I've wondered if I should share this story or not. But I hope I'm right in thinking that the man it's in memory of wouldn't have minded.
Some years ago I bought a Black Widow SA recurve via the TradGang Classifieds from a man named Don Collinsworth from Alaska.
Don had hunted with that bow in Alaska and in the Lower 48, as well as in Africa. Bears. Deer. Wildebeest. Other wonderful animals I can't remember now, but I recall the pictures he e-mailed to me of him and that bow in far-off places. It already had stories by the time I bought it. I think Don wanted to get a lighter bow to shoot as he was getting older.
The bow shot like magic. Heaps of fun! I only took that bow on one spectacular hunt to the incredibly wild and terribly hot Gascoyne River in Western Australia, a dry, sandy riverbed that held a few small puddles. Man, we shot some great old billy goats on that trip! If you look hard enough you might even find the story on some dusty TradGang shelf!
Not long after that trip, I noticed that moisture had got under the glass. I live in the hot tropics, so that is always a worrying possibility.
I asked Black Widow about it, and they said they'd look at it to see if it could be helped. I sent them the whole bow. Alas, the limbs were beyond help. I asked them to make new limbs for it, which they did, modifying the old SA riser to make it into a PSA. They sent it all back to me, old limbs and new, and it was all good.
But I didn't shoot that bow much after that. I was collecting and shooting and hunting with a wide variety of bows at that stage of my life, and it sat on the bow rack. Eventually, to raise funds for some other bow, I sold the PSA - so Don's old riser with the new limbs - to a bloke up near Jabiru called Bear. Don't know him personally, but he's a hell of a good bowhunter. He's killed heaps of boars and buffalo, so I know it went to a good home.
Somewhere in all of that, Don took ill and passed-away. I barely knew him, except for the transaction and the e-mails we'd send back-and-forth showing each other the amazing wilderness and wildlife sights of our different parts of the world. I remember wonderful pictures of snow-covered Alaskan beaches, salmon, bears, eagles and whales, I think. I wish I still had those photos, but I reckon I might've lost those e-mails somewhere along the way, maybe when my old address got hacked. Don was a good bloke and a passionate traditional bowhunter.
Well, lots of time went by, and those old limbs with the cracks and moisture sat in a cupboard. I'd remember Don and his adventures when I'd look at them from time-to-time, as well as my own trip to the Gascoyne that summer.
My life underwent some drastic changes. Good and bad. I quit bowhunting for awhile. I welcomed a fine son into the world. And my marriage failed. It took me quite some time to work through things.
At the start of this year, I embarked on a grand adventure, a new start, as a teacher in an indigenous community in a remote part of Arnhemland. Packing-up a house in town wasn't easy. Because of my career change to bush teaching, I had to get rid of a lot of stuff. I need to travel light.
I had no use for Don's old recurve limbs. I couldn't lug them around with me for the rest of my life. But I couldn't quite throw them out. Not yet. I had an idea. So, they came with me along the washed-out, corrugated, slippery, flooded wet season road past Beswick and Conways and Mountain Valley and Mainoru. And for some months they sat in a cupboard in my government-issue teacher house while I got my head around the culture shock of my job.
And then I began my journey back into traditional bowhunting. I'd really missed it. You might recall a few months ago I wrote about how blessed I was to finally kill a buffalo with a longbow, something I'd dreamed about for more than a decade.
One hot day back in October, Meg and I took the axe to the crash-site of that first bull. It was a place of huge significance to me. I hacked through the rock-hard, thick dry hide to retrieve the horns. And then I took Don's old recurve limbs, which I'd also carried, and reverently placed them in a stand of pandanus nearby. A few quiet thoughts (I'd already told Meg about Don) and we walked away, carrying the axe and the horns and skull of that bull.
The resting place is a grassy plain on the edge of a shady grove of timber next to wonderful swampland and creek systems. There are scattered clumps of pandanus and lone trees over this savannah. A rocky hill looks out over it all. During the wet season, it gets pretty muddy there. And thick with lush, green vegetation. During the dry season, or at the end of it, it's very dusty. But no matter the season, whether wet or dry, it's a place where vast herds of buffalo roam. They're always there. And wallabies, brolgas, egrets, jabirus. It's only about half-a-mile from the Wilton, where barramundi swim, and where giant saltwater crocodiles lurk.
We hunted past the crash-site of that bull, and the resting place of those old recurve limbs of Don's, a few weeks back. I paused to peer into the pandanus clump. There was only one limb there. I looked around, but couldn't find the other one. It will be there somewhere nearby. A dingo would've sniffed it out, found it interesting, and wandered away with it for a little while before losing interest.
It's a place where you hear the mournful, beautiful, eery howling of packs of dingoes as they call to each other when evening falls. This afternoon, it was lashed by an incredible tropical thunderstorm, heavy and black - and life-giving.
I hope Don would get a kick out of this. I hope he'd see it as fitting.
Topic: Final resting place for Don's old recurve limbs... (Read 690 times)
