Latest / Salish Wolf / #67 Blayne Prowse on Project Quiver

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#67 Blayne Prowse on Project Quiver · Salish Wolf

0:06
Welcome to Project Quiver, a father daughter journey across
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the globe to capture the artistry and spirit of the
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world's finest traditional bow carvers.
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I'm Todd, the father. Ella is my daughter.
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Together we're on a mission to create a stunning coffee table
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book that profiles more than a dozen master bow years and their
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unparalleled skill. For each chapter, we travel to
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the Bow Years workshop. Carve a bow under his guidance,
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photograph his woodcraft in detail and share his story here.
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On the Salish Wolf podcast. The book is called Quiver, The
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Art of Life Through bow craft and this journey, our living
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story is Project Quiver. Blaine, thanks for joining me.
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I'm really glad we were able to do this.
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Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Pleasure.
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I was just scrolling through your Instagram.
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You make a lot of cool things. It's not just, it's not just
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arrows. Yeah, the arrows, I haven't
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really done any for I guess probably a year now.
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So why is it? Why is that?
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Mostly the shaft supply dried up that I had.
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The guy that was making the shafts stopped milling so I kind
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of had to stop too. It was actually my next door
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neighbor that was doing it and so being able to source Canadian
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shafts was kind of ideal. Yeah.
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And then so anyway, it just, it was just time to change it up.
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Anyway, I was I was finding I wanted to have some other
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creative outlets, so I started carving spoons.
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I saw some spoons. That was really.
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Cool. What?
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Was the inspiration for that. I think mainly I was sort of
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feeling 'cause we live quite remote up in Heidegua here, so
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there's not a lot of people around to begin with.
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And all my work I was mailing out to people, so I would never
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get interactions one-on-one with essentially anyone that I was
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selling arrows to. And I thought it'd be really
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nice to be able to go in the community, go to markets,
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actually see people. And plus it's something I can do
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in the house because it doesn't smell, there's no dust, it's
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just me and my knives so I can be there with my family while
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I'm doing it instead of having to go disappear into my shed
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that I was working in. OK.
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So yeah, how's that? It's more of a sort of thing in
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it. Pardon me.
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How's it going? Oh, it's good, yeah.
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Nice. Yeah, the spoons are well
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received and people are enjoying them.
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So Hideguy, you said it's pretty remote.
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A lot of people aren't going to know anything about Hideguy.
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Can you talk for a minute about where it is that you live?
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Yeah, it's an island off the northwest coast of BC.
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We're actually closer to Southeast Alaska than it's
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almost anywhere else in BC. We're 60, I think it's about 60
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miles off the coast. So when we get in a fit, get on
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a ferry from Prince Rupert and that brings us across to the
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islands. It's a six hour ferry ride.
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Wow, yeah. It's a long ferry ride.
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How long have you been there? Five years, 5 1/2 years.
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And what took you there? Just change, Change it up.
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Yeah. And something I've been wanting
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to do for a number of years. And then a property just kind of
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fell in our lap and we went let's just grab it and let's do
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this thing. So we did.
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That's so cool. And then you said you have
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family. Do you have kids?
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Yeah, I have two. One of them one's older, she
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lives on Vancouver Island and the other one is 10 and she
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lives with us up here. OK.
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And then are you carving as a full time profession?
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Essentially, I mean, it's not a, it's not a full time income,
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it's just it's what I do. I'm mainly a stay at home dad
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and then I do bits of this and that construction work and walk
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the dogs and homestead and hunt and fish and.
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Nice, yeah. Yeah.
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So have you always worked with wood?
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Actually, I did my apprenticeship in sheet metal,
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which is pretty funny. And I didn't start, I started
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building bows in 2013 I think. So I was still working then, but
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I was able to stop working there when my daughter was born in in
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2015. And that's kind of when I really
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got into doing the, the bow building and arrow building and
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stuff. I actually did the Raven Beat
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course the summer of 2015. So my daughter was just like two
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or three months old. Yeah.
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And that was, that was I built a bow myself.
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And then I decided to take Jamie's course and that sort of
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kicked off everything with the arrow building.
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And shortly after that I met the guy up here.
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He was doing the shaft milling and he suggested I get into
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building arrows. And then eight years later, I
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was still doing arrows. Yeah.
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What was your inspiration for getting in the bow carving?
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So I was hunting in this area on Vancouver Island where you
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weren't allowed to use a rifle. It was too close to a town up
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near Courtney. And so I had to use a shotgun.
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And I had an an incident where I shot at a deer and I wasn't sure
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if I hit it or not. And it took off.
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And it's like, you know, this is lame.
