Someone you introduced to archery and then took them on their first bowhunt.

Back in the compound days, My bro-in-law wanted to learn archery and hunting. We went and bought him his first bow, a Bear compound, and got him set up and shooting. He was so excited shooting it for the first time. This was in the spring and fall was coming so we started scouting and learning about deer, got his NYS safety course and bought licenses. He was a quick learner. When the season opened, we went and hunted a piece of hardwoods owned by an uncle of mine. He got a shot at a doe but missed it. I had a really nice buck come out in the meadow I was watching. It stood there looking at me about 60 yards away. Twice my range. That was a good day and we both went home feeling pretty good.

We got many folks into archery but only one hunted with me, and that was in the late 60's. I helped him get a bow as well, a 56" Indian Hawkeye. He practiced a lot that year and I was with him when he shot a doe with it the very first year he bowhunted. After that, we never hunted together again....just how life works. I think he still has that Hawkeye but other things took over his interest in ensuing years. Family...job...kids, etc.

I've given away more bows to beginners than I could possibly remember. Back in the 70's and 80's you could buy a barrel full of recurves and longbows for ten, twenty dollars apiece. I always had three or four bows to give to someone who wanted to start shooting. My son is the one that I started out and taught, it ended up I was hunting with him and three or four of his buddies. It got so bad or good that they were in all my good tree stands and killing deer and I was hunting on the ground. I always enjoyed watching young hunters kill their first deer with a bow or really enjoyed calling in a nice Gobler for a beginner.

I'm the same with fly fishing, I've given away some nice rods and a box of my hand tied flies to people starting out. Never regretted or missed any of the equipment I gave away.

Like George, in the late sixties and seventies I started quite a few bowhunters and from time to time still hunt with some. One young man's mother called me after he took Firearms safety class I taught. She said He really was interested in taxidermy and bowhunting and wondered if I could teach him more. I taught him taxidermy and took him bowhunting. His first deer was a P&Y buck and the first time I took him bear hunting he took a bear. He's still at it and now I work part time for his car dealership.

I got my son interested as soon as he was old enough. He saw how much enjoyment I got out of bowhunting and wanted to be in the woods with me. Then, when my daughter got married, my new son in law wanted in on the fun too.

My son still shoots a compound, but my son in law sometimes goes to the Kazoo Expo with me and one year, he bought a bow from Rick Ellis. So I’ve got one of them on our side, just have to work a little harder on the other.

MP

1964 my best friend (Larry Ball) and I went deer hunting for 9 days at Camp Gruber (16,000 acres of public hunting lands in Eastern Oklahoma). I had just introduced him the archery. We slept in a pup tent and ate turnip greens and hocks and buried some beans in coals with more hocks, and along with campfire coffee, and did pretty good on the cheap. My '57 Ford was almost a new car compared to Larry's '52 Chevy, but it was scary going up steep washed out rocky logging roads on completely bald tires. In those days we were the only ones in camp for many days until someone else and his son came along the first weekend.

In 1970 when I got out of the Navy, my friend had a rack of Hills in his kitchen. I thought they were uglier than my recurves, but he could really shoot'em and later became the President of the Oklahoma Longbowmen, before he had to quit shooting due to arthritis. He introduced me to a 2-D group then, which actually shot down some ravines across the street from the field archery club I helped start in 1962. Larry was such a people magnet, he would get a bunch of cowboy characters to set up several deer camps each year, and that went on for eight years.

Started some others shooting too, like my brother-in-law, a tall dudley doright looking fellow with round eyes and a huge block chin. He lived with my wife and I when he was a teenager, and with one of his uncles, he was quite the coon hunter with hounds, mules and wheat lights. He took to shooting a bow real quick, and later in his life, he managed a duck camp east of Houston for a few years.

Those big belt buckle wearing characters have gone on, but their still remembered....all the time.

Got a few folk into archery but never take other folk hunting .Not being selfish but too many folk don't want to learn bush skills and whilst teaching folk to shoot is easy,most folk don't take to hunting that easily.As I generally find and ground stalk game it's difficult to teach folk that.I track and ground stalk 90% of all my prey. I am self taught and grew up on a steady diet of rabbit and fox hunting since I was ten years old.Thats how I learned to stalk and hunt.OSR

In the 70's I joined the Big Brothers program and got lined up with a 12 year old boy whose dad had deserted the whole family. I started him in bowhunting, as well as small game and Brittany Spaniels. He'll be 54 in November and we go to the Upper Peninsula every year to bear hunt with our bows. He's still a great friend and we took his son last year.

My nephew killed his first archery buck when he was 12 with a Bear SK that I lent him. It was the first deer he ever drew on . It ran about 40 yds and fell over. One of the most memorable hunting days of my life. His Dad had baught him a compound the year before but he never shot it. I think he wanted to be like his uncle. He went on to kill two more deer with that bow. He is a 20 yr old college student now, shooting a Bear Montana. The SK in now in the hands of another new traditional hunter, who killed his first recurve buck last year.

My wife Chris. She was a farmers daughter who did nothing but work on the potato farm and go to school.After graduating from college she became an RN and was working in a hospital when I met her. We got married and my grandma told her that when you marry a Stewart you marry their fishing rods and bows meaning of course we fished and hunted a lot. I taught Chris how to shoot a bow, we shot in many leagues at the club and went to (and still go to) many archery shoots. She hunted with me for many years using a longbow when when she killed her first deer. I remember it like it was yesterday. She had a good hit with little blood. We grabbed some TP and went on the track dropping paper where blood was located. She was amazed at the paper trail of blood as we crawled on our knees looking for blood. The blood trail opened up and her deer laid dead not from from the hit. I think I was more excited about that morning than she was. She still hunts with me but probably won't kill anything again as she reads her bible most of her time in the blind. She just enjoys watching the animals roam as she sits and watches them. After every hunt she comes back to our cabin and tells a story of what she saw on her hunt.

Hope Chris has many more great Hunts Jon.

Love that story stickbow208

Mines kinda a long story that end up going in a complete circle. I don't think I have time to tell it now, but I'll try later.

Took a compound guy to a Javelina hunt. Had him try my recurve, and he liked shooting it. Next year he had a Horn, longbow and shoot his first Javelina with it. He never went back to his compound.

I first bowhunted at age 12. When I was a student at the Univ. of WI in the '60s I took one of my professors bowhunting, it was something he'd always wanted to try. Despite loads of patience and my best efforts this fellow was a real nimrod in the woods, he "just didn't get it."

Once, that first year, on a morning hunt, I set him in a ground blind I'd made against a windfall. I then went a hundred yards down the trail to another blind I had. While waiting for daylight to arrive, in the stillness of the pre-dawn darkness, I suddenly heard sneezing, coughing, hacking, clearing of the throat, and a whole comotion of nasal and throat noises coming from Frank's direction. This went on for at least 15 minutes!

Later I asked Frank what that was all about. He explained, "Well, I had my nasal spray in one pocket and my buck scent in the other. Both were in small plastic squeeze bottles and I got them mixed up." And that explained all the noise & comotion and why we never saw a deer that morning.

Note: Eventually Frank did become a pretty good bowhunter and we developed a solid friendship. He was the best man at my wedding a few years later. Frank is gone now but this has always been a good story to tell around a campfire and a good memory of "back then."

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