If I won the lottery, after calling a lawyer for financial advice, I’d immediately be on the phone booking a moose bowhunt to Alaska or the Yukon. And I’d want to bring a bow. While I enjoy shooting all types of bows, my No. 1 dream/goal would be to tag a massive moose with a traditional bow, just like the guy in the video below.
I own two traditional bows. The first was a 50-pound-draw one-piece Bear recurve that my dad gave me for my birthday when I was 12. Unfortunately, no matter how much I practiced, I couldn’t draw the string back to my face until I was 16 , which meant I developed some not-so-good shooting habits. Lesson learned.
Or so you’d think.
After jumping on the compound bow craze in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I went back to a recurve in 1983. I ordered a custom takedown Robertson Stykbow, but the overly optimistic me chose 70-pound limbs. Yes, 70 pounds! Again, for years I struggled shooting that recurve until an older — and wiser — me got on the phone with bowyer Dick Robertson and ordered a set of 54-pound limbs. What’s the saying; You can’t fix stupid?
Today, I still enjoy shooting my Stykbow, but must admit I don’t practice with the recurve enough to carry it into the woods after whitetails. But like I said, if I won $500 million, I’d book the moose hunt and then spend hours each day getting up to speed with my traditional bow.
As for the clip below: The size of the moose encountered on this Alaska bowhunt is tremendous. And the sound of the light rain is heavenly to a stalking traditional archer. The hunter is carrying a custom recurve from Black Widow Bows, a company that’s been in the business of crafting fine shooting sticks for more than 60 years. Click here to see a behind-the-scenes video that shows the process of building one of their high-performance traditional bows.
P.S. If you’re in the market for a traditional bow, this article showcases seven outstanding choices.
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