Primitive Bowfishing

This is an awesome video of how to make a more traditional style bowfishing kit.

How to make a simple bowfishing reel

Quick and easy way to make a bowfishing reel.



The 2nd video below here shows how to attach a bowfishing reel to a longbow or recurve without damaging your bow.

Bowfishing under water?

Bowfishing under water? This video was so hilarious I had to share it.

Just one of the many reasons why poaching is wrong

For a website that is pro-hunter, I want to point out at the same time that I am still anti-poacher. The video below is just one of the many reasons why I am against the poaching of endangered animals.

It is one thing to hunt deer for their meat and then eat them, it is a totally different topic if people are killing endangered animals, not eating them and only harvesting them for their ivory. I also am disgusted by "trophy hunters" and "big game hunters" who don't actually eat what they kill. If you are going to kill it, then you should be eating it. End of story.

And killing an animal for its ivory - and then using that money to fund terrorism, well that is so wrong it boggles the mind. Think before you buy anything made of ivory.

Nature Deficiency Syndrome

For a couple years now I have been bringing up the topic with friends (and anyone else interested enough to listen) about what I call Nature Deficiency Syndrome.

What it is is when people are so deficient in spending time outdoors that they develop behavioural problems like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, various eating disorders and many other mental disorders - all because they have become disconnected from the natural world.

However I am apparently not alone in this idea.

"Nature Deficit Disorder" is basically the exact same thing, different name, and refers to a hypothesis by Richard Louv in his 2005 book "Last Child in the Woods". So apparently he thought of it first, and apparently his version is limited in scope to children - ignoring the fact that adults could also be suffering from "Nature Deficit Disorder" or NDD.

Note - NDD is probably the better acronym because NDS is more commonly the acronym for National Defense Strategy. But whatever, lets not quibble over names and acronyms.

Regardless of what you call it (and who thought of it first), the idea is that people (not just children) are feeling isolated in cities and disconnected from the way mankind was meant to be.

We evolved living under blue skies and in green forests, surrounded by nature. We were never meant to build cities and skyscrapers, it is contrary to our genetic code to live surrounded by glass, concrete, and stainless steel.

Now maybe, someday, after millions of years of evolution has gone by where mankind has been living in such buildings all that time and possibly even going their whole life without ever seeing a real plant, then maybe mankind will have evolved to the point where they are no longer bothered by being disconnected from nature and suffering from Nature Deficit Disorder.

OTHER FACTORS

Food

There is a biochemical connection here too. Humans need Vitamin D, not just for their health but their mental health too. A lack of Vitamin D results in depression.

See also

Does Vitamin D Help you lose weight?

All About Vitamins - What do they do?

Vitamin D - Essential for your Winter Diet

Food Deficiencies and Mood / Anxiety Disorders

If you read the last one it gets into how certain food deficiencies cause people to become depressed, suffer brain damage, and even become suicidal. If the lack of certain foods can do that, what does the lack of fresh air do?

So it isn't just a lack of nature that people could be suffering from, they may also be having problems because we also live in an age when many people are eating processed foods filled with chemicals. Or genetically modified foods like so called "organic foods" which have been genetically modified to produce their own pesticides / poison. (According to research studies organic food actually has more pesticides in them than regular non-organic foods, because of two factors: the fields growing the organic foods are right next to fields spraying pesticides, and because the organic foods have been GMd to produce their own natural pesticides. The end result is a double whammy of pesticides. The whole organic food industry is basically just a scam to get people to pay double or triple for their food.)

Fresh Air

What does a lack of fresh air do to the human psyche? Just that alone probably causes mental problems, making people feel claustrophobic.

Having fears of natural predators like snakes, wolves, bears, large cats - those are engrained in our DNA. As are fears of heights, flying, falling, tunnels, small spaces, drowning, water, etc.

When you read the list of phobias that are most common what you realize is two things:

1. Many phobias are connected to man's evolution within nature and tied to survivalism.

2. There is no documented cases of people being afraid of nature as a whole. There is no "nature phobia". It does not exist.

