Primitive Buck Kill
Contributors to this thread:Whitetail Deer
From: skipmaster1
30-Dec-21
skipmaster1's Link
This season a good buddy made me a matched set of flint arrow heads. Years ago another buddy had made me an Osage self bow, but it stacked really bad at my drawlength. I met up with him in October and asked if he could work the bow a little more for me because I wanted to tune some arrows for it and hunt with the stone points. He took it and made it beautiful. Thinned and recurved the limbs and reduced the stack. I got it back at the end of November and went straight to work tuning maple shafts for it. Once I was tuned, I built some perfectly matched, perfectly straight, flint tipped arrows. I hunted a few times with it in mid December before I finally had my chance at a deer. I was on a remote oak ridge in the edge of a bedding thicket. This buck slowly came in feeding and finally offered a shot. I made it count, entering the leg, breaking 2 ribs, centering the heart and cracking an offside rib. He turned out to be a scarred up small racked 5.5 year old. This hunt will go down as one of my all time favorites because of the effort and challenge and the fact that both of my friends were absolutely ecstatic that I put there gear to use. I filmed it all too. It’s hard to self film and get enough to tell a story but the guy who did my editing really pulled it off. The video link is above.
From: skipmaster1
30-Dec-21
From: Treeline
30-Dec-21
Nice job! Congratulations on a great deer earned the real hard way!
I shot my antelope this year with an obsidian head and a river cane arrow off a self bow. Amazing amount of damage even thought that point blew up.
Self bows and stone points are definitely effective! If they weren’t, none of us would be around today as humans would have starved out!
From: skipmaster1
30-Dec-21
Tree line- sounds like an amazing hunt! Congratulations. Yup, if it didn’t work we wouldn’t be here!
From: Jeff Holchin
30-Dec-21
Very well done!
From: Bou'bound
30-Dec-21
Special very special
From: Bowboy
30-Dec-21
Congrats!
From: JL
30-Dec-21
That was pretty cool. Making those arrows looks like a serious art. Congrats and thanks for posting up.
From: Earltex
30-Dec-21
Incredible accomplishment. Well done!
From: Shiras42
30-Dec-21
Excellent! Now that is how you measure a trophy!
From: JusPassin
30-Dec-21
Yup, that is "real" bow hunting.
From: Dale06
30-Dec-21
That’s amazing. Congratulations on your accomplishment!
From: Matt
30-Dec-21
Cool, thanks for sharing.
From: bentstick54
30-Dec-21
Congratulations, great job on getting it done the hard way. Great video.
From: elkmtngear
30-Dec-21
Great shot, Congrats!
Top shelf quality and production, on that video!
From: Beav
30-Dec-21
Outstanding! What a trophy!
From: t-roy
30-Dec-21
Very impressive, Greg! Well earned trophy, for sure. Congrats!
From: smarba
30-Dec-21
Congrats, the experience sounds amazing! In your first photo of the arrowhead, did the shaft break or did the arrowhead shift? Or is the misalignment just an optical illusion from camera angle?
From: Supernaut
30-Dec-21
Outstanding, congrats!
From: skipmaster1
30-Dec-21
Smarba- the shaft cracked at the notch when it came out
From: Grunt-N-Gobble
30-Dec-21
Very cool!
From: PK
30-Dec-21
awesome! well done
From: midwest
30-Dec-21
That's neat...congrats!
From: T Mac
30-Dec-21
That is awesome plain and simple. And to think how much we humans complicate the hell out of everything with all the gadgets and endless broadhead debates!
From: Paul@thefort
30-Dec-21
A hunt with so many parts. Nicely done. A hunt that will not be forgotten. my best, Paul
From: WV Mountaineer
30-Dec-21
Awesome stuff man. Congrats.
From: scentman
30-Dec-21
Nice!
From: drycreek
30-Dec-21
Talk about retro ! I do have a question though. How do you practice with a stone head ?
From: DanaC
30-Dec-21
Awesome hunt, congratulations!
