My Bow Room and Shooting Area

 

In the fall of 2005, I tried to get back to shooting muzzle loading rifles, an activity that I had enjoyed for many years, but had become inactive in for about the past 8 to 10. I discovered that in that interval, my eyes had deteriorated to the point that I could not really use the open sights required in this type of shooting. Even further back, like about 1970, I had enjoyed archery, so I decided to give that a try.

Initially, I thought I would return to competitive target archery, but I discovered that while I was gone, the technology of archery had advanced... and how! Everyone was shooting incredible mechanical marvels called "compound bows", with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars worth of sights and other attachments. OK... I didn't want to go there, so I began a collection of vintage recurve target bows... the ones I drooled over in the catalogs and couldn't afford back when I was young. I got a number of them... the great ones of their day: Bear Tamerlane, Hoyt ProMedalist, Hoyt Custom Pro, Wing Presentation, White Wing, Black Widow. However, somewhere along the way, and I honestly don't remember quite how it came about, I tried barebow, or traditional shooting, and fell in love with the simplicity of this niche of archery. From there, it was a simple step to specializing in longbows, rather than recurves. I sold and/or traded off most of the target recurves and have been happilyl collecting and shooting modern longbows since then.

I have set up a range in my garage/furnace room... not terribly satisfactory, but workable. After all, I am in Seattle and we have had a terribly rainy winter. Come spring, i will be setting up a range to 30 yards in the back yard.

Meantime, here are some pictures of what I am beginning to refer to as my "Bow Room"... the target room and room where the bows are stored. It's actually the furnace room, but hey, it works. Previously, it held a huge model railroad. Sometime ahead, it will hold a smaller one again, but it will have to share with the target backstop and bows.

With that background, here are some pictures:

 

 

Shooting in the garage has its limitations. The backstop is in the furnace room and you have to shoot through the furnace room door. I've tried several backstop arrangements. They got larger after my wife put a few carbon arrows inot the cement wall! Currently, what you're looking at is cushions from boats Ann has redone the interiors of (that's her business). I stacked them two deep on the wall, then put the target in front and padded some more around it. Works really great. A 60# arrow will not penetrate two cushions.

 

This shot is from further back, out in the driveway about 14 yards from the target. From inside the garage you can shoot about 8 or 9 yards, but only with short bows due to a very low ceiling. I can manage my 58" Morrison and my 56" Hill Bear Cub, but the longer, 66" bows are just too awkward unless you shoot kneeling, and my old knees just don't "knee" all that wll any more.

The backstop looks different here because the picture was a lot earlier when the arrangement was different.

 

I love good equimpment, and am blessed with being able to have some. Probably my most favorite bows though, are Howard Hills. Their light weight and utter simplicity just resonate with me. The fact that I seem to shoot better with them doesn't hurt, either. This is the second round of six arrows shot with a Hill Wesley #45 the day I got it. The first round kind of let me find the target, then I shot this. surprisingly, this was with the bow still un-nocked. I generally do better now, but I keep this photo as a reminder of where I was.

 

 

Here is the current collection, picture just updated. There are quite a few Howard Hills and/or Hill types. These are on the front line. R/D's and Recurves are in back. Still some pegs to fill :^).

 

 

 

I really feel that I should explain these antlers. I am not a hunter... been there, done that and never bothered with trophies. However, when I set up this little bow room, I kinda wanted some antlers, so I went looking to see if I could pick up a set. Now folks ask me what this deer was taken with, and I tell them the truth... a '57 Chevy!

Between his untimely demise and present use as an archery accessory rack, he has developed something of an attitude. When I put my shooting glove on him and glanced back, this is what i saw.

When I performed as a ventriloquist in Las Vegas, I used a very raunchy old cowboy figure l called "Uncle Fred". Fred was, as you can imagine in cabaret performance setting, rather obscene. Well, now I call this deer "Uncle Fred".

Link to see "Uncle Fred"

 

Having bragged up the Howard Hill bows, here are some closer views of my new Wesley. Hill bows are extremely slim, and very, very light. this one weighs in at 19 ounces! They represent, to me, about the ultimate in simplicity in a modern longbow. This one is black glass on bamboo cores with an ebony riser and bamboo tip reinforcement... beautiful!

 

 

The grip area of the Hill is, like the bow, slim. The arrow rest is extremely narrow. If there is something I would change about them, it would be to make the rest maybe 1/8" wider, but, as I told Craig Ekin, the man who builds them, folks have been shooting them this way for a long, long time, so he shouldn't change the production standard just for me!

One caution regarding this slimness, though... that arrow rest is barely as wide as the arrow, which means there is very little interference with the fletching. However, feathers, and especially feather spines, can cut the top of your hand! I wear a light left hand glove when shooting these... just call me Michael Jackson!

 

Here is the back of the grip. This bow has what Craig calls the "locator" grip, which has a slight depression to center the hand. The normal grip is often a bit deep for me, as I have small hands. On at least two Hill bows I have encountered, the grip had apparently been made for someone with a large hand, and I just couldn't handle them. Craig is modifying one, and once I get it back to look at what he did, I will modify the other... not a big deal, but if you order one, by all means, order the locator grip.

 

Here is the Wesley strung up... again, as simple as it gets... classic "D" strung bow.

 

When shooting in the driveway, I had no place to set the bow when I went forward for the arrows. I had been using, like everyone else, a cut off road cone. I came up with this, which I like much, much better. This is a piece of pvc pipe with a solid end cap. The cap is screwed to the square of plywood with two sheet metal screws. and the pipe is then inserted into the cap. I cut a groove in the top of the pipe to hold the bow.

 

Closeup of the bow resing on the top of the pipe.

 

 

Closeup of the top of the pipe, showing the groove "bow rest".

 

 

Well, after all that photo taking, I had to shoot that strung up bow, didn't I? This is another six shot round with the Wesley. This was from out in the driveway... 14 yards. Guys, I really like that bow!

Note... at this point I had been back in archery for two months and my previous experience, more than 30 years back, had been target recurve with sights.

 

 

Just to show that I do make progress... Here is a group from this morning... I have been doing a lot of experimentation... varying form and shooting different bows. I was trying to work on "pure instinctive" but finally got a feel for gap shooting and wanted dto try that. That led to efforts to lessen the gap by changing the form. Currently, I'm shooting three fingers under, arrow above the nock, and a high anchor point on my cheek bone. The result is very little gap at up to 20 yards. I'm still working on form at 10 yds, and this is what this "system" is producing for me:

There are things I don't like about three under and the high anchor point, but I will give it several weeks of daily practice. If it continues like this, or, Lord help me, improves, I'll know that I have found "my style". Also, so far, I have only done this with one bow. I need to see if it translates. ( Boy, do I need to see about that... the bow it's working with is the heaviest one I can shoot... 56#. My shoulder wants to back off to 45#.)