I giggled at the title of the thread, and was about to move on, but clicked on it anyway, just to give ya one of these:
There is grist for the mill here, though, and so I will respond.
It was for many years a custom of mine to hunt the first three weeks of November, west of the Blue Ridge here in Virginia. The laws were set up so that I had one week of pure bow, and solitude, followed by a week of muzzleloader and bow combined, and then a week of firearms hunting.
Kills with the bow being extremely rare for me, come muzzleloader season I would bring out the Lyman Great Plains rifle and home-cast .54 round balls. My eyes have gotten so that I need glasses now to see the sights. I could still take either does or bucks with the bow during this season, and some days are better spent with a bow than a smokepole, so the bow stayed strung. The opening day of muzzleloader meant that I would now be seeing more people in the woods, and trucks would be coming into camp about a hour before first light.
When rifle season came in, so did the competitive crowds, and now I used a Remington Model Seven, in 7-08, that I had customized while working for a local gunsmith. Some days were spent in the company of a hopeful Ruger Bisley in .45 Colt.
The laws have changed, and there are once again two weeks of muzzleloader hunting in my range. This year, Lord willing and nothing drastic occurs on the home front, I will be up there for three weeks again. I wish it were for a month. I will have my week of bow, and then two weeks of bow and muzzleloader combined.
My beloved rifle "Dinner Bell" will stay home in the safe, weeping silent tears and threatening to rust from the inside out.
The Remington 522, older than I am, will go with, hoping to take some head shots on the wary squirrels. A shotgun for turkeys (maybe) or just for companionship in a lonely tent, and a couple of pistols for treerats and backup oughta do it for firearms.
The hunt will center around the bows, but when it looks like a muzzleloader will put meat in the freezer, that is what I will carry. My sidelock might misfire during a goodly rain, but if not, the deer falls within fifty paces when I do my part, and blood trailing is not a worry. Muzzleloader or rifle, I usually shoot deer at about twenty yards, as I like to sit where they will move through. My advantage is that I do not have to draw a weapon and betray my location with all that movement. And I get to sit flat on my butt on the ground.
I am up there, among other things, to kill deer. Except for one, maybe two days, my muzzleloader is limited to killing bucks. The bow is not. I feel the air and choose my strategy, and either feast or kick myself at the end of the day. It is all hunting, though, and there for whatever meat or spiritual healing I can glean from it.
Follow your bliss.
Killdeer
Topic: how traditional are you? (Read 1015 times)
