much to digest in one sitting. If you’ve managed to get all of the mechanics, physics and constantly moving parts sorted out and fixed in place so they don’t drift about aimlessly, you’ve managed to have a pretty good day of it.
Where you manage to screw up your good day starts with your memory failing. Mental anguish comes with every bow you buy. It’s free, whether you want it or not.
Muscle memory for some of us, is likely attainable, it takes a lot of practice and a good deal of time, but what the heck, go for it. Getting the eyes to cooperate, in conjunction with remembering anchor points, breathing techniques, glowing dot alignment, and managing to figure out distances, adjusting one’s hand grip strength, compounded by the dreaded target panic that inflicts the other hands trigger finger, is all in all, a pretty tall order. It’s hard not to over state the fact that mental anguish comes free of charge with every bow.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten some other horrible distraction associated with today’s technology for flinging arrows; like a good old fashioned case of buck fever or taking lengthy naps in a tree, but I guess it’s time to ask the question; Why fool with it all? Why not just drop more money on a crossbow? (Have you priced crossbows lately? My first two trucks didn’t cost that much!) Why not just stay in the bush bean patch and hunt for copperheads, or scour the honky-tonk for some quarter Cherokee maiden with two different sized legs?
Well, I guess one plausible answer is found in the mankind’s innate fascination with every new and improved technological innovation that mankind seems to continue to dream up. Be it good or be it bad, we all seem to want to sell ourselves the charade that new is better, faster is better and if it looks like it’s better, then maybe I’ll get better.
The more I look at it, two sticks and a string look a lot better every day. I think I’ve dislocated some kind of artery!
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WOMR Note; September Sky resulted in some really kind comments. Simply profound! Thanks for reminding me to read more Nash Buckingham. His prose has been too long on the back shelf.
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