quiksilver

Okay guys, it's embarrassing story time.

I'll start.

It was a roasting hot summer afternoon, probably around 1990'ish. We're talking the dog days of summer - sweltering. I took my recurve and my uncle's freebie Whitetail II bowand walked over to my buddy Toby's place to fling some arrows with Toby and Mark (our other partner in crime).

Everytime we got together, things always started off harmlessly, and usually ended badly. This day would be no different. On this particular day, wekicked off our festivities by walkingdown to the local sportsmens club and digging through the brush behind their targets on the archery course, picking up some new (gently used) arrows to monkey around with. Fresh, non-bent arrows were a hot commodity at that time (for us at least). It didn't matter if the fletchings were rotted off, really, as long as they had a nock andflew.

With a fresh dozen or soof non-matching arrows in hand (multiple colors,a variety ofshafts and lengths), we go back to Toby's farm (his dad farmed horses), and set up to shoot the haybales out back.

We started off shooting at Pepsi cans, but that deteriorated into taking weird angled shots, seeing who could break the other guy's arrows. Next thing you know, somebody's hat is up there as a target, and gets a 2117 shaft driven through the bill. Somebody had pepper spray, and we tried to spritz down the neighbor's cat with it. Harmless kid fun.

Now it's turned into a hunting contest. We're headed across the fields, each of us with bow-in-hand, looking for tweetie birds to shoot. This is a true skill competition. This was the superbowl of archery. Nobody wanted to lose.

I'll never forget this: Toby says "OOH, there's a big starling!" I see it too - maybe 40 yards out, just on the top of a rise in the hill, through a tiny opening in a thick green rose bush. You could make the outline of a nice-sized blackbird. He saw it first, so he got the shot.

Toby draws and takes aim, as we all await the outcome. . . .He's really focused, staring down that 40-yard pin like Randy Johnson in Game 7.Waiting... Waiting... Finally, helets go of the stringand the arrow takes flight. (Keep in mind what a lincoln log aluminum warclub would look like flying at 40 yards out of a 1980-something Bear Whitetail bow). It was like lobbing telephone poles - slow motion, as the arrow sailed toward the target.

The arrow and fletchingsdisappear into the lush green rosebush- at first glance, it looked just high.

There we all stood, shoulder to shoulder, waiting impatientlyto see the lucky blackbird take flight, when all of a sudden, Toby's dad's prized blackmare stands up from behind the bush and trots away. LMAO

Apparently, what we all saw was the silhouette of the horse's ear or face or something... apparently it wasnot a blackbird, as the three geniuses had suspected.

Dear god was that the funniest thing I've ever seen.

We caught up to the horse, andchecked its head for wounds - it was a clean miss.

If his dad would've seen what we did, he'd have killed us all. LOL

Austin/WI

Thatis pretty good. ALWAYS KNOW YOUR TARGET AND WHATS BEYOND!lol I can't say I have any embarrassing stories from hunting, plenty other stupid moments with friends though.... $5k worth of damage to a VWconvertible Turbo Beetle....good times.....

PreacherTony

LMBO!

Fran, I figured out what I am gonna do ..... I'lll just gather your stories up, (cut & paste), and when I get enough, I'll put them in book form .... I want half the proceeds though!

Austin/WI

Good idea....

popeandyoungchaser

when my best friend jarrod and i were young and crazy(last hunting season) we were hunting the tallest ridge on my property that overlooks the mohichan river. There are a ton of oaks on this ridge and the deer sign was abundant. So we lug our treestands up there and set up for the after noon. Now this is not a bunny hill in my neck of the woods, it is basically strait up and down on the non-river side and strait down on the river side.Well we were sitting in trees right next to each other since we were filming, we sat all eveing and hadn't seen anything so i started putting the camera away when a yearling doe walks in my friend stands draws and realeases seeminglyall in one motion. The arrow hit pay dirt and the deer hit the water!We both kinda looked like this as the deer jumped off the cliff . we hurried down our trees and went to the edge and looked over, no deer in sight. we took a conoe down the river the next day but couldn't find the doe. We have killed three other deer in this spot and none have come close to doing this!

quiksilver

Come on fellas - don't be shy. I know we've got some potential Darwin Award Winners out there lurking.

Here's another gem.

Sometime around 1991, I almost killed the poor sap who fitted me for my first compound bow. I'd never used a release aidbefore (always shot with my fingers), but he convinced me that mechanical releases were the wave of the future, so when he was measuring my draw length, he had me use a release aid to draw the bow. It was one of those Bear Crackshots with the trigger on the thumb.

Well, the bow he had me horking back was about 15# too heavy, and far too long, so I never did get it far enough back to roll the cams the whole way over. So while he's out there fooling around at the riserwriting down measurements, I'm straining to hold this bow back. I don't know what happened, but I must have pushed the button on the release and WHAM!

Well, the arrow launched right through the shop and wound up stuck in the ceiling tiles at the other end of the room. Bow guy was down. He was okay though, just kindahit the deck to protect himself I guess.

Seriously, he's lucky if it missed himby more than two inches. He had his arms, fingers and face right in there.

