A 45 pound draw hunting bow has the killing ability of a 30-06 rifle

What Is Archery?
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Avoiding Common Archery Shooting Mistakes | Archery and Bow Hunting
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A 45 pound draw hunting bow has the killing ability of a 30-06 rifle. Actually, in expert hands and in the right circumstances, even a 25 pound draw weight bow will have the killing ability of a 30-06, or any other shoulder fired weapon you want to stack against it.

But how does a bow have the same killing capacity as a 30-06?

Because of much the same reason a bullet does: blood-letting. A bullet has ‘shock’ value as well, yet an arrow will bleed even more quickly than a bullet because of it’s cutting edges. And when hunting or speaking of hunting, the arrowhead is equally as important, if not more so, than the bow or arrow.

When it comes to surviving in a true wilderness setting, a bow is the absolute best weapon you can have. Better than a rifle or pistol for several reasons.

First: a bow can be made from almost any hardwood material, especially the maples, yew, ash, and best of all, the Osage orange. Birch, some pines, and aspen can be used as well, with brittle oak being a fairly down-the-line choice. There are exotics that can be used, but we’re talking survival in North America so will limit our choices to anything growing around us.

Second: an arrow can easily be made from reeds (think cattail for one) or whittled from other woods, Port Orford Cedar being the most commonly used (until the Spotted Owl terminated the harvesting of it, and over harvesting as well, to be totally honest).

Cedars make the best wood arrows because they don’t warp as readily as most other woods, have a more stable grain pattern and can be reaved most easily into sheaves for arrow stock, and can be compressed most readily.

Arrowheads can be chipped from flint, or other stones, even panes of glass, any bone, or just the fire-hardened tip of the arrow itself. If you’re industrious, you can file steel down to a very serviceable point. But, we’re talking survival and what’cha got with you, not what you’d like to have.

Bowstrings can be spun quickly from the inner bark of many commonly available plants- milkweed being a common material or cut from any animal hide or, in a survival situation, from the cords of one’s jeans.

Regardless where you live, any archery shop now is going to convince you that “you must absolutely gotta have the very bestest top of the line got more speed than light double helix hyper snappy wheel compound that we happen to sell right here” bow. I won’t say BS on that, but I will tell you this: a salesman’s job is to sell. Not necessarily what you want or need, but to sell.

What kind of bow you get- be it traditional longbow, recurve, or compound- is up to your preferences.

It won’t matter what style of bow you choose, just be sure it’s the one you want and dream about. If your imagination is filled with Robin Hood or Fred Bear or Ben Pearson or Howard Hill, you would probably feel more comfortable with a longbow or recurve. Either will be a fine choice.

Longbows have a tendency to ‘stack’, which means they get harder to draw as you draw them. If it’s a very short bow, it will stack more than a longer bow. Recurves stack less than longbows due to the curve. Too, the length of your personal draw will also cause it to stack more or less.

Draw length is measured the old-fashioned way: Hold your arms out in front of you, fingers extended, to make an arrowhead. The distance from your fingertips to your chin is your arrow length, your draw length is from your wrist to your chin. Bowyers have simplified this for us, however, and make their bows with an ‘average’ draw length of 28 inches. The reason for the arrow length? So you don’t cut your fingers with the sharp broadhead, it extends beyond your hand. Arrows can be cut to length as required, even simply at home with a sharp knife.

If your dreams extend to the modern mystique of wheels and pulleys, cams and short, snappy- and very fast arrows- then you may be dreaming of a compound.

Bow Hunter.com

Compounds do send arrows down range faster than other bows and use very light arrows. (Do not use a wood arrow on a compound bow- ever. Nothing may happen, but then again, you may end up with an arrow shaft in your forearm, or worse.

If TSHTF, the best choice will be the recurve or longbow because of the simplicity of their design, maintenance, and ease of repair. You would need a shop to rebuild steel/aluminum/magnesium pulleys and steel cable strings.

Not to mention, compounds are much heavier than stick bows. You can carry more arrows than more bow.

Arrows for longbows and recurves run from cedar to esoteric compunds like graphite. In short, any arrow can be shot from a stick bow.

Compund bows shoot aluminum, ‘glass and graphite with equal aplomb, but never wood.

