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Business News
JOPLIN, Mo. —
Probably nothing I ever did was more of a waste of time than bow-hunting, in terms of producing meat for the freezer per hours spent. I’d spend a whole season without getting a shot some of those years, way back there when I lived in Arkansas.
When I moved back to Missouri in 1990, I still couldn’t afford one of those manufactured tree stands for bow-hunters, so I started making my own. More time spent, in the basement, with a saw and hammer. More time wasted. Each year I would make a couple more, a small platform at the end of a ladder, to carry out to some new place I had found, struggling and sweating and swearing I had built my last one.
I killed enough deer with a bow to keep me at it, but to tell the truth, I loved being there even if I didn’t see deer. That’s why I did it every year, I just loved being out there in the woods, up in the limbs, watching and waiting in anticipation of seeing something significant. Every now and then I would get a shot at a turkey or deer. Wild turkeys are tough to get a shot at when you are in the air and they are on the ground. Their enemies, the bobcat and the owl, live in trees, and you are much bigger than either, so therefore easy to see.
As I have written before, the first turkey I ever killed was a Jake standing behind the one I was actually shooting at. You could say I was very lucky, or he was awfully unlucky, I don’t know which. The first deer I killed was the result of an arrow that ricocheted off a sassafras sapling. I was lucky, he wasn’t.
I was also lucky that all those tree stands I built held up. Of course I used a harness most of the time, but when you are young and think you are invincible, you don’t buckle up all the time, and I nearly fell out of one on two or three occasions. Maybe more.
And while I call it a waste of time, for a young outdoor writer, spending time outdoors is a necessity. I learned a lot. I always took my camera and I often took a pen and tablet. That way I could sit there high above the ground and write about what I was seeing and feeling and thinking while I was wasting time out there in the woods. The money I made from magazine articles I wrote about bow-hunting, and the pictures I sold, came to a considerable amount, and likely paid for the lumber and nails I bought for the treestands I built.
Probably nothing I ever did was more of a waste of time than bow-hunting, in terms of producing meat for the freezer per hours spent. I’d spend a whole season without getting a shot some of those years, way back there when I lived in Arkansas.
When I moved back to Missouri in 1990, I still couldn’t afford one of those manufactured tree stands for bow-hunters, so I started making my own. More time spent, in the basement, with a saw and hammer. More time wasted. Each year I would make a couple more, a small platform at the end of a ladder, to carry out to some new place I had found, struggling and sweating and swearing I had built my last one.
I killed enough deer with a bow to keep me at it, but to tell the truth, I loved being there even if I didn’t see deer. That’s why I did it every year, I just loved being out there in the woods, up in the limbs, watching and waiting in anticipation of seeing something significant. Every now and then I would get a shot at a turkey or deer. Wild turkeys are tough to get a shot at when you are in the air and they are on the ground. Their enemies, the bobcat and the owl, live in trees, and you are much bigger than either, so therefore easy to see.
As I have written before, the first turkey I ever killed was a Jake standing behind the one I was actually shooting at. You could say I was very lucky, or he was awfully unlucky, I don’t know which. The first deer I killed was the result of an arrow that ricocheted off a sassafras sapling. I was lucky, he wasn’t.
I was also lucky that all those tree stands I built held up. Of course I used a harness most of the time, but when you are young and think you are invincible, you don’t buckle up all the time, and I nearly fell out of one on two or three occasions. Maybe more.
And while I call it a waste of time, for a young outdoor writer, spending time outdoors is a necessity. I learned a lot. I always took my camera and I often took a pen and tablet. That way I could sit there high above the ground and write about what I was seeing and feeling and thinking while I was wasting time out there in the woods. The money I made from magazine articles I wrote about bow-hunting, and the pictures I sold, came to a considerable amount, and likely paid for the lumber and nails I bought for the treestands I built.
I am guessing that there are a lot of you readers who have never gone out in the grandeur of autumn, the majesty of October, and sat in a tree stand so deep in the woods you can’t hear a thing that tells you it isn’t the early 1800’s. If you haven’t you need to. If you haven’t had a good talk with God lately, it is a good thing to do, even if you don’t want to shoot a deer. Take along the camera, and just try it once. If those self-climbing tree stands are too expensive for you, I understand that completely. But I can build you a nice ladder and platform stand for very little. Just call me for a list of the lumber and materials you’ll need.
Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or email me at lightninridge@windstream.net My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot .com
