Reclaiming the Bow

As a youth, the fact that archery season was much longer than firearm season appealed to me. I purchased a small Bear Silver Mag bow, adjustable in draw weight from 30 to 40 pounds, set up my hay bale back stop, and started what would soon become a passionate hobby of looking for arrows nearly buried in fescue turf.
I don’t know who I was trying to fool anyway. Early in life I decided that successful bow hunters were either:
a. Much more serious about hunting than I’d ever be; or
b. Hunting in an area with a much denser wildlife population.
I hunted exclusively on my family farm. You could hunt deer and turkey there successfully, or you could go days, or weeks, on end without seeing either. They were around, but seemed often to stay in the proverbially greener grass on the other side of the property line fence. I considered it a good day of deer hunting if I got within a couple of hundred yards of deer. Getting within bow range seemed about a likely as wrestling a deer to the ground bare-handed and putting it in a submission hold.
But we’re out of venison. Firearms season is more than a month away. I may not have much time to partake in firearm turkey season this fall. Urban archery is legal in Columbia. And Ann knows someone with backyard deer, and also thinks she knows where I might get close to a turkey. Maybe I should give urban archery a try.
I checked Bass Pro, and it looked like bows were going for $350 and up. I didn’t think I wouldn’t to go there at this point. It was time to dig up the Badger.
Back in the 1980s, before I abandoned archery, I decided I needed to upgrade from the Silver Mag so that I could lose arrows at greater distances. My friend Troy had just the thing: a Browning Badger, with a 70-pound draw weight. We struck the deal during a Tom Sawyer-like caving expedition in southern Gasconade County, and Troy retrieved the bow from where it had been bouncing around in the back of his ’68 Chevy pickup, and $60 later I was a set.
But now it’s 2011. For more than two decades this bow had been stored in a clean, cool, dry place. Would it work? Is a bow from my high school days still safe and effective? Would this lead me to start listening to Aerosmith and Whitesnake again? I took it down to the creek and set up one of those self-healing Styrofoam targets in a place where there was ample backstop to absorb any stray arrow. I backed off, really just far enough so that if I hit something hard the arrow wouldn’t bounce back and get me. I asked Ann to back away from me, in case the bow splintered or a string broke. Then I pulled it back and let one fly.
It hit the target. Not the concentric circles that really constitute the target, but the ample white border around those circles. The bow didn’t break, and I didn’t even lose the arrow. I shot several more times to relearn how the multi-range sight pins work. Soon I was lethally accurate, albeit at a very close range. It would have to be an extremely foolhardy deer or turkey that would fall prey to my arrow. I don’t think you’ll find many deer anymore rash than within the city limits of Columbia. I would have to give this a try.