With today’s compounds, the biggest ‘thing’ is the speed factor. Everyone’s trying to get their bow to shoot as fast a 30-06 bullet. Or so it seems. I’ve heard excuses (ok, reasons) from things such as “the deer don’t jump the string”, to “the lighter arrows need the speed” (which they do). To gain this speed of arrow, they use the lighter carbon or graphite arrow, which usually weighs less than the broadhead on the end. And speed creates penetration- which the lighter arrows need. Badly.

Arrows are ‘fletched’ with feathers- real turkey feather is best and be sure they come from the same wing- or plastic vanes.

The biggest problem with vanes is cold temps. They seem to stiffen and don’t stabilize the arrow as quickly. Some say feathers aren’t as waterproof as vanes, but I don’t see that. Just spray with Camp Dry once and forget it. No problems. Water runs off like a duck’s back.

Some people also claim wet bowstrings stretch and make the bow lose power due to less ‘fist’ in the bow. Not true! I’ve never lost ‘fist’ with a string or cable. (‘Fist’ is your hand-made to a fist, thumb extended upward, and from the riser to the string is the height of the string from the riser.)A vegetable fiber string will most likely stretch, as will leather. Soak them in tallow before use.

What does make a bow lose power can be on the string, though. Silencers. Attachments that quiet the string vibration after the shot- which vibration is also what the animal hears and causes it to ‘jump’ the string- and evade the arrow. Silencers can be as simple as a feather tied to the string, both ends of the bow, or as complicated as gobs of rubber bands woven into the string layers. Here, less is more. Go as simple as you can get away with. Some people don’t use silencers at all.

Arrowheads are what does the killing with an arrow. There are several rules to follow with arrowheads used for hunting in each state. (Note: in a survival situation, there is only one rule: survive. So forget about ‘nice’ and ‘laws’ and ‘fair chase’.) MN requires arrowheads “be of barbless design with at least two blades and a circumference of two inches for three or more blades and weigh 125 grains”. Which just means, go to your local sport shop and buy what they sell cuz they’ll most likely not be selling illegal products.

Complicated monsters that cut quickly and cleanly, to be sure, but no where near as hardy as the old Razorhead. The closest I’ve seen to the Razorhead is the Magnus two-blade, and they’re great. Not to mention, take a very fine edge. Oh, yes- I sharpen all my broadheads. Not something you’ll do with the more modern designs- all you need with them is more razorblades.

Between a two blade and three, or four, blade the biggest difference is cutting power. Or cutting ability. An arrow kills by bleeding the animal out- so expect it to run and have to track it- like cutting its throat. The more blades, the more damage to arteries and muscle and veins and… you get the idea, and the more easily traqcked. The more damage, the faster it bleeds out. Too, shot placement may be a bit more precise with an arrow than with a gun because arrows do not go through bone. Hitting the critter in its vitals is, well- vital.

So practice-practice-practice! Side note on broadheads: round over the tip so it passes by bone rather than trying to penetrate it and getting stuck. You don’t need a pointy point, you need something that slides past the bone. Also, an arrow wound to a non-vital spot with a rifle can wel cause an animal to bleed out, so there are more areas to aim at with a bow.

When it comes to shooting, a crossbow is probably the easiest to learn quickly since it’s so much like a rifle. Compounds are easy to learn and be accurate with when loaded with sights- and some with stabilizers, levels and flucks - but have their limitations in those condiditons.

Shooting a bow is relatively simple. Nock and arrow on the string, push-pull the bow and string apart, bring the hand to your cheek, look at the target as you point the arrow at it, and let the string go. All bows are shot in that manner. The hardest part is doing the same thing over and over again and never varying that technique.

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The shooting aspect.

‘Instinctive’ shooting is how archers first shot. By looking at the target, pointing their arrow at it, and releasing. No sights, no levels, no floofloos. Use a push-the-bow-pull-the-nocked arrow method as you raise the bow to point the arrow at the target. The string hand anchors someplace on your face- usually the corner of the mouth- prior to releasing the shot. The bow arm is extended almost straight out, with just a slight curve, the uper body leans forward slightly and the head is ‘cocked’ over the arrow.

