"So long as the new moon returns in heaven a beautiful bent bow, so long will archery keep hold of the hearts of men."
—MAURICE THOMPSON.
OULD that through some medium we could call in the ghost of Robin Hood; no doubt it could and would reveal the secrets of successful hunting with the good bow and shaft. But, be that as it may, we must rely on our own devices to ferret out these secrets as best we can.
BUCKS AND BOWS
From a practical standpoint, there are no real secrets about hunting the white tail deer with archery tackle. It is a matter of education. One must know a lot about the bow. One must become proficient with it. One must know a lot about the nature and habits of deer.
When these things are mastered, the hunter may have hopes of being successful on occasion. It must not be assumed that the bow is as efficient as the rifle. It is not. It has not the power, the range or the accuracy.
The hunter who chooses the bow is taking a handicap of 20 to
1. It follows, therefore, that the archer is either crazy or the king of all optimists, or so say the non-archers.
The toxopohilite, however, takes an entirely different view.
In most cases the would-be bow hunter has hunted for many years with firearms. He has reached a point where his sporting conscience tells him that he has taken his share of this noble animal.
He has become conscious of the fact that fish and game cannot vote; he has, for sometime past, concluded that it is time for him to do something about conservation.
But, when he reflects on the 20 to 1 handicap the archer must take, conscience appears to issue a parole. He knows that bow hunters will never be able to reduce the herd even though the season be open to both sexes. He knows there will be very few if any permanent cripples.
After reviewing these facts, he feels the urge to sally forth with a full quiver of arrows and a dependable bow to see what the red gods have in store for him. Success or not, he will be out with nature and will enjoy a full cup of pleasure.
Few people seem to realize the important part the bow has played in man's advance toward civilization.
It has been said that the three most important incidents in man's early de- velopment were the discovery and application of fire and the inventions of the wheel and the bow.
Without fire man could not have advanced to a position much above the ape, without the wheel man could not have progressed and without the bow he may not have survived.
The bow is the instrument the marked the time when man really gained "Dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."*
It is not the purpose of this volume to record a history of archery. Such a story would be the history of man's progress from the third interglacial period to the 17th century. But, in order to appreciate the antiquity and the importance of this weapon, a short sketch touching the highlights of archery seems to be in order.
Paleontologists have found arrow points embedded in de- posits known to have been formed during the 3rd interglacial
period. These points bear the trademark of Mousterian cul- ture, the first artifacts made by pressure flaking. This wouldindicate that certain tribes, at least, of the Neanderthal group used the bow—one hundred thousand years ago!
When the Wurm glacier retreated northward, thus freeing central Europe of ice, our progenitors, Cro-Magnon men, ap- peared armed with the bow. Their arrow points were of Soulu- trean culture, the highest development of pressure flaking.
These points are artistic in design and some are wafer thin.
Their celebrated paintings in the deep recesses of certain caves located in Southern France and Spain sometimes depict arrows in the slaying of such game as bison, reindeer and wild horse.
It must be assumed that these men used the bow to protect their families from the cave bear, the cave lion, the cave hyena and the tiger—dangerous beasts, all.
In 1926, at Folsom, New Mexico, the late Dr. J. D. Figgins discovered the fossil of two ribs of an extinct buffalo with an arrow point embedded in the matrix.
This fossil is now in the museum of natural history at Denver.
Since then other finds have been made in this geological deposit that clear up any and all doubt that Folsom man roamed our Southwest during the latter part of the last ice age which scientists have placed at around 25,000 years ago.
These arrow points would indicate that Folsom man was armed with the bow.
