Scariest Thing Ever Happened Shootin a Bow

[Pat B.]

Years back I had two Bear mag handled t/d bows blow up.. Actually it was the limbs that broke, both times.. The one that got my attention was when I was out stump shooting. As it was during hunting season I had a bow quiver on and full of sharp Zwickeys. When the limb broke, at full draw, five arrow with broadheads went in five different directions including straight up.. As all the pieces and arrows came down I was sure thankful none landed on me !!  And yeah, both time got slapped by the broken limb..

[Reformed]

Here is a litany Of flukes blunders and acts of God
Winter of 1988
Whellie bow next to me delaminated at a tournant nice white shirt full of blood is mine or the guy next to me was him fiberglass in his vain
Gal on my squad pulls back and the nock blows up. at this point I am getting a little shy of bows and what can happen to people and there equipment.  then my bows all within a short time

`993 in a pine tree  Greenwood SC on a warm night deer are starting to make there way out into an opening  look up and there is a pine snake approx 5 feet long and it wants down the tree no deer
  that night
2004 Set up a deer stand with my son after a night in the woods, full moon so we can see  like it daylight so we searched out a tree for another stand found what we were looking for put up the strap on steps four or five, set the stand.  Went tromping through the woods with Brandon one of those nights that you will always cherish on the way back we stopped back to the location of the tree only to find it not there but on the ground expedited by a beaver  
2005 sliver from a broken riser under my fingernail

[NDTerminator]

I'll add the incident that is a dead tie with the carbon arrow blowing up.  This also happened back in the early 80's.  It was my first & last experience with climbing tree stands.

I was using a climber that I had previously put 10' up a tree, that I got to via tree steps.  I had sat down on it with my bow in my lap and was just starting to buckle my safety belt when the bolts holding it together broke almost simulataneously, bang! bang!.

In the split second before I hit the ground in a tangle of stand pieces, I had the smarts to throw my bow (and it's quiver of arrows) as far from me as I could.

Think in terms of falling unprepared 10' intermixed with a garbage can full of scrap steel.  I had more bruises, dents, cuts, gouges, and scrapes than an NFL team on Monday morning.

Never used a climber since then...

[Pete Darby]

Had a bow blow up at full draw in the house that sounded like a gun going off. But it didn't scare me since it was over before I had time to be scared.
Fell backwards 15 feet up out of a tree, but was to busy trying to live to be scared. I was a mite startled though.
I guess the only thing that really scared me was this summer while working on a children's archery line a little eight year old pulled his arrow back behind the riser and the arrow blew up as he released it.  I couldn't stop checking his forearm for damage.  I just knew he had pieces of arrow in his arm.  But luckily he didn't even get scratched.

[Ron LaClair]

About 25 years ago I had a table display at Anderson Archery's Clinic here in Michigan. One of the bows on my table was a 130# Hill style longbow built by a friend of mine. It was strung with a sign that said, "Pull me if you can". A lot of guys gave it a try with no one getting it back more that than about 12". I had been using the bow as a workout bow to  make my 80 to 90# bows feel easy so when a couple of  big strapping lads wanted to see it pulled, I proceded to show them how it was done.

They were standing in front of my table so I faced away from them along the line of tables and pulled the bow to full draw and held for a second when...  CRACK!    :eek:  the bow blew into a hundred pieces with part of it landing three tables down and part if it hitting me in the head. When my eyeballs stopped dancing and my vision cleared, I looked for the guys and they were long gone.