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I want to be able to see my projectile flying and I know if
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I hit or miss. And then that was sort of the
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start of it for me. I'd shot a compound in the past
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a little bit. And so I was familiar with
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archery. And so then I went to the
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hardware store and I bought a Maple board that had the grain
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running straight through it and bought a draw knife and a few
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other tools. And I just built this Maple
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board bow and it didn't break. As far as I know, it's still
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alive. I gave it to my friend to let
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his son use it and pretty sure it's still alive.
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So why did you want to build your first bow rather than just
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buying one for hunting? I didn't really know where to
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turn. I was kind of intimidated by the
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whole thing and I just thought I'll just.
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And money wise, I had no idea if I didn't know about things like
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Assamic Sage back then where you could just pick one up for 100
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bucks. I didn't have any clue.
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And rather than going into the sporting goods store and being
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disappointed, I thought, well I can buy a $20 board from the
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hardware store and few tools and I can just build 1.
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So I was looking at Poor folk Bows Bows, his website and early
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clay hay stuff on YouTube. OK.
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And that's, yeah, that's where it kind of learned how to do it.
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What's the first one that you said?
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His name was Poor Folk Bows. OK, Yeah, I.
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Recognize it OK, I can't. Even remember what his first
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name is but. So you learned to carve that bow
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based on just a few websites? Clay Hayes and poor folk bows,
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Yeah. Nice.
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Yeah, I had no mentor. I just sort of kind of had a
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grasp of the concept and so I just kind of went to it and I
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did the bow scale thing with the bathroom scale and pulled it
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down that way to get my draw weight.
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And I built a little tiller tree that didn't have a pulley.
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I was just pulling it down and clipping it into notches and
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super rudimentary. But it worked.
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But it worked. Did you have any carving
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experience of anything before that?
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I mean, I've been playing with knives my whole life.
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So I've always, you know, even as a child I was whittling and I
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probably had my first pocket knife when I was 5.
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And I grew up in a pretty small hillbilly town, so it was not
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uncommon for kids to be walking down the train tracks with
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pellet guns. And but he's packing knives
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around and you know, that sort of thing in the 80s, so.
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Was that in? That was on Vancouver Island
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too. That was Vancouver Island.
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Yeah, near Courtney. OK, Yeah.
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Wow. And so then you made your first
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bow and then you did you make any more before you went to
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study with Jamie and Ravenbeek? I don't.
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I actually, I think I messed around a little bit, but I never
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finished any other bows. I tried making a oak board bow
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or something and either it didn't.
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I don't think it broke, but I just stopped on it and then,
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yeah, I went to do Jamie's course and.
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Made an English Longbow I presume?
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Yeah, it was a flat bow, actually.
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Yeah. Flat bow.
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OK, Yeah. 'Cause my whole, my whole
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purpose was to hunt with it, so I wanted something that was
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stable. A little more compact too.
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Yeah, compact and then with a rigid handle, so I had a good
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arrow shelf so I could cut it in a little bit and things like
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that. OK.
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And you use that bow to hunt. Yeah, and I killed the deer with
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it and that's how I ended up coming here and meeting the guy
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that was building arrow shops because I posted a story about
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it on Trad Gang and he saw it and invited me up here to hunt
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with him. So we did that.
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Oh, really? Yeah, I killed the deer up here
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with it and then went home with some arrow shops and some
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inspiration and bought a couple fletching jigs and this and
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that. And I got started doing it.
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And then I saw Jamie a couple of months later and I told him what
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I was doing and he said, oh, you want to build arrows for
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Ravenbeak, We need somebody to do it.
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So And where he's at in Powell River and where I'm at in
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Courtney, we're separated by a ferry, so.
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And his mom lived in Courtney. So he would bring stuff over and
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I'd pick it up from her and then I'd build arrows and then he'd
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come pick up when I had 10 or 12 dozen done.
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And so we did that for a few years.
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So that was quite an education and in my arrow building for me.
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Yeah. And are you still making bows or
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did the arrows replace that? I messed around building bows
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for yeah, I like until I think the last boy I built was the
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last one I finished was probably two years ago.
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And then last winter I helped another fellow here build 1 and
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I'd started one while I was while he was building his.
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And so I still have one that's it's pretty.
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It's about ready to go on a tiller tree anyway, but I
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haven't put the effort into it since then.
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Yeah. So yeah, the inspiration comes
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and goes and they go, it'd be fun to build a bow again and
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then it just doesn't happen. So and right now we've been
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ramping up production for all the Christmas craft markets with
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spoons. So I'm totally focused on that.
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Are you selling a lot? Well, I sold probably 30 of them
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over the summer at craft markets and then I've sold some to
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friends and family off of there. And last Christmas they sold
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around another 30. So if there's inventory, there's
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opportunity. So I'm just making a bunch to
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get them ready to go. Yeah.
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Cool. So for the arrows, when you got
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into that, Jamie uses bamboo shafts for his arrows.
