Is it the Old Way and Does it Matter?

Last week we were at the Iowa Deer Classic. It was a good show and we sold more glass antlers than we have at any one show. For me, that's a good thing, because it means that I get to make more antlers when I get home. It's also part of the means that allows our little family dream business to keep growing. We've been really blessed with the people we've met and the support that we've felt along the way and we really love what we are doing and hope that it keeps growing.

Now I'm pretty certain that there is easier money to be made out there in this big world, but we've been enjoying this time of doing what we do. The big hope for me is that we don't get sucked back into the rat race of rushing to get everything done that needs to be done so that we can pile more on to ourselves just to make more money. If the amount of money we make coincides with how content we are, then I'd be all about finding that job that pays the big bucks. 

But this meandering along and watching our business grow slowly and sometimes even agonizingly slow, has been really good. It's shown us how God provides for us, and it's something I hope that we'll never forget, even after a good show or when things are going great!

When we got home, I had some catching up to do, especially in boiling down some sugar water. Even though the weather had turned cold, I still had a lot of water from before we left and so I needed to take care of that. With the cold temps that come with the full moon and the wind a blowing, sitting around the fire wasn't the most comfortable thing. I did sit by the fire long enough to do a little bit of thinking, but for the most part I just added water and wood and then ran back in the house for twenty minutes or so and then I would come back out and do it all over again. As I said, I did get in a little bit of thinking time and my thoughts were mostly about something that I heard at the classic.

Going to the Iowa Deer Classic has always been on my "want to do" list. It was placed there by reading and watching material from Gene and Barry Wenzel and hearing them talk about the bucks at the classic.

Barry and Gene are twin brothers that always hunted with recurves even when it wasn't cool. They were always cutting up in their videos and it always looked like they were having the time of their lives. They put out lots of videos and books on hunting, especially hunting whitetails. They did some outside of the box things like doing deer drives with bows and shooting running deer. They were frowned on by some of their peers but for us younger guys, they were in there with the "greats", right up there with Fred Bear, Howard Hill and Ishi. I still love watching their videos! I believe that they are pushing 80 and so they don't get out much anymore, but the last I heard, they were still hunting a little. I was watching for them at the Classic and was disappointed when I didn't see them. 

But time marches on and there are always new "greats" to take the place of the last generation. Since I hunt with a longbow, I'm always looking for the traditional bowhunters and bow makers at the Classic and I've been disappointed in the fact that I've seen very few of either one. There is one exception. One of the new and younger "greats" is Jared Scheffler from Whitetail Adrenaline. He hunts with a longbow and his videos are very professional, but raw and real life. He hunts almost entirely on public land and doesn't hunt from a tree stand, but mostly stalks deer on the ground. He does some radical things as well, like taking frontal shots that most people say should never be taken. He says that if you have the right equipment, it makes for a great shot. He'll tell you that it's best to spend your money on your bows and arrows and binoculars and not to waste your money on camo or fancy trucks, and so you'll see him in his videos hunting in his everyday clothes and leaving the woods with a deer strapped to the top of his van. He's  full of energy and really draws a crowd, especially the younger generation. There always seems to be a group of twenty year olds or so with mullets and square toed boots hanging out around his booth.

We were lucky enough to have our booth kind of catty-cornered across from Jared's and so I left Jenelle hanging high and dry in our booth for a bit so that I could go and talk to him.

I'm always interested in how other bowhunters shoot their bows. When shooting a traditional bow, there are lots of different techniques that can be used as far as aiming or just shooting instinctively. I mostly just shoot instinctively, pulling back the string and finding the same anchor point on my face, looking at a spot and letting go and watching the arrow hit that spot. Jared, in his videos, just rips it back and lets it fly, no anchor point or anything. I haven't seen many people shoot this way so I wanted to ask him about it.

Jared says he shoots that way because it feels natural to him. But he said that he is trying something even more radical. He said that he's been looking into ancient archery and feels the way we shoot in America really isn't that traditional. A lot of the old arrows that have been found are longer than our modern arrows. Historians think that it made the bows easier to shoot accurately with a lot of arrow sticking out past the bow. Jared thinks the bows were drawn and shot differently than how we do it. And so he draws his bow back at chest level until both of his shoulders are locked.  His draw length with that style is over forty inches! He showed me the arrows that he's been shooting. Thirty two inches is about as long as you can buy, so he glues two pieces together with a long insert. He also draws his bow with his thumb and puts his arrows on the right side of the bow. Well, I call it the wrong side because I put mine on the left. He shot some deer that way last year and we'll see them in his next video. "That" he said, "is the old way", and the way we shoot in America really isn't that old, but just the way it was resurrected after the gun era. 

Well, I've probably lost the majority of you all by now, especially those of you that don't shoot bows and so I'll rope it back in. I'm really not making syrup the old way either. I'm pretty sure that three hundred years ago nobody was making syrup in a stainless steel pan on the fire.

 And blowing glass? It's an ancient art but I used electricity to melt the stuff. So what's the point of doing something that we call the old way if it's really not that old?  I guess the value in doing something the old way isn't so much in how you do it as it is in recapturing those things that were lost with modernization.

 When it comes to blowing glass, things like individual uniqueness can't come from a machine. And so when it comes to making antlers, I think that the attempt is even more rewarding. In nature, there are no two antlers that are identical. Even a matching set isn't really matching if you look closely. On every set that I've ever seen there's a slight difference from side to side. Since I'm trying to replicate antlers that are unique in themselves, I'm able to do something that a machine could never do, and that's exciting for me!

When it comes to making  syrup, well there's the little things like watching the fire and waiting for the syrup to thicken. Hearing the water drip into the buckets. Smelling the smoke and looking at the stars. Chatting with a friend or scratching your dog's ears while you wait. 

Or just sitting around and thinking about why we like doing what we like doing.

And that's something worth taking the time to think about!