How To Get Started In Traditional Archery

It's a little after July 4th right now and I am going to be doing something different this year. I am going to be hunting with a trad bow. This here is a Galaxy Sage that I ordered from Lancaster Archery and my reason for going with a trad bow this year is I've been bow hunting now for almost 29 years. I've been shooting archery for even longer than that and I remember as a kid we always shot recurves because they were the easiest bow that you get your hands on. Compounds weren't that popular back then. Also growing up with two older brothers you basically got what you were given and in our family that was a recurve bow because it was kind of a one-size-fits-all and my dad's motto was if I wasn't strong enough to pull it back I needed to bale more hay and if I couldn't pull it back far enough I needed to grow longer arms. One thing I always remember though is just how pure these bows are to shoot and unless you shoot them there's really not I can't describe it other than pure. There's nothing like coming to full draw letting go and watching that arrow as it spirals down range and into the target and I just got to that point I think this year in my life and in my hunting career that I want to get back to shooting traditional archery. This bow here come fall or come winter I ordered from Lancaster Archery. This is an introductory recurve there's nothing real fancy about it. It's the Galaxy Sage. It's a takedown recurve and I do leather work as a hobby and what we kind of did is made our own accessories so I'll start with that and what I want to show you is my setup for this year and what I'm doing for hunting whitetails here in Wisconsin and I'm not an expert on this. I'm not going to claim that I'm a traditional expert by no means but I want to show you my setup. I'm going to show you what I'm trying and throughout the year if I find something that I like I'll talk about it. If I don't like it I'm going to say hey I didn't like this and I'm switching so I kind of want to bring you along on my traditional archery journey. To start off with my accessories I go with is my arm guard that I made. We do a lot of leather work. We do bridles for horses and saddlery stuff, belts and why not make my own arm guard. Essentially use some antler and carved a nice elk into it and stamped it and just a nice leather arm guard that works out beautifully. I think it's kind of a cool touch especially when it's traditional. That's kind of what's neat is you can kind of go in and make your own stuff, kind of fine-tune your own equipment. So that's my arm guard. Same thing with my finger tab. This is just nothing more than some stretchy cord with the pull tab on it. I went in and just kind of leather stitched a piece of leather. This is actually chap leather so it's a little bit thinner that I'm able to cut out my own finger tab and I absolutely love it. Maybe I'm a little biased because I made it but just kind of neat to be able to make your own stuff and then to top that off I took an old quiver and put buckskin on it, dyed the leather, baseball stitched up the side of it and kind of stitch it down to kind of give it that traditional look and attaches onto the side of the recurve and just kind of I think it's kind of a cool accent piece, cool look and neat to be able to make your own cover like that. Now the bread and butter. My actual arrow setup. These are the arrows. This here is, these are gold tips. This is a 400 spine. This is their traditional series. It's designed to look like the old cedar or wooden shafts. I got them wrapped with more of a traditional wrap and then the feather I went with I believe these are four inch feathers that I put on there. Going towards the tip I have brass inserts that I went with for more weight and also gold tip makes what's called a fac system. You could add it's modular weights that you can add into here so I added in a bunch of weight for the FOC for the front of the arrow. These are about I want to say 550 grains. I don't know the exact amount right now. I don't remember offhand but it's definitely a heavier arrow and then I taped on or actually taped off and then use fingernail polish. I put white on the front. I'm not a what you call an instinctive shooter. I actually do aim. I aim off of this white band on the front of my arrow. I know some people are want to get pure traditional. Bear with me. I'm starting out in this. I still like to be able to aim. I'm not quite there yet to be a true what people call a true traditional or shoot instinctively but I like that white front that I put on my arrows. So that's my arrow setup. Going to the bow itself again I said this is the Galaxy Sage. I will tell anybody that's starting out and shooting a recurve go with light limbs. Just to give you an idea I'm almost six foot two. I shoot my compound is easily I can draw back 70 pounds on a compound. That's a very comfortable draw weight for me at a 29 inch. I'm shooting 45 pound limbs on this recurve. So there's a big difference between a compound and a recurve. Now that I've shot as much as I have with a recurve I can probably bump up limb sizes and that's kind of what's neat with these is I can buy stiffer limbs but if you went too heavy way too quick you're going to lose your form. When you're drawing back trying to get your form and it's it's a totally different ball game than what you're used to with a compound. So my advice to anybody starting out with a recurve or long go with a lot weaker than you think you'd need. Again this is a 45 pound on a recurve and my compound is easily 70 pounds. I can draw that back and hold that back all day comfortably on a compound. Different story with a recurve. If you go too high your form is going to suffer and one thing about a traditional archery