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Is that what you were using when you were making them for him?
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Yeah, yeah, and she'd. Just bring me piles of them and
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then I would just work through them as as needed.
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Random spines. But I presume your neighbor
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wasn't milling bamboo. Shaft arrows, No Sitka spruce.
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So old growth Sitka spruce from up here in Heidigwai to salvage
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it from the cut blocks or buy logs from the logging company.
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And then he'd mill them up. So yeah.
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So they're milled dowels. Yeah.
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And was that specifically for arrow shafts?
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That's why he was milling them. Correct.
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Yeah. OK.
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And he's not any longer. Not anymore, no.
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Yeah, OK. And.
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What was that like for you? I've I've made a few arrows, but
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it didn't captivate me the way the bow making does.
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Like I didn't really feel as drawn to it or I didn't feel it
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was this therapeutic. But speak with other people who
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make arrows and they absolutely love it.
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Like how was it for you? Like the artist?
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Is there artistry behind it? Is is it feel like for me I felt
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a little bit too kind of assembly line.
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Right. There was definitely some
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artistry to it because I was cresting everything too.
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So that and putting caps on, which is the paint at the top,
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10 inches or so of the shaft and then choosing different
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feathers. Or I'd have people that would
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reach out and say, hey, I want my arrows like this.
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And so I would have to come up with something and make them
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look really cool for them. So there was definitely some
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creativity involved. But after, you know, by the time
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I stopped doing it, I think it was time for me to kind of stop
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doing. I just wasn't as passionate
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about it anymore. And it was a, it was a time
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factor. I would have to go in my shed
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and be there for, you know, I'd go down for say 15 minutes and
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do a quick dip on something or a repaint on something.
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So it's just back and forth constantly.
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And then when it was time to actually fletch them, then I
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would be in there for a couple hours, finished seeing them,
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fletching them, burning them, doing the wrap that I do on them
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in the leading edge of the feather packaging, all that
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stuff. So it was a lot of time of just
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being away from my family doing that.
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And I think it just got a. It did get a little monotonous
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at times. Do you think you'll get back
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into it at any point? If I do, it'll be primitive
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arrows. I'll be making them out of shoot
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shafts, not out of milled shafts.
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OK. Because the main reason is that,
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you know, the, the main place I can get them from is Sherwood
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shafts in Oregon, which are great shafts.
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It's just cost prohibitive for me to do that with exchange and
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shipping and all those things. So, yeah.
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And then also a lot of my arrows were going to the States and now
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with the tariff thing that. Yeah, shipping them back, yeah.
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Yeah, like it just it was AI think it was a good time that it
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just sort of stopped for me. So I didn't have that
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disappointment of now I have all this extra stuff I have to work
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around. Definitely sold it a lot of
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arrows in Canada, but it was, you know, probably 75% went to
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the States, so. Right.
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And what about archery? You hunt using a bow.
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Is archery something that you're passionate about, or is it
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something you just do occasionally?
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Yeah, my passions kind of weaned on it.
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It's just I go through cycles with things.
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You know, in the spring I'll probably shoot a bit more, but I
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don't. I haven't haunted with the bow
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for a number of years up here. I'm just rifle hunting and I'm
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not even hunting that much. Like I'll go in the rut and get
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a couple of deer and that's kind of as far as it goes for me.
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I was a lot more passionate about hunting a number of years
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ago and now I'm just doing other things so.
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Yeah, well, a couple deer for a family, small family is probably
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enough, isn't it, for the year. Not really.
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I mean the deer are quite small so that could probably put we
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are allowed 15 deer per season here.
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So I could probably put 10 deer in the freezer and be that would
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probably be good. Ten.
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Wow. Oh yeah.
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OK. Yeah, there's, yeah, a lot of
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people shoot a lot of deer up here because there's no
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predators. So they're just, they're not as
15:33
prolific as you would think with the number of deer were allowed.
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But there are still a lot of deer.
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So you put in the time. There's no wolves, no Cougars,
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just black bears. And the black bears don't really
15:45
bother them. Yeah, black bears are more
15:48
interested in eating salmon and berries.
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Yeah. I haven't made it to Heidegger.
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I really want to get there. What's it like?
15:55
Like it's compared to like where you grew up on Vancouver Island.
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Like I just imagine it's so much more wild than not even.
16:03
Yeah, there's a lot less people. Obviously.
16:08
It's a lot similar to northern Vancouver Island.
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So Port Hardy area, it's that same kind of same, same kind of
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forest. It's spruce and hemlock
16:19
dominated. There's no Douglas fir.
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There's not a lot of understory diversity here.
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We have not the shrubbery that are that is on Vancouver Island.
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So there's no ocean spray. There's very little red ocher
16:32
Maple or sort of red ocher Dogwood.
