Archery stuff

Archery has become a major focus of my Ranger activities, across the board. Fantasy, Medieval, Modern, it does not matter. Hence, there will be some pieces here concerning modern archery and hunting concepts...and some to do with emergency preparedness as well.

I have a lot of bows. Three horse bows, four longbows, one compound bow, and two longbows under construction. I make wooden arrows...but I am looking into making my own carbon arrows too. I also have bowfishing shafts. Anyway, I have a lot of them...and I love them.

This year will feature a LOT of camping, backpacking, hunting, and related activities...as well as preparedness drills. I will be doing a lot of this in a variety of kit...from Middle Earth to modern or even disaster modern.

Among other things I am using camo facepaint, civilian camo clothing (Realtree, Mossy Oak, etc), which are a LOT more effective than the standard military camo patterns..mostly due to the focus on the individual rather than on units. Civilians are generally hunting, so hiding and being unseen is paramount....military people are simply trying to avoid immediate detection so that ambushes and battles can be manipulated to gain surprise. It is more complicated than that, but in a nutshell, that will do for this blog.

We have takedown recurves to go with the emergency packs. I have modern bows for situations where I have enough warning to prepare better than grab and go allows.

I prefer bows over guns. Why? One word; Noise. Fire a gun and everyone in the vicinity knows something is up and pretty much where, generally speaking. It attracts attention and investigation. For our purposes, the point is to E&E without detection as best we can, and that means keeping noise and light discipline firmly in place. Silent movement and camouflage. Hand & arm signals, various whistles and clicks.

With any luck, this sort of preparedness training won't have to come into play. However, better prepped and ready than surprised and unprepared.

What I've Been Up To

Aside from dealing with ridiculous amounts of snow and extremely cold temperatures, these are the things I have been up to;

The top image is a photo of some arrows I made for Greg Lammers (fellow MERF member), recently completed. The are 11/32 ash shafts with 125 grain field points, five inch flights, and wrapped with artificial sinew.

The bottom image consists of projects I have under way..all of them my own items. Three arrows, again of 11/32 ash shafts, five inch flights in a left helical twist, two of which are bound with sinew, one of which has an insert in the self nock. The points are 125 grains, in the case of the broadhead and blunt, but the whistler I have not measured. The arrows are still under construction, along with 11 others.

The horn is my new hunting/signal horn...from Scotland it comes, taken from the makers' own cattle. It is a great big thing and quite thick so I will be working some scrimshaw on it...to some degree. It will receive new thongs and a baldric.

The quiver is a Sherwood from an online leatherer whose name I do not recall. I have begun disassembling it, as can be seen, and will keep going so I can make some modifications to it. This quiver is entirely for my MER activities since we have little evidence that back quivers were used in Europe, although we know they were used in other areas of the world like Africa and Japan.

I am also going to make a couple of belt 'quivers' of different sort...one a bag type meant to go along the small of the back, the other a waist quiver that hangs from the belt at the side. Both are medievally appropriate.

Other bits that aren't shown here; various belt pouches for archery bits and bobs, more arrows with different kinds of points on them, bows, new hoods, and some dresses.

Spring turkey season kicks off next month...I shall be prepared.

Eledhwen