Growing up around bowhunting

When I was about eight years old and living on a 40-acre fallow farm in rural Michigan with my parents and siblings, my Uncle Darwin, my father’s brother-in-law, called and asked permission to hunt whitetailed deer on the farm with his bow and arrow. My dad said yes, and Uncle Darwin arrived the day before the opening of the Michigan archery deer season and started doing some scouting.

I don’t remember if my uncle ever harvested a deer in the few years he hunted the old farm before my folks moved to Illinois and sold the property. I do remember that one year, Uncle Darwin brought along an older fiberglass recurve bow he wasn’t using anymore and tried to talk my father into joining him on his hunt. My father wasn’t interested in bow hunting and was putting in long hours at work, so he never hunted with my uncle.

Darwin left the bow with my folks, in case my dad changed his mind, so my dad could practice. That never happened. My brother and I ended up with the bow. That was the beginning of my developing interest in bowhunting.

When I was maybe twelve years old, I harvested my first game animal, a cottontail rabbit, with that old bow. We were living in a developing subdivision and were surrounded by farmland rapidly being turned into suburban housing. To go hunting, all I had to do was walk out the back door and into the cornfield behind the house. We had pheasants and rabbits in that field, even after it was no longer used to grow corn and was covered with tall grass.

I came close to harvesting a pheasant a couple of times, but every archery shot ended up being a near miss. After I was in my mid-teens and had my first shotgun, I eventually shot a pheasant in that field. A year after I made that killing shot, the exact spot of the harvest was covered by somebody’s living room in a house which was part of a large subdivision development.

There was also a small area of timber a half mile or so from our house where my brother and I would occasionally hunt for squirrels. I managed to shoot one with my bow using a blunt on the arrow tip. I hadn’t realized just how tough a gray squirrel was to kill using an arrow until that harvest. Cottontail rabbits were easy compared to that squirrel.

As time went on and we were using firearms more for hunting, we discovered muzzleloading. The archery gear was put in the closet and forgotten about other than for bowfishing activities. Muzzleloading rifles were just more fun to shoot, hunt with, and compete with in shooting matches.

My interest in archery was rekindled after I retired. I had more free time, and archery technology had produced the compound bow, which was easier and quicker to learn to shoot accurately. We were also living where hunting opportunities with bow and arrow were easier to find, with successful hunts possible in a single day rather than requiring a long trip.

I still have both the recurve bow and long bow (traditional bows) from my early archery years, and the compound bow I bought after rediscovering how much fun archery can be. Since my shoulder problems, I’ve invested in a crossbow because of the medical limitations of drawing a vertical bow.

I’ve also discovered a magazine I found online which deals with traditional bowhunting and is done in the style of magazines from years ago. It contains hunting stories and adventures, interviews with bowhunters, and some fictional stories related to traditional bowhunting. Ads are few to none. The intent is to support the publication through individual issue sales and subscriptions. The magazine is published and printed in Canada by a couple interested in keeping the traditional bowhunting lifestyle alive.

The magazine, called “Trad Hunters,” was started in 2025 and is published quarterly. I received Volume 3 in today’s mail. Volume 1’s material is centered around Alaska. Volume 2 is based on stories about the High Country. Volume 3 concentrates its information around the Great Lakes area. The magazine uses heavy stock paper and photos or sketches to illustrate the stories.

I have several archery friends who have abandoned their compound bows for the traditional recurve or, in the case of the “hardcore types,” exclusive use of the long bow style. If I can’t use the traditional bows anymore, I can still read about them!