Catholic Hack Contest

Sorry for not posting in a while. Just bought a house and am in the process of unpacking. Haven't shot my bow in nearly a month. The good news is that when I'm unpacked and ready to shoot again, I have an actual fenced in backyard! Can shoot up to 20 yards in the privacy of my own yard. Much better than shooting under 10 yards in the garage of my former rent house.

The purpose of this post is to share a video of someone I'm subscribed to on YouTube. His name is Joe McClane, but he goes by the name of Catholic Hack. His channel is a great resource for instinctive/traditional archery. I've picked up more than a few tips from his channel and am sure I'll learn even more as I progress and watch the videos again.

I'm reposting a video he made about a shooting glove. There's a chance I can win the same glove by reposting this, but that's not the only reason I'm sharing this. His channel is not only about archery, as implied by the name. He is also an avid Christian and posts videos about his faith and relates it to archery. He has a welcoming personality and seems like he'd be a cool guy to hang out with. I'm in Baton Rouge...maybe I could make the trek over to Texas one day and shoot. (I just hope he's not a Cowboys fan. Haha.) Anyways, check out his channel and subscribe to his videos. And until next time, I want to believe.

http://youtu.be/wy5LUpjWzgI

Thrift store bow

Haven't made a post for a while so I figured I'd make one about my new bow. Picked up this bow from a thrift store a few weeks ago with hopes of converting it into a recurve. It's a Bear Kodiak Magnum compound bow, probably from the late 1970s to early 1980s. 

Sorry for the out of focus pic. Hey, at least my socks are clean!

I did a lot of research and quickly realized that I do not have the tools and know how to attempt such a conversion (yet). Took it to my local archery shop and had them remove the cables. (I figured just cutting them off on my own with a pair of snips might be a bad idea). Then, I contacted a user on a forum I frequent called Trad Talk and began the process of having this bow converted to accept ILF (International Limb Fitting) limbs.

I sent off and quickly received the newly converted riser from user jondho and began refinishing it. It had a very nice and shiny varnish, but it was chipping away from years of neglect. Judging by the rust on all the hardware, this bow was left in the elements for quite a while.

Yeah, a little bit of rust and the bubbles are cracks in varnish. But did you see that price?

Riser with all varnish removed and ready for sanding.

 Put on several coats of stain and a few coats of semi-gloss polyurethane and here are the results.

Finished riser. So shiny!

Ordered some TradTech Blackmax limbs and this thing is shooting great! Took it to the same archery shop to buy a string and test her out. Fired one shot down the range and the arrow shot like a laser. The other compound guys at the range were in awe of this bow that I saved from the confines of a thrift store.

Really happy I sent it off for conversion and put in all the effort to make it look nice. Just have to mount the original Bear medallion. I'm going to clean it up first. It looks a lot nicer than in one of those previous pics. Hope you enjoyed reading about the process and seeing the pics, so until next time, I want to believe.

(Almost) Finished bow. Just need to remount Bear medallion. Also added some string silencers since this pic.

I want to believe...

So before I begin my random musings about instinctive archery, let me first say a bit about myself. I am a professional musician and full-time school teacher. I have three degrees in music, including a doctorate. Learning to shoot the bow intrigues me because it's like learning to play an instrument. You put your finger here, do this with your arm, stand on one leg, and it makes the sound you want. You put the arrow on the string, do this with your arm, stand on one leg and the arrow goes exactly where you want it to go. Might have exaggerated on the whole standing on one leg thing, but I digress.

The two are very similar in that form is everything. My main instrument is the double bass. It's basically a six foot tall tree with four strings. Without proper form, it is nearly impossible to make a good and consistent sound. Making a good sound consistently is the most important thing. I'm a pretty big guy and can sometimes get away with bad form or technique by just "muscling" through something. This is ok (maybe) sometime but is not good in the long run.

Muscling through a passage or piece on the bass is not the most ideal practice. I would equate muscling it through in archery to pulling back the string on the bow and just letting the arrow fly with no regards to your posture, alignment, form, or even where the arrow will go. Although I'm very analytical with my ever changing concept of archery form, I sometimes feel like I'm just muscling through the shot.

I take a shot, see where it goes, and try to assess what I did (whether correctly or incorrectly). If I did something different on the previous shot, I try to add it to my shot routine. If the different thing in the cycle was detrimental to the shot, I try to never, ever do it again (yeah, I would it was that easy to stop). This constant change in routine/shot sequence makes it hard to ever feel comfortable and wonder if instinctive archery really exists.

So the previous sentence leads me to the title of this post (and more than likely that fancy sign off I was trying to find in my previous post), which is "I want to believe." I really want to believe that if my form is always the same and if I focus on that tiny scrap of bird crap (hey, that rhymes) on the target, that it will always go exactly where I want it to go. There are times when I get a pretty good grouping and I totally believe in instinctive archery and other times where I think instinctive archery is a much bigger pile of bird crap than what I was just shooting at on the target.

The purpose of this blog is to write about my quest to believe in instinctive archery and to hopefully improve my shooting simply by discussing it. Not sure either of those will ever actually happen, but I want to believe they will. See, that was it. That was the witty sign off. Just put it before the end. Dang it! Oh well, I'll try to do better next time.

Introduction

This will be the first of many posts as I delve into the world of instinctive archery. I started shooting a recurve bow in December of 2014 and was gung-ho for a few months. I was also in the middle of a massive weight loss (around 80 pounds since September 2014) and archery took a backseat to that/life/job until May when I stumbled upon a Bear Kodiak Magnum compound bow in a thrift store. I learned that these bows could be converted into traditional bows and the interest in archery was rekindled. I sent that riser off to someone to covert it to take ILF (international limb fitting) limbs, which means that the same riser can be used with many sets of limbs to adjust poundage and the length of the limbs. Since then, I've been shooting nearly everyday and trying to remember everything I forgot about traditional/instinctive archery. I have many topics I'd like to talk about from my experience with instinctive archery so far and have many posts planned. I'll try to pace myself and make this blog as interesting as possible (if that's possible). I'll try to come up with a creative sign off, but for now, I'll just end this right here.