First, I want to thank "Bowmofo" for creating the "OHIO MEMBER" thread. This gave us Buckeye Tradgang members a chance to see who may be living close by. Just so happens, I found that "Bowhunterksb32" lives about an hour away from me. He hunts some of the same woods I hunt and we began chatting via PM's here on the site. Yesterday, we decided to hook up at the wildlife area we hunt to get to meet, get to know each other, swap stories and do a little frog gigging with our bows and gig's.
During our chats here, I found that Bowhunterksb32 had a 6 year old Son (Soon to be 7 years old!) That has been shooting bows since he could draw one back. His Father recently gave up the wheelie bows for good and has gone traditional. His Son Easton now wants a bow like his Dad's longbow. Easton has been shooting a compound for a while and I thought this boy needs a selfbow. and I am the fellow that could hook him up with one to help inspire his interests in traditional archery.
It's great that here on the tradgang, what comes around goes around! See, I have had many people on this site offer me good advice and that has encouraged me, helped me through tough times and has unselfishly gave me gifts to help keep the traditional archer in me thriving. For instance when I was down and had surgery "the Ferret" Mickey Lotz went well out of his way to come for a visit to cheer me up. Without thought he and other sent me items to help me through the recovery and gave me the confidence that I would shoot bows and build bows again. Now it is my turn to give something back to the sport of traditional archery and our great site the Tradgang.
Knowing I was to meet Bowhunterksb32 and his Son, I wanted to give them something when we met, this seems to be the tradition of traditional archery. I had a low weight self induced Mickey L. snake bow and thought I could cut it down for the young man of 6yrs (going on 7 yrs!). I cut about ten inches off each end of the snakey osage and retillered it to about 20# @ 25". This way he could grow with the bow and still be able to shoot it now.
The bow is now 47" and is the same hieght as 6 yr old Easton (soon to be 7 yrs old). No the best tiller job I've done, but when I shot the little reclaimed bow I was impressed with the performance. I could not wait to see the boys face when I would give it to him. I added in a hand twisted flemish string that I made and some muskrat string silincers donated to me by the Ferret during our recent visit together.
Profile of the osage selfbow I named "Lil' Snake"
Braced
Full draw
I meet the two at the wildlife area a couple hours before dark, so that we could meet and get to know each other before dark. It was a real pleasure, the two were real fine people and I was impressed how Scott had raised his boy to be polite and respectful, as well as a good archer by the age of 6 yrs (going on 7 years).
After talking a bit, I handed Easton the Lil Snake bow and he said "This is a small bow." I asked him to read the writtng on the bow and he read " For Easton". A big smile came across his face. He was the proud owner of his first traditional bow.
His Dad and I set up a water bottle for Easton to shoot at and I could not believe at about twelve yards the boy hit the bottle at least the first 4 shots that he took. I said WOW! We took a couple pictures and off we went to hunt some frogs.
Easton and new friend (Me!)
Stay tuned for the rest of the story,,,,,
Topic: Bow's, Boy's, Bogs' and Frog's (7/3 UPDATED PIC's) (Read 6209 times)