What does exist however is lazy people who don't want to go outdoors and would rather sit inside and play Elder Scrolls - Skyrim, which oddly enough is about a hero who walks around in a world hunting monsters, mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, wolves, etc and completing quests that involve killing evil wizards and undead (because they're unnatural).

That shows that people want those things, to hunt and gather outdoors - but they are lazy and want to do it from the comfort of their sofa.

Community

Ever lived in a tight knit community where you know all your neighbours' first and last names?

What kind of psychological damage do you think people suffer from having no sense of community, possibly even being afraid to talk to their neighbours? I think they would be in a constant state of paranoia. That cannot be good for your psyche.

Bizarre Crossbows - Vertical, Takedown and Ridiculously Powerful

A fellow crossbow enthusiast sent me these videos so I decided to post them on here.

The first video is of a vertical crossbow that is designed for extra maneuverability. The 2nd video is of a takedown crossbow that can be taken apart for easier storage.





The silly thing is that modern crossbows have become so powerful that many people (mostly men with ego problems) are going after the ridiculously powerful crossbows. Like the Excalibur Matrix Mega 405 (405 fps, 290 lbs), which is almost double what you legally need to hunt. Like in the video below.



The Excalibur Matrix Mega 405 is basically just a souped up version of the Excalibur Matrix 380 (380 fps, 260 lbs).

But is all that power really necessary for hunting? Our ancestors got by just fine using 40 to 60 lb longbows hewn from oak, ash and yew when it came to hunting (and 80 to 200 lbs when it came to war). And when crossbows entered the scene around 700 BC they were using a similar amount of power.

So what it makes you realize is that these modern crossbows aren't just meeting the standard for hunting, they're basically designed for war - that is how powerful they are. Add that to the fact that crossbows can be fitted with scopes and you have something which can be extremely accurate and doesn't need all that power for the purpose of hunting. The legal requirement of 150 lbs minimum is really all you need, so anything between 150 and 200 is likely to be more than adequate at the distances hunting takes place (99% of crossbow hunting takes place at ranges less than 60 yards away).

You would really only need the extra power of a Excalibur Matrix Mega 405 (or a similar crossbow) for long distance shots - distances so vast you can barely see the deer - wherein the biggest factor isn't the power of your crossbow any more, but how powerful and accurate your scope is at that distance.

Where to Buy Exotic Woods for Bowmaking

In Ontario it is easy to find oak, maple, ash, elm, juniper and similar hardwoods for bowmaking - the trouble is finding bow woods that are more exotic. Like Osage, Yew or Lemonwood.

Even if you are not a bowyer, finding exotic woods for DIY carpentry / woodworking projects can be hard to find.

I have tried at Home Depot, Central Fairbank Lumber and several other locations but exotic hardwoods are tricky to find. Even trying to find cherry, walnut or apple wood is a difficult process, even though those woods are not really exotic, just harder to find.

I have heard that the following places might sell some of these trickier to find woods, but I have not yet gone to their locations to check for certain:

oliverlumber.com supposedly has over 50 different varieties of softwood and hardwood. Located at 9184 Twiss Road , Campbellville.

exotic-woods.com has about 200 wood types listed on their website, but I have yet to visit their store at 5229 Harvester Road, Burlington to see what sizes the wood they have is available in.

That is trick about exotic woods I find. It is easier to find smaller "sample sizes" at Lee Valley for example, but such a small size is useless for bowmaking. I need staves 6' long, which is why all my bows thus far have been predominately oak and ash.

Now you might think, hey, what is the point of making a bow out of an exotic wood?

Well some of it is just for looks, like using an exotic wood on the handle or tips to make it look prettier.

In the case of yew or osage there is an argument for making a bow more powerful, but you can make equally powerful bows out of hickory, oak and similar woods - which will change the weight more than anything else, so the best argument for using an exotic wood is so it weighs slightly less. (Lightweight bows do tend to shoot slightly faster.)

Like this Osage and Cocobolo bow below, which is both beautiful and fairly lightweight.