Excerpts from “An “Autobowography” of the Past 55 Years of Archery”
By Tom Dorigatti
Welcome back, readers. In the previous blog, I told about pulling a nice stalk on a big buck pronghorn only to be foiled by a pair of pronghorn does I hadn’t seen that were lying down watching out for that big buck. The 1969 hunting season was continuing like the 1968 hunting season, with me making rookie mistakes. Let’s pick up the continuance of the fall pronghorn season and my adventures with trying to bag my first pronghorn with a bow and arrow.
Equipment: Here is a listing of equipment used during that 1969 Bow Hunting season:
Bow: Bear Kodiak Magnum recurved bow, 50#@28” draw length. Dacron String, no bow sights, combination gap shooting/instinctive.
Arrows: 2016 24SRT-X aluminum with index nocks and Chartreuse Feathers fletched full helical. Spare arrows were 11/32 Matched set of Bear Port Orford Cedar arrows, brown in color, with white feathers fletched full helical.
Broadheads: 125 grain Bear Razorheads with inserts. Everything hand sharpened.
Release style: Fingers on the bow string, apache style, with Bear 3-fingered shooting glove.
Quiver: 4-arrow Kwikee Quiver, mounted on the riser.
Arrow Rest: Arrow shot off the shelf of the bow.
Clothing: State law required blaze orange hat and blaze orange vest or jacket. I wore Levis and standard hunting boots. No Camo gear whatsoever.
Hunting style: Spot and stalk.
The Story of the Great Fox Shot.
Jim and I didn’t get another good opportunity for a spot and stalk that day. It seemed that about every time we’d find something worth going after, they would “make us” or whoever’s turn it was would manage to screw up worse than the pronghorn buck and the buck would get away. We nevertheless had fun because we saw a ton of huge “goats” that first day out. Guns were firing all around us, but always in the distance, because “road hunters” didn’t want to hoof it out away from the main course and into the Bad Lands where we were hunting, and of course we were thankful for that, too. The bigger bucks were out where we were, or so it seemed, anyway. Either way, we didn’t run across other hunters and that made our lives easier.
The next morning we were out bright and early and while coming back from yet another failed attempt at a spot and stalk by Jim on a huge pronghorn buck, we spotted a fox. He was about 30 yards or less away, and we could see his head and the upper half of his body because he was in a small ditch. He was stopped, looking right at us, but apparently he didn’t know we had spotted him, so he just froze and wasn’t moving. I drew back the bow and launched the arrow. I hit well short (hey, for once, I didn’t over-shoot, hoo-rah!), and the arrow skidded along and out of sight. A big old cloud of dust went up, and Jim shouts, while looking thru his binoculars, Great shot, Tom! You nailed him right in the head; he’s flopping around out there! That was one helluva shot! I had no more made a good shot on that fox than the man in the moon. It was a super fantastic clear lucky shot; lucky in that the arrow skidded just right and ricocheted to nail him in the head before he could move and run off. But hey, Jim and I split that $75 bounty so what the heck. I did break down and tell Jim that I saw the arrow hit short and skid/ricochet into the fox. He was busy watching in binoculars and hadn’t seen the arrow on its way in the direction of the fox. Glance offs might not count for score in target shooting, but hey, in bow-hunting, sometimes a skidder is as good as a double lunger! We didn’t have to chase that fox at all. He went down immediately. Hey, I didn’t hit him in the ears; I didn’t hit him in the horns and knock him down, and I didn’t shoot over the top of him either. I’m making some progress here!
Stay tuned for the next story about a great stalk on yet another huge pronghorn buck….
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