Focus on the target- a small patch of hair (in hunting)- and not on the arrow. Let your eye aim the shot just as you would by pointing your finger at it. Release smoothly- release smoothly- release smoothly- by extending the shooting fingertips. Right: don’t go past the first joint on your finger to pull the string-arrow. Just open your fingers and let the arrow go. Once released, hold the bow in place- don’t drop it or let it fly into orbit. And don’t let your release hand fly off into space, either.

nstinctive shooting can be done with any bow in any position. If you’re laying on your back, you can shoot with this technique holding the bow level with the ground, no need to bring it to a vertical position. If you’re leaning forward ducking under a branch, the bow can be shot without lifting it to a vertical position. If you’re hanging by your hair or the skin of your teeth, a bow can be shot without having to bring it to a vertical position.

Now let’s talk about sights and levels and stabilizers and… all those modern contrivances that require a bow be held vertically and level before it can be shot. Which usually includes all the compound bows being sold today because they ‘just gotta have all this stuff to make them work’. BS. IMO. Sights are wonderful on bows, just as on rifles and handguns. But they do limit a bow a lot more than a rifle- kind of.

When useing sighted bows, the weapon must be held in a vertical position for the sight to be any use. In short, you can’t ’tilt’ your bow and expect the sight to be ‘on’, ‘cuz it won’t be. Any deviation off the axis the bow was sighted in at will negate the sight. And in the bush, you’ll have a lot of fun trying to find a vertical position 100% of the time. For sure, it’s not the most difficult from a stand- though some shots from a stand with a sight are nearly impossible and only uncomfortable with instinctive shooting.

Sights on a compound are for tournaments and field shooting at the club, but for hunting I feel they’re pretty ‘iffy’ if I’m stalking. As to having a sight level… I ain’t building a house, I’m shooting a bow, probably at a deer or rabbit or partridge… You don’t need no stinkin’ levels.

Two additional items you’ll need- again are some sort of finger protection such as a glove or tab. Mechanical releases are very good, make the release butter smooth, but again, use the KISS principle. Unless you absolutely positively gotta have the latest gizmo.

An arm guard is mandatory, especially if you’re shooting with a jacket or ghillie suit or long sleeves- anything the string can whack on its way to resting. And it’s doubly mandatory if you’re shooting sleeveless. You don’t need broken blood vessels in your arm swelling to the size of a birthday party baloon.

If you’re going to hunt with a bow, be sure to spend time honing your tracking skills as well. Nearly any animal shot with a bow is going to move out of the area before it bleeds out and you don’t need to waste a life or food. After all, that food may save your life, or that of someone you love.

A lot of people have spent gazillions on their armories and think they have all the bases covered, but until they have a bow, they’ve only got to third base. Home plate is a long way off- about 90 feet, which is farther than the average deer shot with a bow. So might I suggest getting a bow and half-dozen or more arrows, a finger glove or tab, an arm guard, and a few hours practice to really round out your survival preps? Who knows- the opportunity may arise you want a silent shot…
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What Everybody Ought to Know About Bow Hunting For Survival

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(This is a really good article written by an experienced bow hunter. I think this is something that should be considered for survival and self defense in addition to the must have other weapon a gun. The government has become the "sheriff" of nottingham. American citizens should all become "robinhoods". :) Story Reports

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TGO Why Should every body own a Bow!

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Build a Wooden Long Bow Plans

Build a Wooden Long Bow Plans

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Bow Plans Includes How To Make Your Own Arrows Popular Mechanics Article Excellent!!
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Frequently asked questions about bowstring and serving material

Indoctrination and Data Mining in Obama's Common Core School Project

The nationalized curriculum standard known as Common Core includes government bureaucrats that are currently mining sensitive and highly personal information on children through Common Core’s tracking system.

The data will then reportedly be sold by the government to outside sources for profit.

According to the conservative think tank American Principles Project, Common Core’s technological project is “merely one part of a much broader plan by the federal government to track individuals from birth through their participation in the workforce.” As columnist and author Michelle Malkin has pointed out, the 2009 stimulus package included a “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund” to provide states incentives to construct “longitudinal data systems (LDS) to collect data on public-school students.”

In other words, an aggregation system to mind personal data on children including information about their health, family income, religious affiliation and homework.

Through the stimulus bill, Americans’ privacy has been increasingly compromised. Now, permission that once had to be granted by parents to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to release students’ data has changed with a January 2012 regulation mandating that all information collected by schools since 2009 can be shared among federal agencies without consent.

