An Austrian, Mike Sarnitz told me that Story. Hes was a bow & arrow pioneer in Austria. I did an interview with him, because I will add a chapter on him in the Englisch edition of my "Legends in Archery", it will be published in 2010 in the US.
I touhgt you may like that kind of story:
Mike´s story with Fred Bear:
As a trainee I went late summer of 1978 to the Bear Archery plant in Florida, wich was just transferred from Michigan to this beautiful southern state. For me it was like heaven, due to the fact, that I never saw a factory wich combined manufacturing processes with a museum and a wonderful archery course around the factory including a fresh water pond. Fred knew about me as a sceptical rifle hunter who was not aware of the efficiency of the bow and arrow harvesting game. I personally just could not imagine, being brought up in a very conservative and traditional way in regards to hunting – after work Fred sneaked into my office, both hands in his pockets and said “ Mike, do you have a minute, I´d like to show you my museum” - I was more than thrilled, that the big guy personally wanted to give me a tour of his own museum. After all the workers left, Fred and myself went up to the first floor and went along a wonderfully decorated hallway, where I could see not only full and headmounted trophies, but also on the other side of the hallway, the whole manufacturing machinery through a big show-window enabling the general spectator, to see both-the artifacts of the museum, mounted animals and bows and arrows of primitive tribes and at the other side, the whole factory with all the production. I was rather speechless which Fred realised and therefore took his arm around me and strolled with me through the museum and telling me stories wich connected him with the appropriate animal. He sensed in my behaviour, that I still could not imagine that you have to approach game very close contrary to tha actual rifle hunt and at the end of this late evening he asked “Would you like to join me over the weekend to hunt white tale buck?” I murmured a shy “ I would love to” so Fred picked me up on Friday after work and we went after a four hours drive to the specific hunting ground. The logcabin we slept in was propably for every young hunter the absolute ultimate and a dream came true, even without having already being successful in a hunt. On the next few days, it seemed that it was pretty difficult to locate the tracks of whitetalebucks in the area, so we went after 2 or 3 hour of tracking and scouting back to the lock cabin. However, this time was used to talk about drawweights, spine of the arrow and broatheads. I thought to myself, this particuar weekend will be more a theoratical one and as an impatient young guy I was a bit disappointed, that we did not even see one animal. We did some practise in the loggcabin, although Fred would not allow me yet to use the bow – but that was the deal he said already prior to our hunting excursion. Altough I did already some good grouping, it´s a completely different story to shoot at a target versus hunting an animal. At 4 p.m. on Sunday, we went out again and Fred put me in a groundblind while he was in a treestand approximately five meters above the ground. We both overlooked the forest opening and had eye contact. I was after so many unsucessful excursions a bit frustrated and did a little bit of drawing in my diary as my assumption was that nothing showed up. In the very same moment, four dows and three male whitetales came out to the opening and started feeding. It was at a distance of approximately 20 meters, while Fred´s treestand, at his particular angle, must have been around 16 meters. They were feeding for a couple of minutes and the wind blew into the perfect direction towards us. It was a wonderful sight, especially the big whitetalebuck who did not feed but was a bit cautious before he also started feeding. Suddenly I heard the twang of Fred´s string and all the animals went off highly disturbed. I heard and actually saw an arrow falling to the ground as the opening was covered with little stones. My immediate reaction was “Oh my god, he missed” and was confirmed that my prejudice was right about my scepticism towards this hunting form. The hunt was over and I put on a friendly smile wanting to say to Fred “ missing is part of hunting”.... ...However, my smile immediately froze, when I saw that exactly the same big whitetalebuck appeared again on the scene. Trying to feed but after seconds went on his hindlegs, tried to stand up again and fell to the ground. I just could not figure out what happened. The arrow was away from the harvested buck, Fred being in the tree and me in the ground blind. There was a couple of seconds of silence and I saw a big grin on Fred´s face, with his thumb pointing up. He climed down and I congratulated him in a very puzzled and astonished way. What had happened? The arrow from his 65 pound recurve Kodiak bow went right through the lungarea with the animal dissapearing for propably 15 seconds and returning to the feedingarea. After having realised this incredible experience and how ethically and efficient this particular hunting gear was, I introduced Fred into our traditional way of congratulating the succesfull hunter: breaking two twigs with Fred asking me: “What the hell are you doing?” I said “Two hunting cultures are coming now together and I as a european take this twig, put it into the mouth of the animal honoring this wonderful creature with the second twig putting on tha blade of my hunting knive, handing this over to Fred, who took it after shaking hands, putting it on his borsalino-hat. He smiled and said “ I like that, I will introduce this amongst our hunters, but there will be not many twigs left in the future. Great stuff!” I was rather quiet on our way back home and something in my whole attitude changed. Fred just glanced over to me after a couple of hours of driving and sensed, that there were a lot of things going through my head now. Than he broke the silence and said “When you get back home and you speak about bowhunting, never try to discriminate riflehunters but on the contrary be patient and let them be part of our beautiful hunting form. Let them hunt with both:bow and rifle”
I'd like to post some pics, but I'm to dumb for....LOL
Topic: Austrian Fred Bear Story: (Read 223 times)
