It is almost like the Archery Gods were looking after that bow, once the original user could no longer grasp it. You ever get that feeling? That the Fates or whatever make sure that the bow goes where it has to, and bides out its time until it can get to the one who will love it all over again?
A long time ago I read about "bird arrows". I don't know where, maybe in the first Archers' Bible or something around that time. But I remember reading about bird arrows, painted black, which made it hard for the game to see it as it headed toward them. I was inspired. At the age of fifteen, I made my first arrows. I started with old beat-up shafts, and repainted and fletched them. Along with these, I made a "bird bolt". I know, a bolt is a short crossbow arrow, but "bird bolt" sounds cool. I painted it black and fletched it with peahen tail feathers. I then capped it off with a .38 Special case scrounged from the pistol range under the bleachers at McClure Field, a ball field at N.O.B. Norfolk.
Some cases were easy to deprime with an ice pick. Some I had to drill out with my dad's hand drill. I glued one on the end of the arrow and tapped a small nail down the flash hole. I shot it a few times, but mostly it lay fallow in the quiver. I shot mostly targets then.
Then, in my senior year of high school, my dad bought a piece of land to put a house on. There was a stable nearby, where I kept my horse, and a campground, where I lived while working at the stable that summer. And crows lived there, too. They mobbed my beloved redtails, and so gained my enmity. One day, a mob of them were gathered in a tree, having run off a noble hawk. They were laughing and telling hawk jokes over a few caterpillars, and I snuck up on them. The lookout, face full of grubs, saw me and let out a garbled "Thquawwk!!", whereupon all took flight. I let fly from my Ben Pearson Colt the magnificent, gleaming bird bolt, like ebony lightning, guided by Orion himself. It knocked one sleek shimmering feather from the smug corvid's tail, letting it flutter down within easy sight of this excited poacher. Gleefully, I picked it up and ceremoniously fastened it in my hair. I had the trophy, had done the deed, taught the lesson, and didn't have to deal with a mess. Perfect!
Poachers should never win, though. and the Cosmic Game Wardens had caught me. I had no truck to confiscate, no license to revoke. No money to dun out of me, and only a twenty-dollar bow in my hand. They took the arrow. I never saw it again after it winked out of sight behind the crow.
Killdeer
Topic: Stealth arrows (Read 511 times)
