BOW AND ARROW.

A friend recently (and generously) lent me a bow and some arrows when he heard I was interested in learning to bow hunt. And then, hilarity ensued. At first I couldn't pull the thing back—being that it was a powerful compound bow—so I had to spend a couple weeks building the muscle. Then, when I finally got to the point where I could draw it back—notably after I learned how to loosen the tension—I started to practice.Practice, however, is a generous term. In reality, I would shoot the arrows approximately nowhere close to the box I'd set up, and then spend the next twenty minutes searching the woods for them. But after a few days I started to hit the box. Then I started to hit the target. Then I started to hit it from further and further away. Suddenly, this instrument which bordered on being a silly toy in my hands when I first picked it up, was becoming a weapon. And as I became more and more accurate—a deadly weapon.The thing is, I want to learn to hunt. Or more specifically, I want to experience the act of hunting. I want to feel what our ancestors felt. I want to feel the nerves and the pain and don't want it to be easy—thus the bow. A gun gives you quite a bit of range (ten times the range in some cases). With a bow, you have to get within forty yards or so if you want a good chance at hitting your target. You have to be quiet, camouflaged, calm. Deer are not stupid, or rather deer have evolved to evade, out run, and outsmart close-range hunters. I want that challenge.However, since I don't feel that simply wanting to "experience" something is necessarily a justification for doing it, I also want to learn to hunt because Hannah and I want the meat. We don't raise any meat animals of our own yet and know this winter we're going to want to have some around. So, I borrowed a bow and arrow, figured out how to shoot it, and soon will start hunting.All I've hit is a box, and I know I have a considerably long way to go before dinner is served. Apologies to our vegetarian followers, but expect a few more posts this winter about my adventures learning to hunt, clean and cook venison––well, hunt definitely, clean and cook, hopefully.- Jesse.