Archery: What was I thinking???

Apparently, the archery gods have a sense of humor, and I am a worthy target for them.

When I got my bow five weeks ago, I had a beautiful goal: Unlike hunting with a gun, which I began after literally one shooting lesson - one day at skeet - I was going to do archery right. I was going to take my time and try to get really good at it before I unleashed myself on the wildlife of Northern California.

Noble, eh? I would've told you it was totally freakin' brilliant, if you'd asked me.

Only problem is I forgot one thing: At least when I started duck hunting, I actually took a shooting lesson.

Mind you, I didn't go into archery blind: I got some basic starting advice from the guy who sold me the bow at Wilderness Archery, looked up some beginning archery instructions with diagrams and got to work in my back yard, paying utmost attention to form.

Me, paying utmost attention to form.

But deep down I knew I was probably developing bad habits.

So the last time I went to the shop to get sights (wow, huge help!), I inquired about lessons and signed up on the spot. And today was the big day.

The good news is that I long ago shed my juvenile dream of being declared a prodigy on occasions like this. (I blame Shirley Temple movies for this former affliction. That's all I can say.)

But as my instructor, Tex, watched me take a shot, and then another, and then another - all while being shown up by an 11-year-old with a compound bow in the next lane - I knew it was coming. Yes, I was going to stop everything, drop everything and go back to zero.

I had hoped - modestly, I thought - that there might be perhaps one thing I was doing right. And maybe there was. I think he said something complimentary about me standing nice and straight. But pretty much everything else required a lot of correction.

In fact, as soon as the 11-year-old left and it was just me and Tex, we moved waaaaaaay down the lane, so I was standing about five feet from the target.

Fingers tucked.

Hand at proper angle.

Elbow out - just a bit.

Shoulder back - no back, not up.

Fingers on bowstring - no, don't squeeze the arrow!

Draw.

Finger touching corner of mouth.

Now, wipe that cake you're thinking about eating off the side of your mouth.

Or elbow the person with bad breath behind you. Whichever mental image works best.

Hmmmm.

OK, do it with your eyes closed.

Strangely enough, that eyes-closed thing was good. Got me thinking about all those body parts and where they needed to be, with no silly target distracting me.

And at the risk of sounding immodest, I have to say I shot AWESOME groups at five feet with my eyes closed. Like seriously, if I could get an elk to stand five feet from me while I'm blindfolded, that mofo is dead.

Now I just need to figure out where I can shoot with my eyes closed around our property for the next few weeks, because the kind of shooting I've been doing is off limits to me for a while. Oh, the mere thought of it fills me with mirth!

Don't get me wrong: Tex was awesome. I just hate being outwitted by my own cleverness.

Oh well. Onward!

©Holly A. Heyser 2011

Oh, now I've gone and done it - I got a bow!

I've been putting off getting a bow for a couple years now.

Holly! I'd yell at myself. You've spent literally thousands of dollars on guns. Howzabout you get good at shooting them before you buy another weapon?

I had myself totally convinced, which was a great way to avoid further hunting-induced hemorrhaging in my wallet.

But then I got on this weird kick: My new workout is a rigorous-but-fun hike through the woods. Then I realized on one of those jaunts that my trajectory into the world of hunting had followed a totally unnatural course: Decide to start hunting, buy gun, take hunter safety class, take shooting lesson, then hunt.

That's like the nature equivalent of getting a mail-order bride! The right way to do it, I now feel, would've been allowing myself to get to know the land, falling in love with it, slowly honing the skills I need to live with - and off of - it, and then hunting.

I got deep into Step Two as a child before my life took a turn for the urban. But these weekend jaunts have gotten me feeling like I'm picking up where I left off as a kid. And that was my inspiration.

Ah ha! All I need to do is pick up where I left off. When I was a kid, my parents got me a cool little recurve bow that I had tons of fun with, just shooting targets. Why not do that again with an adult-sized recurve bow? I mean, why not have fun with it?

I don't have to push myself into getting a bow that requires more strength than I have, just so it'll be good enough to hunt with. I don't need to worry about spending $600-$700-$800 on a compound bow to increase my odds of success in the field. And I don't have to pressure myself to master the bow in time for the next archery season this summer.

Yep, I can just have fun. What a concept.

So after I got my tax refund and tithed most of it to MasterCard, I held back a little to get myself a bow and a little archery gear.

I didn't know squat about archery, so I found a local archery shop - Wilderness Archery in Rocklin - went there after work Friday and told them what I wanted to do.

They took a few key measurements - draw length (27"), pull (25 pounds) and budget ($200-300) - and steered me to the PSE Razorback. It's a takedown bow, which will allow me to replace these short limbs with longer ones to gradually ratchet up my pull strength.

I also picked up six arrows cut to my size, a bag target and some basic accessories, and that was it - I was on my way.

Of course, by the time I got home with my new toy, it was dark. But Saturday morning I was ready to go.

