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Business News
PITTSBURG —
My first bow was a laminated Ben Pearson recurve, just like the ones Pearson and Fred Bear hunted with.
I was just out of college, the new and very young outdoor editor for the Arkansas Democrat newspaper in Little Rock, and I was invited to visit the Ben Pearson plant down in Pine Bluff.
I wrote a newspaper article about how they made those bows, and before long they sent me one that I had particularly liked. It was short and strong, about 55 pounds of pull. I liked it so much I went out and practiced with it much of the summer, and in October, I took my wife and baby daughter back to visit my folks in southern Missouri.
There was a large tract of private land I had always had permission to hunt, so I took my bow and an out of state archery tag which was much less back then, and found an old deer stand I remembered, built from stout oak lumber, looking over a small pond at the edge of the woods. It was wonderful to get away from everything, and I spent most of the afternoon watching wild creatures around me, even a few deer much too far away.
I will never forget seeing the oddest set of antlers on a deer that afternoon than I have ever seen.
He had two fairly large straight antlers rising straight up out of his head, maybe 18 or 20 inches long, and not another tine coming off them.
He was a spike buck all right but you could see from his size he wasn’t a young deer. His antlers were much like those of a gazelle.
In my back lawn, I was good with that bow. I could put an arrow in a paper plate about every shot, from 25 or 30 yards away.
I knew that most deer would be closer to a tree stand, so I had little doubt in my ability. But in the lawn, I had nothing between my target and me.
That evening when a fork-horn buck came shuffling down the trail before me, he was no more than 15 yards away.
But there was a sapling or two between us, and my well-place shot, which would have penetrated his heart, glanced off a sapling and went completely through his back leg a foot or so above the hock.
I trailed him quite a ways, and just after dark I found him dead.
The arrow blade had cut the femoral artery, a very lethal, if accidental, shot.
My first bow was a laminated Ben Pearson recurve, just like the ones Pearson and Fred Bear hunted with.
I was just out of college, the new and very young outdoor editor for the Arkansas Democrat newspaper in Little Rock, and I was invited to visit the Ben Pearson plant down in Pine Bluff.
I wrote a newspaper article about how they made those bows, and before long they sent me one that I had particularly liked. It was short and strong, about 55 pounds of pull. I liked it so much I went out and practiced with it much of the summer, and in October, I took my wife and baby daughter back to visit my folks in southern Missouri.
There was a large tract of private land I had always had permission to hunt, so I took my bow and an out of state archery tag which was much less back then, and found an old deer stand I remembered, built from stout oak lumber, looking over a small pond at the edge of the woods. It was wonderful to get away from everything, and I spent most of the afternoon watching wild creatures around me, even a few deer much too far away.
I will never forget seeing the oddest set of antlers on a deer that afternoon than I have ever seen.
He had two fairly large straight antlers rising straight up out of his head, maybe 18 or 20 inches long, and not another tine coming off them.
He was a spike buck all right but you could see from his size he wasn’t a young deer. His antlers were much like those of a gazelle.
In my back lawn, I was good with that bow. I could put an arrow in a paper plate about every shot, from 25 or 30 yards away.
I knew that most deer would be closer to a tree stand, so I had little doubt in my ability. But in the lawn, I had nothing between my target and me.
That evening when a fork-horn buck came shuffling down the trail before me, he was no more than 15 yards away.
But there was a sapling or two between us, and my well-place shot, which would have penetrated his heart, glanced off a sapling and went completely through his back leg a foot or so above the hock.
I trailed him quite a ways, and just after dark I found him dead.
The arrow blade had cut the femoral artery, a very lethal, if accidental, shot.
You can’t imagine what a great weekend that was for me.
The next day I spent hours skinning him and cutting up the meat.
We had a new baby at the time, and I wasn’t making a great deal of money, so the venison I took back made a good dent in the grocery bill.
The flower I talked about two weeks ago in this column was wild morning glory.
About 20 percent of those responding got it right.
My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com, and my e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613.
