Today’s bowhunter can choose from a wide variety of gear to use when pursuing game. In many states, deer hunters of any age and physical condition can carry high-speed crossbows with high-tech scopes, and in every state you can use a modern compound bow.
Even so, some archers choose a more difficult — a more traditional — challenge by carrying a recurve or longbow. As you’ll see in the YouTube video below, Greg Krause has increased the degree of difficulty even more by using a self bow, hand-made arrows and even a stone head. Krause built his arrows and relied on two buddies for the self bow and stone heads.
Early in the video Krause is tuning his bow. If you’re not familiar with traditional archery, yes, you can tune a recurve or longbow. You won’t end up with perfect bullet holes through paper in the same way that you can with a perfectly tuned compound, but you can improve arrow flight by altering the brace height (by twisting the bowstring) of a traditional bow.
Further arrow flight changes can be made by changing arrow spine (stiffness) or changing head weight. Because the stone head weight is fixed, Krause stiffens his wood arrow by cutting it a half inch (shortening an arrow increases its stiffness). I enjoyed watching how Krause uses the wing feather of a wild turkey for his arrow fletchings, and how he mounts the stone head to the wood arrow.
Like almost all traditional bowhunters, Krause limits his shot distance to close and closer. One of the biggest challenges with killing a deer with a recurve or longbow is drawing the bow undetected when an animal is 15 yards or closer, but Krause pulls it off.
“I think I just him in the heart,” Krause said after the buck runs off. Later in the video, you’ll see proof that he did make a perfect heart shot. Watch closely and you’ll notice the tracking dog (which turns out not to be needed) licking the entry wound.
Congratulations to Krause and his two buddies for building a traditional bow/arrow/broadhead combo that is every bit as effective today as it was forever ago.