Indoctrination and Data Mining in Common Core: Here’s Why America’s Schools May Be in More Trouble Than You Think

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(Between your "smart" phone gathering everything about you and obama's common core data mining project the state run government will know more about you than you know about yourself! You can ignore the fact the state run government is going to collapse the economy or you can be aware of the regimes goal of making sure you will be obidient and not be an individual who questions anything the regime is doing and will do.) Story Reports

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Survival Means Being Prepared To GET OFF THE GRID

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Survival Means Being Prepared To GET OFF THE GRID. It doesn't mean depending on the government.
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(It is apparent government laws, rules and regulations have and are mandating more control over your every move. Every new "law" has built in procedures to collapse the economy bit by bit.

There are many laws that require businesses and state government to increase funding to the federal government.

Obamacare is a prime example with its 2600 pages of rules and regulations.

Government agencies make new rules and regulations everyday that require businesses to give more funds to the government or face fines. The RIN credit scheme is an example that most people don't know about.

Many of these "hidden taxes" are just passed along to the American citizen.

In 2014 pensions must report ACCOUNTABILITY and balance their books. This means state governments/cities must contribute more to their pensions funds. Many pension funds are a ponzi scheme that were never fully funded. In 2014 the new pension law will require a massive influx of funds. Some states will not be able to come up with the massive funds required. These states/local governments will be on the verge of financial collapse in 2014.

Massive increases in food stamps have occurred. It has doubled since the fraud obama has come into "office".

SS disability has vastly increased since obama has started his quest to kill the economy through over burdened taxes and entitlements.

These people on ss disability are not longer counted as unemployed. This reduces the fake unemployment rate.

When a persons unemployment checks run out they are no longer counted as unemployed, they are just not considered unemployed!

ANY part time employment is considered FULL time employment by the federal government and increases the fake unemployment rate.

If a one person works two part time jobs the federal government considers this as 2 people working full time!!!!!! The unemployment rate is a total SCAM!!

Government statistics are not accurate and are geared to make you think the economy is not as bad as it really is.

This is why you should be preparing to get of the "grid" and be self sufficient as much as possible not depending on the government or your local quick store for food and water.

Everything the regime is doing is geared to make the US economy crash.

Everything you should be doing should be geared to preparing for the economy to collapse and the ensuing anarchy, lawlessness and chaos that will breakout.) Story Reports
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Surviving means knowing what to eat besides fritos in an emergency.

Pine

A good case in point about unexciting taste is illustrated by pine trees. All the pines of Southern Appalachia contain inner bark that is edible raw, steamed, stripped as noodles and boiled, or dried and powdered into flour for baking. (Pines include hemlock trees, but remember that every evergreen is not necessarily a pine. Yew, for example, is toxic.) This is a most valuable piece of information for two reasons.

First, virtually everyone can identify some species of the ubiquitous pine tree; and so this survival food alone should negate the threat of lost people starving to death. And secondly, the nutritional breakdown of pine is impressive. That layer of yellowish inner bark (just beneath the dead layer of outer gray bark) contains protein, fat, phosphorous, iron, carbohydrates, riboflavin, thiamin, niacin, and vitamins A and C. That's a mouthful.

The taste is considered by most to be terebinthine and uninspiring for any thoughts about lining up for seconds. But consider those ingredients. Fat is the body's most efficient energy source and an important requirement in our diet. The right kind of fat, that is. The bad kind of fat runs rampant in our fast food culture and gets so much bad press that the chubby little three-letter word has earned a connotation of ill repute.

Protein is so important to the body's well-being that if it is missing from the diet, the body will break down its own muscle tissue and use that protein. In other words, the body eats itself. It resorts to self-cannibalism.

The Adirondacks, a tribe of Native Americans who once thrived in the New York state area, survived some harsh winters of deep snow by preparing meals of pine bark. Because the animals they hunted denned up when the snow drifts stacked too high, the Adirondacks' hunting excursions (by snowshoe) proved fruitless. Their resourcefulness in substituting bark for animal protein earned them their name, which means "people who eat the tree bark."

Harvesting and Eating

If you have never seen inner bark in a pine, go outside and find a white pine with living branches close enough to the ground to be reached.

