So I've been shooting my warbow for a couple months now. I love all kinds of longbows, native american, ELB, Hill style, whatever. I am unlike others who enjoy the heavy longbows- while I appreciate heritage and am a history buff, I have almost no interest really in flight or clout. Being a big man, to me it's just a giant ELB and I love the size, power, and fun of pulling it back behind my ear. I want to poach the King's deer, and have decided to embrace the challenge of taking a 76" 90# bow out in the woods hunting. Not in a tree, but on the ground, either hidden or on the stalk. Sure, I could stick to either my 58 or 64# ELB, but why not do something wacky and go for the full 90?, LOL. Really the quarry most suited to this size bow is the King's boar aka feral hog. Anyway, I acquired the bow without having the proper arrows for it. The bow is tillered to 33" and up to now I was only able to practice pulling and holding it past my ear with out a long arrow, and for shooting purposes was limited to some 30" carbon arrows I had lying around for my non-primitive bows, which only allowed about a 75-80# shot pulled to my face. Let me say the carbons were just NOT heavy enough for the bow, not to mention shooting them out of this lovely ELB is just wrong. Such a huge stick needs some HEAVY arrows in order to transfer its energy efficiently. Even weighted with a heavy field point and a piece of plastic coated wire inside the carbons just weren't cutting it, barely hitting 650g total weight. This bow needs something more in the realm of 800+ grains to function and get decent cast, not to mention being tillered to 33" it really needs to be pulled all the way back to do what it was meant to do. This meant I had to have wood shafts for sure. SO...enter in my buddy JohnFletch over on Tradgang, he does some arrow making under the moniker Glacier Traditional Archery out in Montana. He knew of my hunting goal and assured me he could build me some tough poplar shafts to do what I want to do and even make them look medieval. We did some trading for a large pile of spined wood dowels I had that I knew I wasn't going to use any time soon and he got going on building me some proper arrows. The coolest part for me was that he actually had a fletching jig modified for 7" feathers allowing him to glue the feathers on like a contemporary hunting arrow without needing to wrap/tie them with thread. I've got some really handsome STOS broadheads which have that perfect triangle look, that I'm going to try on them..but I may also get some real big hand forged heads just to keep in the medieval spirit. I've got 10 of the 34" monsters, but pics only show a handful of them.
Well, I'm pleased to report that the arrows John built for me fly like darts out of this bow pulled to 33"!! I'm working on 10 yards right now just to get comfortable aiming with the behind the ear anchor, but so far it's working...check out the nice lung shot I got on deer target
The bow isn't lightning quick being such a big ELB, BUT it is hilarious how hard the arrows hit the target...it makes the target sway back and forth and had me in laughing fits. I have plans to do a little camouflaging to the bow to dull it down some for the woods. If I actually pull this off over the next few seasons (it may take more than a few tries, hehe) I'll have myself a cool story to tell.
He even threw in a couple bodkins for me to try just for the heck of it. Pretty neat.
10 yard kill, haha!
7" feathers glued on, no wrap necessary! SWEET!
