Back in the day when there were NO deer around where I lived.

I'd go cut a branch off an elm tree for a bow (always kept a few curing out in the barn, actually), and use willow switch arrows fletched with feathers from the chicken coop. Broadheads were made with tin snips and file from the tops of those old waxed paper oil cans. A few strands of kite string twisted up to make a bow string. I was taught to use the old... uh... gotta bePC here... AH!...Indigenous American pinch draw and didn't learn to shoot like white men, with anchor points and all that stuff,until I was in college. And I'd come home withmeat (rabbits and/or squirrels)after an afternoonout in the west pasture.

Then, when I was 12,I saved up enough pop bottles to cash in and buy myselfa fancy, solid fiberglass Bear recurve - a bow that'd never break? Wow![:-]

If I'd known how many thousands of dollars I'd wind up spending on bows and stuff after that measely $12, I'd have never done it.[&:]

By the way,when I bought that bow? It was another four years before Allen patented the compound.