THE LEMONWOOD BOW - Doug Campbell

[Terry_Green]

THE LEMONWOOD BOW
by Doug Campbell

I had been working all night, but the sale bill for the auction had
said there were two bows for sale. That meant there were no options in
my book. I had to stop and see what they were. As it turned out it was
worth missing a little sleep. After standing around most of the day I
was the lucky bidder who took home an eighteen dollar addition to my
bow collection.

It was an old lemonwood long bow with black fiber backing. I was told
it was made in the 40’s sometime. The finish was cracked pretty badly
and the string was missing. A few minutes and some wood wax helped the
finish and my string jig took care of the other problem. I worked for
three weeks flexing the old bow a little at a time till I was able to
string it then reach full draw. The draw weight turned out pretty good
at sixty two pounds at my draw length. But the rainbow trajectory left
some to be desired. Some 60-65# cedar shafts I had already shot good. I
had the idea that I wanted to kill a deer with this old bow, so my
recurve went into the corner and the practice started in earnest.

Deer season finally came around and I felt fairly confident out to
twenty yards or so. The first month of the season was uneventful with
no opportunities for shots, but a planned trip to northern Missouri had
me pumped up. A whole week during the rut with nothing but hunting was
what I waited for all year. Chuck, a friend of mine, and I worked hard
all week to connect. We had several close encounters but could not get
any shots until the last morning I could hunt.

We set up to rattle in a brushy patch of timber before daylight. At
dawn Chuck crashed the horns together, he no sooner finished the
sequence than five does came trotting in. The does messed around there
for a few minutes penning us down, but offering no shot opportunities.
When they left we switched rolls and I started rattling the horns.
Within fifteen seconds a small six pointer came slipping in, catching
me in the act of moving. I froze and we had the classic stare down for
a few minutes. When he decided maybe I was just a strange looking stump
and started sniffing for acorns I slowly brought my bow up came to full
draw and released. I think he was faking me out since when my arrow got
to where he should have been he was already ten yards away.

Chuck and I had a good laugh over this and discussed what to do next.
After an unsuccessful search for my arrow we started to move down the
draw farther into the brush. We hadn’t went ten steps when I saw
movement about sixty yards ahead of us. The movement turned out to be a
decent eight point buck. We dropped in behind a couple of trees and
grunted at him. Without any hesitation the buck turned and headed
toward us. As he came he veered toward Chuck who proceeded to send an
arrow under his belly at twenty five yards. This time it was Chuck’s
turn to go hunt his arrow. We couldn’t believe seeing this many deer
and calling them in without moving more than twenty yards.

We weren’t being particularly quiet, with Chuck thirty yards away
digging his arrow out of a tree when I looked down the draw again and
saw another buck crossing the ditch. I grunted at this buck and he
turned and headed right toward me. We didn’t even have time to take
cover and just froze where we were standing. The buck kept coming and
walked by at about twelve yards, which I guess was to close to hit
since I shot right over his back. Needless to say Chuck and I both had
plenty to rib each other about for a while. This turned out to be the
last of the deer through the wonder spot for the morning.

It was time to head home before I knew it and no deer for the old long
bow, but a ton of exciting memories. It was Thursday afternoon and I
had to go home and catch up on some chores and get things ready for
opening day of gun season. My wife Karen, enjoys deer hunting, but
hasn’t gotten into bowhunting. I try to get everything right for her
since this is about the only hunting she does and it is a great
opportunity for us to be in the woods together. After spending most of
the day Friday catching up I decided to take my bow and go and put her
stand up about two in the afternoon. The stand was an old homemade
chain on type which is big and stable but makes a bunch of noise being
put up. By the time I had gotten done banging around and had the stand
hung in a big sycamore tree behind the house it was after three so I
decided to just sit there for a while.

Less than ten minutes had went buy when fifty yards away a small buck
stepped out of the cedars. Out came the grunt call again, a couple of
soft blows and the buck headed my way. It seemed like he was on a
string that lead to the base of my tree. When he walked by looking for
the other buck he never had a clue what was waiting for him. The old
lemonwood came to full draw and the cedar shaft suddenly was
disappearing through his chest tight behind the shoulder. I guess the
rainbow trajectory doesn’t hurt much when you are only shooting ten
yards. The Zwickey tipped shaft passed thru the buck and was stuck in
the ground. After a short tracking job it was a real joy to run my
hands over my first long bow killed deer. After traveling a couple
hundred miles and spending a month and a half chasing deer I had
finally killed my deer within a two hundred yards of my back door out
of my wife’s tree stand. Sorry Honey. There is a special feeling of
achievement when you take on a challenge and after much time and work
accomplish it, this one was even sweeter being able to do it on my own
place within sight of my house. By the way the next day my wife was
able to take a nice fat doe to help with our years venison supply.