An axe to grind

So my bow arrived today. I bought it on eBay. A fine older bow, a PSE Carroll Intruder. $125 for the whole kit and caboodle. The arrows are a motley lot, the trigger release looks a little worn but works, the bow itself draws smooth, but 70#'s is more than I thought it would be. If I draw correctly using my back muscles it is easier, so maybe that's a good thing. Sometimes you choose a tool that forces you to learn good form.

It's this huge box, twice the size needed, sitting in my office when I get in. The office mates all wonder "what the hell is that?" Their jaws drop, or they laugh when I tell them. "What the fuck for?" they ask. No one here hunts. Few even know any hunters. The word "hunter" sticks in their throats - mine too I must admit. I'm a freak. Crackpot survivalist or budding psychopath take my pick. (Crackpot survivalist if anyone asks...) Of course, this is a dot-com, located in Chelsea district of in New York city, and the only thing most of the folks here have ever shot is the video game gun attached to their Nintendo, so I guess that makes some sense.

I leave the arrows and broad heads at the office, and take the bow home on the subway. I figure I will probably get searched carrying the big camo bag on the train, and best not to have the arrows. (Large bags are subject to search on NYC subway lines as a post 9/11 security precaution.)

I'm still not used to camouflage, it irks me somehow. Here, ironically, it marks you, leaving me uncomfortably visible.

Shoot first, buy later

So to start this journey off, I shot at the local archery shop and range, Queen's Archery A nice establishment, if not terribly easy to get to from Manhattan. I'll go back soon I'm sure, but I am already thinking I will need to find a quite place in Riverside Park to setup a personal range. This could be difficult and maybe even illegal - though I don't think so.

Anyway, I wasn't sure what to expect on my way to the shop but the people were nice, if a bit cautious. There were a set of regulars there, using bows that ran the gamut from very simple recurves to high-tech target bows. All seemed highly skilled. I was not the lone novice either. A group of young Asian-American guys in their 20's were seemingly there for the fist time as well and who were clearly as much on the outside as I. While still within New York City proper, the atmosphere was distinctly country with a constant stream of Hank Williams Jr-esque tunes playing and the liberal use of camouflage as part of the decor. It reminded me of a bowling alley in a way, with shoddy plastic tables and dusty glass cases of unused gear. That antiquated feel of subculture that has a loyal and unyielding group of adherents. The archery culture I would expect is much the same as the hunting culture I knew growing up. I don't really have anything against it per se, though the underling anti-intellectualism was distressing at times. It might be different here in the northeast though, so I'll try and stay open and I hope to walk a middle path. I'm not, nor will I ever be, much like many of these folks. I want to hunt for my own, admittedly over intellectualized reasons, that are more about having a different relationship to nature and my food sources than about "scoring a kill". I need to be respectful though in my dealings and realize that at least for now, I'm the one who knows nothing and should shut up and listen.

As I watched the bowmen and looked over the requisite wall of trophy bucks, I tried to think about what I will do with a dead deer. There's something that bothers me about taxidermy. It's an artifice somehow and speaks of something vainglorious. I mean, of course we can kill animals, we're highly developed technological species! Assuming I score a buck, I think I'll hang up the skull to remind me of the act. The death. Other than that, I hope to find a way to use almost all of the deer. Eat it of course, but also, carve the bone and antlers into usable forms. Suggestions welcome on that one.

The bow rental came with a lesson and practice lane, only $18 bucks. The instructor walked me through the procedure. How to use the trigger release, basic parts of the bow, my stance. Then then some zen - "do one thing at a time": nock, draw, aim, exhale, shoot, repeat. Use the sites to adjust after each shot. Find a rhythm. Get comfortable with the rig. All in all, I did pretty well I felt. Though I would guess that laying one in the black at a well lit indoor lane is the lowest of prerequisites for dropping an arrow just behind the shoulder of wary buck at thirty yards in dawn's gray light, it was a first step I was happy I could accomplish. By the end of my hour I had moved from the starting distance of about ten yards (does anyone ever get that close to a deer?) back to the thirty yard line. Even at distance I was able to consistently put my shots on the target. The rental compound was a low weight, I would guess set to about 40lbs. I shot the hour, and because it wasn't very busy, they didn't kick me right out. It was a great first experience overall.

I'll try and find a bow on ebay now, and take it back to them to have it adjusted.

Also, I found Saxton Pope's "Hunting with the Bow and Arrow" is in the public domain at Project Gutenberg.

An explination in a very brief history.

"the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior" - about.com, Interview Tips - Behavior Based Interviewing

I took this from the Brooklyn waterfront about October of 2000

I am a city boy and proud of it. There are no two ways around that.

I have lived in New York City for over ten years. I travel regularly to Paris and London and other great metropolises of the world. My friends and family are of all ilk: white, black, gay, straight, communist, capitalist. Christian, Muslim, Jew, few of whom believe in any deity of any sort by the by. Many of us are just simply silly and eccentric. Our most constant quality as a group is an abundance of education and a certain unspoken snobbery about it. And I would say generally speaking, we're comfortable with that.

I define myself many ways. An artist, an athlete, a writer, a computer programmer, a filmmaker, a man about town, an epicure, a cad at times, a devoted dad at others. Am I an agnostic or an atheist? I vacillate on that one, but there more than likely is no god and anyone who thinks otherwise should be put on display at Conney Island if you ask me.

I happily take mass-transit everyday and extol it's virtues to all, riding to and fro, from my little office job working in my shared office/cube, for a big, liberal leaning, corporation.

I play tennis as if it's interstellar warfare and if I could afford it, I'd like to take up squash.

My apartment, is somewhere just north of four hundred square feet, somewhere just inside Harlem, and at only fifteen hundred a month a steal. This is where I am. And as far as I can tell, it is as far from the edge of a fallow cornfield with grazing whitetail at dawn as you're likely to get in this world. Packed like a sardine from morning to night, and as snug as a bug in a rug being it.

Like I said, a city boy.



I however did grow up in the country. In southern Illinois near the Mississippi river and the far edges of West County, St. Louis. I grew up catching frogs and minnows in streams. Chasing water bugs and climbing the bluffs along the Mississippi that run just north of Alton, Il. My earliest memory is from 1973, "The Great Flood of '73". The water had reached our doorstep.
I was there
watching it lap up with our German Shepperd, Pepper. A guy my family knew, a neighbor I've long forgotten, in a bass boat drives up. He has caught a three foot long alligator gar. It was taller than I was and I was petrified.

Later, in my early adolescence, I found myself drawn as many boys are to the martial arts. We were living deep into a wooded West County. I had a 35# recurve bow, one of the arms slightly twisted. I spent a year or two burying bolts in a hay bale. Sometimes hunting around for a squirrel and very occasionally going deer hunting with a cousin. Loud, smelly, and untrained, I of course get nowhere near any real game.

But this past Christmas I took my two year old daughter, Junia, back to my father's house.

He again lives in a wooded area and with little else to do, we spent hours walking on a carpet of fallen leaves, under bare limbed oak and elm. The surrounding area is an old farm slowly converting to ex-urbia so there were deer tracks everywhere. At the edge of the woods, feeling that old cold, that very particular early morning wet chill, and in the dark and alluring emptiness. I could feel it.

I wanted to hunt again.