Although bow hunting is on the rise in popularity in North America, the concept of the bow and arrow is one of the oldest tools for defending oneself and hunting in the realm of human history.
Today’s modern bows are at the highest level of technical engineering and can humanely and ethically dispatch with ease the largest game on the continent. Modern bows are light, durable, precision-tuned and, of course, expensive.
The bow and arrow have had many birthdays and they date almost as far back as man himself. Arrowheads that were discovered in Africa have been dated circa 50,000 BC and were probably used in conjunction with spears and/or other projectiles for the killing of animals.
It is somewhere around 20,000 BC when fire-hardened arrowheads were used. They were shaped to a point and inserted into a slot on the shaft then tied with sinew to the front of the arrow which gave them much more strength and reliability. Hardened arrowheads had much more bone-breaking ability and held an edge much longer.
Around 6,000 BC, archaeologists found bows in Denmark that were made from yew or elm and there was an even amount of bend in the bow on the top and on the bottom. This is when bows started to become more accurate and projected the arrow faster and longer down range.
Ancient art and rock paintings depicted archers with bow and arrow in hand as far back as 7500 BC and soon the bow and arrow became the main weapon in warfare as well as a tool to harvest game. Spears became too cumbersome and difficult to lug around. The distance they travelled was not as far and they were not as accurate.
It was the Egyptians who really got technical around 2300 BC when they developed a composite bow which had animal horn tips on either end and was held together with their version of glue. These bows were the best built and in conjunction with tillering, made great weapons and hunting tools. Egyptian bows were approximately 62 to 68 inches in length and had arrows that were made from reeds with very hard fore shafts, which were set into the main shaft with very fine thread then tipped with flint broad heads.
This Egyptian concept was used for a few thousand years until the modern musket was invented in the year 1520 AD which would soon replace the bow as a weapon of war. However, the bow and arrow remained on the scene for many more years as the muskets were slow in production and hard to acquire through bartering and/or purchase. Only kings and the wealthy were able to get their hands on these new modern guns.
Today’s bow hunting and archery equipment has come a long way from the old traditional style long bows and hand-made wooden arrows. Although we still have, and always will, traditional archers and traditional gear such as re-curve, long bows and homemade cedar arrows, names like Hoyt, Easton, Mathews, Bear, Martin and Browning just to name a few, are up to their necks in manufacturing competition. Speed, lightness and ease of use are the top three goals for most manufacturers and now with millions being spent on engineering, research and testing, it’s only going to get better.
My first bow was given to me back in 1983 and made by a company called Darton Archery out of the U.S. I used that little dual-wheeled bow for a year until I travelled to Florida and went direct to the Jennings factory and bought a brand new Woody Lite. At the time this bow was high tech. It had a wooden laminated riser and fiberglass limbs with two plastic round-wheeled encentrics and a steel cable system with a tear drop Dacron string. At the time, it was the Cadillac of bows.
Although my arrows sped at a whopping 198 feet per second out of that old relic, I did manage to harvest my first moose with it down in Devon Township.
I was using Easton aluminum arrows and 145 grain cut on impact broad heads.
That moose 24 years ago was just as dead as the moose I harvested last September with the high tech modern gear.
Even though comparisons could not be made on the advancement in technological design and quality from that old Darton bow to the new Mathews bow I use today, it still did the job and did it well.
Archery is the sport of legend and will remain that way forever.
Bow hunting is a very important part of my life. Over the last 25 years I’ve watched how fast the popularity and demand for decent equipment has increased.
Bow hunting has been around for thousands of years and was not only a staple and a necessity way back when, it also meant life or death in many instances.
What does the future hold for archery and bow hunting in particular? Good question. I guess the answers lie within the current and future government ranks.
The sport of archery is more protected and secure than bow hunting is, simply because we are battling an army of antis, naturalists and environmentalists. This does not mention government officials who are easily swayed or who made promises to people with the power of money behind them. Bow hunting is a very challenging and traditional way of harvesting game and it has been done for literally thousands of years. Guns (modern firearms) by contrast are infants.
Can I confidently say bow hunting is going to be here for 100 more years? No, I cannot. However, it is here stronger and better than ever and I am enjoying it as often as I can.
If you are interested in archery or bow hunting, check out Lakehead Archers. They have a great facility. They not only have an indoor range, but a 90-yard outdoor range and a trail system lined with 3-D targets. They have tournaments on a regular basis and enough experienced people there to help anyone at any level.
Good shooting.