So who’s been thinking of giving a bow a go?
There’s no age limit, our granddaughters started at about 3 years old. And there’s plenty of mature archer’s shooting or competing in their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.
It’s such a family friendly activity/sport and so quiet.
If you are contemplating archery, it’s really important to get the right advice and guidance before you buy any style of bow.
The best place for this is at an archery shop. Having a bow properly set to your physical size and strength will be the difference between enjoyment and frustration.
Your muscles will most likely not be used to the stress’s of pulling a bow. Start with a setup that’s easy to pull and use it regularly to become bow fit.
Another benefit of using a bow, is you don’t need a firearms licence to own, operate or carry a bow. Teenagers can hunt on their own with a bow.
I usually have my fishing bow in the back of my vehicle, just in case an opportunity arises.
Speaking of opportunities, last Saturday morning started at 5am out of bed, a bit of breakfast and then a coffee outside enjoying the still morning air, when my phone rang at 6.20am.
A retired farming mate was ringing from the back of his son’s farm to say there were quite a few koi carp in the flooded paddock over the stop bank by the Waihou river.
30 minutes later I was standing in clear cold water up to my waist. I could see a few small groups of fish spawning on the surface. Picking on the closest group I waded towards them.
A little rattle in the water when they were about 25m away and they started moving in my direction.
Decision, which is the biggest? Hard to tell. The ripples and waves distort their shape. It’s usually the female at the front, they spot me and veer away. In one fluid motion, I raise and draw the bow aiming just below the lead fish. I release my arrow and watch it hit the water. An eruption of fish going in all directions. That millisecond of wondering if it’s a hit or a miss, is torment. The string whizzes out of the bottle on my reel and the game is on to pull the fish in as quickly as possible and dispatch it.
I wade over to the bank and drop the fish to my mate and his grandson. They are scaling and filleting the fish I shoot so they could use them for snapper bait in a local school’s fishing competition.
I repeated this six more times over the hour and the carp had realized they were in danger if they stayed near the surface. They go deep and hide in the grass. It will take an hour or two for the carp to settle back into spawning on the surface again, so I head to another farm that has the same stop bank and flood prone paddocks.
The grass and willow weed was quite long on this property and it looked like there wasn’t much water. But I could hear splashing and lots of it. I dropped down from the top of the stop bank into the paddock and was soon up to the middle of my thighs in the water amongst the weeds. There were fish everywhere. This was exciting!! The carp had less visibility with the tall weeds obstructing their view of me. I was shooting fish as close as 1m away, most were about 2-3m away and some I shot at about 10m.
16 koi carp bow fished in an hour and a half. Now they started to hide in the bottom of the weeds. I stood on one and another slammed into the back of my knee with such force it nearly had me floundering in the water.
Time to head home, smiles for miles.
