I haven't read 'the thread' of so called accusations elsewhere, but here's the scoop.....
I won the bow in the 2007 St Judes auction as it was donated by the previous owner free and clear of any strings. As those that were here know the server crashed somewhere in the last couple of minutes even though we had gotten a new server hoping to prevent the events of the year before. Back then we had only one bid forum and one closing night with 9 pages of items. That one auction raised over $90,000.
The server had to be re-booted by our host,(called by Rob) and until that happened no body knew who won what. Our host said that some members had as many as 12 pages open all that last minute sniping just shut her down. It scared me to death as I had no clue if the server could even be revived. I have never seen our server, and its not even in this country
For that reason this year we linked two servers had four different forums closing 4 different nights to hopefully prevent that and it worked.
I bid on the bow because I wanted to 'semi retire' it to protect and preserve it and its history. It has been to TX on a group hunt, and to the Paradise on St Judes hunts. The bow is scheduled to go out for the last two weeks of this month, and again for the last two weeks of November. I might even hunt with it for a while after that, and then it will go on other group hunts after the 1st of the year. The bow is still hunting, just a little differently than before.
Certain folks registered and their 1st posts were attempts to stir up stuff about the bow, and yes, since their sole purpose was to cause problems they were banned. One guy from AL registered at least 3 times just to do so.
I haven't miss represented the bow or myself, or caused the bow any harm. As some of you know, I fixed the bow's limb twist and gave it a new travel tube.
All the LDB hunt threads are in the Memorable Hunts archived forum.
Too bad that since winning the bow, its been used as a club to beat me with by those that evidently don't like the idea of me having it, and folks that were banned from here for causing problems. I'm sure this wont stop them from hollering either.
I'd like to thank everyone for their comments here and through emails. It means more than you know.