or traditional bow is it does not sugarcoat your shooting form. When you shoot a compound she's nice to you she may lie to you and say you know what your form wasn't the greatest but we still made that shot a good shot. This bad boy if your form is not correct if you're collapsing you're plucking it's going to exaggerate it. It is going to throw you way off down range. So shooting form is huge and work your way up. Don't push it. Don't rush it. I'm shooting a fixed crawl. I actually have my knocking point and then I have a red kind of what I use for my tab. My shots on whitetail here in Wisconsin varies across the country. Me personally even with a compound I don't shoot beyond 25 yards at a whitetail anymore. I prefer my shots 20 yards and closer. This winter we were at a working cattle horse clinic and after we got done with our horses and working with them we were practicing roping. Bear with me drive this point home. I'm trying to toss my rope and rope the steer the plastic steer and I'm trying to bomb it out there and the guy who was holding the clinic came up to me and goes why are you trying to throw it that far I said well in case that steer's out there that far I can get him. He says you know how you fix that. My reply was no and he quickly said get a faster horse and he walked away. That goes into archery. Me personally I like that challenge of getting close. If that deer is too far out of bow range that's part of it. Get a faster horse. Find a new spot. Get closer to that deer. Majority of deer that I have shot with a bow are 20 yards and closer. Last year was like 18 yards. The last buck I shot prior to that that was only at 12 yards. The doe I shot was at 8 yards. This is close quarter combat for whitetails here in Wisconsin. So I have my Manoc my fixed crawl set at 20 yards. 15 to 20 yards I can shoot. I'm very good out to 15 right now. I'm still working my way back to 20. 20 is going to be my max yardage with that. So I shoot with a fixed crawl on that where I put my fingers next to the red button. Draw back. Point on. I put that point where I want to hit and it's been hitting there. Moving up I have a clicker. So what a clicker is is that when I reach a set draw length it lets out a click to let me know. It's also a cycle trigger. So as I come back into full draw and it hits that click that tells me it's time to release. It gives me a consistent draw length. It also works wonders if you have target panic. If you suffer any form of target panic this works wonders. It gets you to focus on the back half of your shot process. So when I come to full draw I'm focusing on aiming. I get my sight on target. My mind now focuses on that back half which is just pulling. Back tension. Pulling. Pulling. Pulling. Until I hear that click and then I release. Obviously I'm not going to hunt with the clicker that loud. I'm going to silence it and I'm going to keep a piece of tape on it. I really like this setup. I kind of want to hunt with it. I want to silence it so that I can actually just feel it through the string versus hearing that audible click. What I did with this clicker is I tied on. I got rid of the chain and cord that came with it and I put D loop material. From there I go back to my string and I ran serving and I reserved this section up here and I did a series of two nail knots around my D loop. I wrapped that around and then tied a knot of this D loop around the bow so it kind of makes a C and then I tie it. Again this is not a tutorial on how to tie the clicker in but I want to kind of give you a ballpark idea but I tie it in so that way it pivots and spins around my bowstring. How these clickers are originally designed or marketed is that you weave this cord through your actual bowstring. Problem is this is a takedown recurve so when I take these limbs off I take this string off or I want to adjust my brace height this has to line back up if it's through that string. I have to put those twists in in order to get this line up. By doing it this way it doesn't matter I can put in as many twists as I want and it's just going to rotate around. Now I will tell you if you do it this way you have to have some resistance on this pivoting this twisting and by doing that prevents it from when you shoot that it doesn't whip and wrap around. To me personally that is the best way to tie in a clicker. I absolutely loved it I've tried the original way that came with the directions I did not like that so I came up with by tying this method so it spins around it and this has worked beautifully for me. So with the clicker when I tie it in I do a temporary knot and I keep shooting for quite a while until I say yep that's where I like it. I may shorten my click I might lengthen it a little bit until I find where I really like it. I will finish that off and when I get it set to where I want my click to go I tied in a constrictor knot and that thing is rock solid in there. This bow here I can throw it out of my tree if I want to and you ain't damage it and you sure aren't gonna break a sight off on it. The only thing different I think I would have done is move my clicker up a little bit I could have shortened this string a little bit off of it but all in all right now it is a beautiful setup it is fun to shoot and it is addicting. I am gonna warn you if you've never tried traditional archery it's challenging you've got to be patient your form has to be spot on and you've got to work your start up close and work your way back whether it be poundage on your limbs to the distance that you're shooting but it is addicting and it is fun. So that's what we got going on this year we're going to send some shots down range and have some fun with the old recurve and hopefully Josh Fletcher can lay down some deer with some trad equipment this year. Boom!