From: skipmaster1
31-Dec-21
Drycreek- you can shoot into loose straw or something and I have in the past. I know that as long as the arrow spins absolutely perfect and is identical in weigh and construction to the arrow with the 2 blade steel head, it will fly exactly like that arrow. I practice with the steel head tipped arrows pretty much exclusively. The speeds are slow and shots ore close so any slight aerodynamic differences don’t show up.
From: Franzen
31-Dec-21
Badass man! Congrats.
From: Pyrannah
31-Dec-21
fantastic! congrats
From: HUNT MAN
31-Dec-21
Very very impressive .
From: skipmaster1
31-Dec-21
Thank you all. This hunt was so amazing and special for me on so many levels. My buddies are stoked that I put their equipment to good use too. I was lucky enough to catch it all on film so I can share it and watch it over and over, which is even better.
From: Huntaholic
31-Dec-21
What a Great Hunt and Buck ! Congratulations
From: Arrowone
01-Jan-22
Great story and hunt. Bow hunting in its truest sense. Congratulations!!
From: ScrubBuck
01-Jan-22
Thats impressive, well done ! Congrats and nice shot too !
From: APauls
01-Jan-22
That's really special! Congratulations! You guys don't have any gloves down there for winter or what? lol Your guy editing did an amazing job. Great video.
From: skipmaster1
01-Jan-22
APauls- haha. I hate gloves. I use a muff but I was only 13’ up in an open tree and it took him 35 minutes to close from 60 yards to 13 yards. It was just one of those times you just have to grit through the cold. It was only 20 degrees so it wasn’t super cold. The guy doing the editing is unbelievable. My camera work is only so so.
From: booner
01-Jan-22
That’s a great video and accomplishment ! Well done.
From: Arrowone
01-Jan-22
Great story and hunt. Bow hunting in its truest sense. Congratulations!!
From: Zbone
01-Jan-22
Way cool, CONGRATS!
From: Zim
02-Jan-22
Very cool. Thanks for sharing. Had a guy visit our YMCA Indian Guides camp once and brought a road kill in. He cut it up removing some parts and showing uses to the boys. One was sinew, which I guess was used to attach arrowheads to the arrows? I've also seen pine tar or something natives used. How did you attach? Not sure if I would ever try to craft all that stuff. Looks like a lot of effort. My half-acre lot subdivision has prevented me from pulling the trigger on a recurve or longbow up to this point. I just don't have enough room for error to shoot regularly.
From: skipmaster1
02-Jan-22
Zim- yeah there are two main areas on a deer you harvest sinew. The legs and the back straps. I filet the “silver skin”(sinew) off the back straps and scrape them clean with a spoon. Then let it dry. To use it, I break it into thin strands and chew it soft. That’s the binding I use to hold the head on and strengthen the front of the shaft. When wet it “ glues” to itself, so there are no knots. When it dries, it shrinks tight and hardens Pine pitch is traditionally used to hold it in place while securing with sinew. I used Kimsha hot melt.
From: duvall
02-Jan-22
Very nice!!! I'm still trying for my first primitive but haven't been able to close the deal yet. Maybe next year
From: Thornton
02-Jan-22
Excellent. But I have to ask, how on earth do you estimate him to be 5.5 years old?
From: yeager
02-Jan-22
Awesome video and hunt……..congratulations on a great buck with your selfbow and arrow! You mentioned you had to shorten your arrow to stiffen it up a bit…..could you have increased the brace height instead, just curious? Well done!
From: skipmaster1
02-Jan-22
Thornton- based on tooth wear he looks to be 5.5 years old. He was also a dominant buck, in November my buddy saw him snort wheezing and pushing bucks away. I’ll send the teeth out for cementum annuli to get the most accurate age.
From: skipmaster1
02-Jan-22
Yeager- brace height could be used to fine tune but it gets tricky with a self bow. Shortening the arrow was the best and most simple way to increase spine.
From: Nick Muche
02-Jan-22
You’ll remember that one for awhile, great video and thanks for sharing!
From: TGbow
02-Jan-22
Awsome!!!
From: skipmaster1
03-Apr-22
Just got the age back on this buck. He was 5.5 years old like tooth wear indicated.