I'm sure every bow shop owner has a story about the guy who almost killed him by shooting an arrow inside the shop. I was that guy.

Windwalker7

Years ago when we were just kids ( before I was old enough to hunt) a friend of mine got his Eviel Knievel (sp) doll stuck in a tree in his yard.

He got the bright idea to shoot it out with his stick bow. He only had one arrow, so he took careful aim. He missed.

The arrow zipped up into the canopy of the big maple and was gone.

A few days later, the next door neighbor came over and knocked on the door. He had the arrow inhis hand and ask if it belonged to my friend. My buddy agreed that it was his and ask where he found it. The neighbor replied that he found it sticking in the bottom of his swimming pool.

HuntingBry

Most of my stories come from when I was around 15 and started bowhunting. There was a guy that we hunted with, Jay, that was, well let's just say he walked a thin line on being law abiding.

In my early days of bowhunting, we hunted with a bow like we hunt with a gun. Sit in the morning, drive in the afternoon, and sit in the evening. We knew no better because we were barely high school kids. Heck, none of us could even drive at that point. Jay was older than us, probably in his mid 30's at the time so we listened to him. He also had a nice collection of antlers so we figured he knew what he was talking about. In my first year of bowhunting we had just completed a drive and were heading back to the cars to go to a different spot to push. On our way back we saw a group of deer milling around in some brush. They were at least 40 yards away and with old Bear Whitetail Hunters in hand with 45-50 lb. draw weights that was way out of our effective range. Jay saw the deer and yelled, "What are you doin'?!?! There're deer over there! Shoot em!" We all just kind of looked at him like he was crazy. Jay had already tagged out so he didn't have a bow. He murmured something about stupid kids and grabbed my bow out of my hand. Fortunately, I'm left handed so he gave me my bow back and grabbed my friend Danny's. Next thing you know there are arrows being flung into the brush. Nowhere near the deer because the bow was about 6 inches too short in draw length for Jay. Danny's dad hears all the ruckus and turns around and asks Jay what he's doing. Jay's reply, "don't you see the deer?!?!" Danny's dad just shook his head and told Jay that unless he planned on buying Danny new arrows to give the bow back. Needless to say, those deer were in no danger.

On another hunt with Jay, the following year, we were putting on a drive on the hillside. We had a lot of permanent stands on this hillside and this drive always put deer out. I was a driver and Jay was in one of the ladder stands. I had made the push through the thicket andapproached the stand that Jay was supposed to be in. I saw no Jay, but saw his quiver up in the tree. I got excited because I figured he had hit a deer and was looking for his arrow. As I got closer, I still couldn't see him. Then when I was under his stand I saw his bow laying on the ground and could hear some faint moaning. I looked up the hill and there was Jay laying on the ground about 20 yards from the stand. I ran up the hill to him and called everyone over. He was a mess. His shirt was torn open and there were leaves all in his shirt and his hair. He had a big scrape down the side of his face. His pant legs were all muddy and his arms were all scraped and cut up. Obviously, 20 yards is too far to fall out of a tree so we all wanted to know what happened. Apparently, our drive was successful and we pushed a nice buck past Jay. He drew and was taking aim when the stand he was in shifted and sent his arrow flying Lord knows where and his bow tumbling to the terra firma below when Jay dropped it to keep himself from falling(no safety harnesses in those days). The deer confused by the noise ran almost directly under the ladder stand. Jay, never being one to let "his" deer get away, drew his knife and figured a 12 foot drop onto the back of a deer wouldn't be such a bad idea. Needless to say, his knife never found its mark and Jay was taken for the ride of his life and beaten along the way. He said he would have gotten the deer if it hadn't rammed him into a tree to get him off. We tried to convince him that the deer was probably not thinking that much into it and most likely just ran into the tree because Jay's weight had him off balance. "Naw, that buck knew what he was doin'! I could see it in his eyes!"

Looking back on it, Jay kind of reminds me of Shaw from Open Season for you guys that have kids. Good ole Jay, I wonder what he's up to these days.

Quicksilver, that shop you put an arrow in the ceiling wouldn't be Bergie's would it?

GMMAT

I'm gonna go down as the most stupid kid for doing this.......but we did it.....and I'm still alive.

Here goes....

I was probably 14.....and my step-dad had acquired a crossbow. I was shooting it with a friend......and we came up with one that would have SURELY made the Darwin awards.....had it not turned out so rosily.

We got tired of shooting horizontal.....and decided to go vertical. Yep. You heard that right. We shot it straight up into the air.....and, in our defense, we backed up under the canopy (hugged up to the trunk) of a REALLY big hardwood. There was really no way for the bolt to get us......but it could have gotten close enough for us to soil ourselves.

First shot.......and the bolt comes piercing through the tin roof canopy of a tobacco barn about 25 yds away.

"Here's our sign....."

whitetaildave24

GMMAT we used to do the same things with our bows. There would be three of us lined up and we would see who could shoot their arrow the straightest up into the air. Whoever had the arrow fall back down closest to us would win. There were many times we would run back to the porch because the arrows were coming back fairly close to where we were standing.