I finally had a couple hours free and went to sit in a blind on the south side of a pond to take advantage of the prevailing south wind and the tail end of a cold front.
I had received a nice 1964 DH Hunter recurve a few weeks ago, and only got a string for it less than 2 weeks ago, but I found a wood arrow that was made up that was tuned to the bow. the bow is 47# @ 28", 62" long, and drawn to just under 30". The only problem was that I had one arrow that was tipped with a broadhead, one with a field tip, and several others not made up, and I couldn't find my wood arrow tools. Oh well, I took the bow with the one broadhead tipped arrow that I had and headed out. I took another bow, a relatively new stickflinger longbow with me as a backup in case a hog showed up.
I took my wife's golf cart (which I proceded to knock the tire off of the rim on the way home, but that is just between us.) to keep from putting a human scent trail on the ground, which has caused me problems at the spot in the past.
It was getting a little brisk towards evening as the sun was beginning to set, so I put on the only layers that I had. Two nice soft wool laters from first lite, and then a button down shirt from KUIU. The shirt isn't terribly noisy, but unfortunately the wind now decided to die down to nothing as 2 doe entered the small clearing. I tried to draw slowly, but even though they couldn't see me, at 12 yards they heard me drawing and went on full alert. I very slowly let it down, and they went back to feeding. This happened one more time later, and I just sat there, thinking that I was just going to have to wait until full dark and them to move on before sneaking out of the blind.
My luck changed a little, because they heard or smelled something to the south and turned that directioin, and I used that opportunity to at least get my bow arm up. By now light is fading fast, and the eventually relaxed and started feeding again. The doe that is in the pictures is the smaller of the two, but still decent for this part of Oklahoma. I waited for her to start walking to cover the noise, and came to full draw and held until she stopped, knowing that I was almost out of shooting light. She did stop at 12 yards away and as luck would have it her leg closest to me was forward. I thought that she was broadside, but she was slightly quartering toward when I released the string. Then things happened fast. I saw here run toward the east, make a mule kick, circle back to the south and crash through the thcik brush on the south side of the clearing. I never saw the arrow impact, but the other doe was in the bruch across from me, occasionaly snorting. I waited around 40 minutes for full dark (mitigaated my the moonrise) to sneak out and look for blood and my arrow, and couldn't find either one.
The release felt good, but without seeing the hit I was unsure. Usually a mule kick is a good sign, but I have occasionally seen a paunch shot do the same. I backed out and walked home. Unfortunately, my wife is out of town until tomorrow, so I couldn't use our dogs for tracking, so I started calling local trackers from the Oklahoma Blood Trackers Association. They actually have an online map that lets you know where different trackers are located, contact info, and any associated fees. The first person I called could't come because his transmission was blown. The second was in Texas for the weekend. The third was out on a track that took a long time, and he had to go to church this morning and wouldn't be able to make it on time. The fourth couldn't find a babysitter until this morning. I was going to use her anyway in the morning if necessary provided she could find a babysitter, but she lived around an hour and a half away, and it the temps were going to hit the 70's today.
I headed out a little after daylight to see if I could find the arrow and blood, and only managed to find the broken third of the arrow from the pics, with no blood on it, and a little closer to the blind than I was expecting. I called the tracker, and she was reticent to come with no blood, so I just told her not to bother coming because I wanted to start a grid search before it got to hot. It took around a half hour before I found her. I checked the thickest stuff first, but she ended up dying probably only 70 yards from the blind, directly across the clearing, in a relatively open area.
Sure is nice to put these old bows to use. Killed a sow with a Paul Bunyan bow that was probably from the late 50's or early 60's last year, so this is the second oldest bow that I have killed something with.
Topic: 1964 DH hunter back in the game. First sit success. (Read 1232 times)