I set up the bag maybe 15-20 yards from my back porch and let 'er rip.

Definitely not a prodigy.

But I actually hit the bag with three of my first six arrows - not bad given that I don't know what I'm doing and my bow doesn't have sights on it.

In my second round, I lost one of my arrows. Despite the fact that they have pink fletching. Yeah. The problem is that my "backstop" is the bottom 10 yards of our property, which we let grow wild to provide habitat for little things.

That means there's about five years worth of a soft mat of dead grass with this year's new grass punching through it - VERY easy to lose arrows. Oh yeah, did I mention a lemon-orange tree with lots of rotting fruit underneath it?


Yeah, my arrows that miss the target often slice through decaying oranges, which makes them just a bit sticky. Oopsie!

I've looked and looked and looked for that missing arrow, but I'm pretty sure that if I find it at all, it'll be with the weedwhacker. Sigh.

Fortunately, I'm having way too much fun to get upset about a silly little arrow.

Part of me is excited to connect with an ancient and vital skill that doesn't require advanced technology. I don't necessarily believe that our civilization is on the verge of collapse, but if such a thing were to happen, I'd like to have some decent survival skills - something to fall back on after all the ammo runs out.

Part of me is happy to have a weapon I can shoot in my back yard. I sure can't shoot my guns here in the 'burbs, but I can get out there with my bow every day - no driving. (Yeah, we wonder why an increasingly urban society has a decreasing number of hunters? Let's talk about all the crap I have to drive to and pay for just to maintain basic skills. Dammit, I want to live in the country.)

And part of me is just happy as hell to be doing this the right way. I'll hunt with a bow when I'm damn good and ready. I won't be rushing this one. I'm going to enjoy the journey.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011

A theory: Why women dig bowhunting

A few months ago, I posed the question: What is it with women and bowhunting? I wondered why the number of women bowhunters is rising far more rapidly than the number of women hunters.

I've found one possible explanation for why women gravitate to bowhunting in a book I just devoured, In Defense of Hunting by Dr. James A. Swan. If you're an expert in psychology, please bear with my grossly inexpert translation: Carl Jung's theory is that our inner personality is generally either more male (the animus, characterized by rational thought and physical aggression) or more female (the anima, characterized by emotions, intuitions and feelings).

Swan applies those traits to hunting:
"The more a hunter relies on stalking and on weapons with a limited striking distance(emphasis added), the more important to success is the feminine mode of consciousness. Sights, sounds, odors, and intuitions that come must be screened and woven into an awareness of the whole of a situation to make the connection between the hunter and the hunted."

Now, if you're a male bowhunter, don't protest - under Jungian theory, each of us has a bit of the other in our personality. According to Swan, you're just tapping your anima. Your manhood is safe!

Is it psychobabble? Don't ask me - I took one psych class in college and one in high school (Ironman, do you remember the old lech who taught that class?) and the only thing I remember is Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I'm just saying hunting with a bow really resonates with women, and I'm looking for answers to the question why.

When I read descriptions like Swan's, they ring true with me - some of the things I love most about hunting are in fact a reflection of feminine traits.

Of course, I still don't have a bow, so I haven't tried bowhunting yet. For now, I must remain content to hunt with my beau instead.

Holly and Boyfriend

© Holly A. Heyser 2010

What is it with women and bowhunting?

This question has been on my mind for quite a while: Why are women so drawn to bowhunting?

The question has been weighing on me for a number of reasons. One is an imminent visit from my sister-in-law Suzanne, who's a bowhuntress in New Jersey. Another is women I've met recently who are bowhunters, including Kirstie Pike - founder of Prois Hunting Apparel - and Julie Kreuter of the Outdoor Channel show Dream Season.

The big one is a statistic I found last fall. While the number of women who hunt with firearms is holding roughly steady, the number of women who hunt with bow and arrow has increased substantially in recent years.

Data source: National Sporting Goods Association. Click to enlarge.

Boyfriend isn't remotely interested in bowhunting, but this is one place where I'm certain our paths will diverge.

When I was a little kid, my parents bought me a toystore longbow, and I absolutely loved it. We lived on five acres of undeveloped land - part of it covered with weeds, part of it an excavation project where sand removal left giant pits and mountains - and I was out playing with that thing all the time. It's the closest I ever got to hunting as a kid, though I just had target arrows and never aimed them at any critters.

When I was in college and hadn't yet figured out a way to dodge P.E., archery was going to be the class I took.

And as a fan of postapocalyptic fiction, it's always on my mind: If civilization collapses and we can't run down to the supermarket for our dinner, how would I gather my food after the ammunition runs out? You can make a longbow with readily available materials (go Tred Barta!); guns and ammo, however, will not last forever.

But that's just me. I really would love to hear from other bowhuntresses out there about why you love it. And at some point, of course, I'll be asking for tips. It's inevitable.

© Holly A. Heyser 2008