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.
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