Lay your knife blade flat against the bark and then angle it only slightly, enough to barely cut beneath the thin outer bark layer. When the outer bark has been removed from a surface area equivalent to a three-inch strip of audio cassette tape, with the point of your blade, outline a rectangle by cutting through the inner bark into the wood. Pull up a corner of the rectangle and peel the yellowish inner bark away from the wood, which will be a darker amber color. The small strip you've removed is ready to be eaten. Chew it until it goes beyond a chewing gum consistency and breaks apart. At that point you can swallow it.

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Cattail

Another plentiful food is cattail, which can thrive in large colonies in sunny marshes or at the edge of rivers or even in roadside ditches. There is food to be had on this plant any month of the year, not to mention medicinal and utilitarian uses.

Harvesting and Eating

If the plant's water source is clean, grasp one plant with both hands near its base. In short gentle jerks, pull it upward to free it from the mud. Then peel away the outer leaves one by one until the interior color approaches creamy white. This pale core is a delicacy eaten raw or steamed, and its taste is always a crowd-pleaser. Eat from the bottom toward the upper end of the plant until the tissue becomes too fibrous to chew.

Now check the root system (actually rhizomes, or underground stems) for curved, tusk-shaped appendages that might be from an inch to three inches long. These structures, too, are edible raw or cooked.

If you're lucky enough to find the cattails in flower, shake the pollen out of the male flower head, which is located just above the female flower head at the top of the tall stalk. The pollen can be eaten out of hand or used as flour in a baking recipe. Both flower heads can be steamed and eaten off their cores like corn on the cob.

Nuts

In autumn, a variety of nuts are available to eat, all of them cholesterol-free and rich in fat and protein. Hickory, walnut, hazelnut, chestnut, beech, and oak. By far the most plentiful are acorns, the only nuts that need leaching of their tannic acid content. White oaks have less tannin than red oaks, but some Native American tribes preferred red oaks for their flavor.

Harvesting and Eating

Gently crack an acorn by using a hefty stone on a log workbench. Peel away the shell and discard it. The two-part split nut inside will usually be covered by a reddish-brown rind, which must be scraped away by a perpendicularly held knife blade. Position the flat (interior) side of nut-half down and slice it into the thinnest flakes possible and collect these in a sauce pan. Pour over this just-boiled water - enough to cover the nuts. When the water turns cloudy brown, pour the water away and repeat until the water remains clear. At this point the acorns are ready to be eaten as is, cooked into gruel, or dried and roasted by a fire, ground into a flour and used for baking.

Other nuts can be eaten right out of the shell, but one nut - hickory - will prove to be problematic due to its convoluted maze of a shell. I once picked the nut meat out of cracked hickory shells for four hours. My yield was one-half cup. Native people cleverly solved this problem by removing the green husk and then smashing nut and shell together and soaking in water. Within two days, the shell pieces absorb water and sink while the oil and nut scraps float. This edible portion was skimmed off and used as a soup base called "powcohicora," a word whose last three syllables should ring a bell.

In this article, we have only scratched the surface of edible plants; but these examples provide a good start for anyone just delving into the adventure. I have chosen plants that are easy to find and relatively straight-forward in the all-important positive identification process. Your job is to make certain of this identification by using a reliable book and/or an experienced forager. We have also not touched on animal foods.

Be safe and sure and selective. Don't forage in polluted areas, such as the right of way along busy roads. Speaking of roads, if ever the semis stop running on our highways and our grocery stores empty, every bit of information you have gleaned about wild foods will be invaluable. Your botany book might become the most important book in your house. Aside from any gardening you might be doing, forest and field will become your grocery store. Your knowledge about these foods will be in much demand by the people around you. We will have gone full circle in our human history of eating. Once again, the real world will be pertinent to everyone.

(Remember grocery stores only have about a three day supply of food. In a panic make that a one day supply. This means you can't go to the local quick store to get some fritos.

What will you do? If you have been preparing to "get off the grid" you won't be worried about not being able to get fritos from the quick store!

Knowing that food is all around you and how to harvest it can mean live or death as a last resort.

When your local home pantry runs low you should know how to harvest the food that is all around you.

No it won't be fritos but it will keep you alive while the revolution of lawlessness and chaos is in progress!!!!!!! Yippy ki O) Story Reports