Hi guys I wanted to introduce myself briefly and show you my hunting arrows I made for this fall. though not entirely primitive, it was a big leap for me and I'm happy with all I learned along the way. My brother Dan started our traditional journey in 2011 By pulling a cheap LB and six mismatched arrows out of his truck at hunting camp. What started as laughter and pure fun has resulted in a passion that has built and progressed deeper year to year. I found this site through Pat and have been amazed, couldn't read enough, I was drawn in...
last Jan after reading here I was able to identify a good crop of redosier dogwood and for a lack of real wild rose harvested shoots from the biggest 8' thorn bushes I could find. I was going to wait till next year to make shafts but an invitation by a friend to attend a primitive gear, ground hunting only, sleep in a 25' tee pee hunt the first weekend of our season gratefully set me in motion early...
The 14 arrows...
33" matched 700 grain (shaft + head) average spine 450, self nocks, wild turkey feathers from my spring gobbler a couple years ago, deer sinew from last year and previously harvested deer, heads attached with my first batch of pine pitch glue, I was able to make hunting heads of bone, glass, and obsidian, admittedly I used TB3, polyurethane clear coat, and fetching tape... each shaft is such an individual to me, I simply marvel at each one. I intentionally left as much bark on as possible, wanting the shoots to look like the wild sticks that they are. Only two shafts were so stubborn in spine and weight reduction that I had to scrape well below all the bark. I experimented with lightening groves advancing to what would more likely be considered flutes, in an attempts to weaken 3 stubborn shafts. Later ill share specific numbers of spine and weight changes related to these groves... adding it to existing threads I searched out here.
Some pictures...
cherry bark wraps