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Yeah, there's no big leaf Maple. There's a lot of Alder.
16:40
There's yellow and red cedar. There's areas where the forest
16:44
is very open underneath, which is really cool.
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You can see through the trees and it's just a Moss carpet and
16:53
in large second growth or old growth trees.
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Is there no more first growth? There's still old growth for
16:59
sure, yeah. Yeah.
17:01
What's is that more Cedars or bit of all of?
17:05
Them it's a mix depends where you go.
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There's spots where there's giant old growth spruce and but
17:12
they, you know, they're kind of intermixed this monoculture
17:17
forestry that you see now where you go into one area and it's
17:20
all just one type of tree that's second growth.
17:23
And that's the way it's replanted.
17:25
That's not nature's way of doing it.
17:27
Yeah. And then how many islands are in
17:30
Hideaway? There is some like 200, it's a
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whole pile, but Blossom are really small.
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The two main there's two main islands, Graham Island and
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Moresby Island. They're the two biggest, and
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then there's down to islands that are less than an acre in
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size. OK.
17:52
And then being that far north, is the weather, are you getting
17:56
snow or is it kind of coastal? So you're not really getting
17:59
much? Yeah, it's very coastal, so we
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don't get a lot of snow here. That's crazy being that far
18:04
north. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:06
We get generally around Christmas time and then into
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January. That's when we get a little bit
18:13
of snow and then by mid February the salmon Berry flowers are
18:19
starting to open. And so like it feels spring like
18:22
already by mid February. Yeah, awesome.
18:26
So your handle, your handle on Instagram is stump stalker and
18:31
that's that comes from shooting stumps I presume.
18:34
Yeah. Yeah.
18:35
Is that something that has been been a passion of yours?
18:40
I did a lot of stump shooting when I lived on Vancouver
18:42
Island, OK, And I've done some here, but again, it just kind of
18:48
as my passion for it weighing down.
18:51
I stopped doing it. But yeah, on bank around when my
18:54
daughter was a toddler, I would take her out every day somewhere
18:59
in the woods. And usually I would take her and
19:02
I'd bring my bow with me and I'd push her out somewhere in a
19:06
stroller and then just let her wander around on the mountain
19:08
bike trails and I'd shoot stumps off the side.
19:10
And we did that for years as she grew.
19:13
It was so cool. Nice.
19:15
Is she in the Archer? She shoots a little bit.
19:18
Yeah, Yeah, she can't. She'll she'll, she'll pick it up
19:22
once in a while. She'll just say, dad, let's go
19:23
shoot. So we'll go out and shoot for a
19:25
bit. Yeah.
19:27
Cool then, And for your arrowheads, do you make your
19:30
own? Did you make your own?
19:32
No, I always bought steel. Yeah, I tried Flint knapping
19:36
with Ryan a few times and I need a lot more practice for sure.
19:40
It's not something you can just jump into, I think.
19:44
Yeah, you have some arrows posted with some Flint knopped
19:47
arrowheads. Did you make those?
19:48
No, those were Brendan Mallette. He's another one of our crew
19:53
from Vancouver Island. Yeah, those are really cool.
19:59
So the steel ones you did not make?
20:01
No. Yeah.
20:04
And then what's the, what's the plan for the future?
20:09
Is it spoons all the way for the time being?
20:13
For right now, yeah, I don't. I don't know.
20:16
I might put an addition on my house this summer so that if
20:18
that happens then there'll be less spoons being made because
20:21
I'll have my hands tied up at that.
20:23
Yeah. What kind of wood do you make
20:26
them out of? What kind of wood?
20:28
What kind of wood do you use? Spoons.
20:30
All there. Yeah, always.
20:34
Now I do. Yeah.
20:35
I was bringing cherry and big leaf Maple up from Vancouver
20:38
Island. Yeah, I found though that at the
20:40
markets people are really drawn to the local stuff.
20:43
So I've just switched straight to Alder and I have.
20:46
My property has probably 1/4 acre of just Alder trees on it
20:50
so there's so much there. Yeah.
20:53
You got I guess probably a 30 foot log, a 30 foot log by 8
20:58
inch diameter at the base just laying there that we had taken
21:01
down the other day. And so there's hundreds of
21:03
spoons in that log do. You guys have Arbutus up there?
21:07
No, yeah, It doesn't really grow much past Campbell River on
21:13
Vancouver Island. And then I don't know on the
21:16
Central Coast how far up it goes, but I would presume it's
21:19
probably around that same 51st parallel kind of zone.
21:25
So if you don't mind, can you tell me a bit more about some of
21:28
the bows that you made? Yeah, I've made mostly you would
21:33
bows. It was quite a common wood where
21:38
I lived on Anchor Island, so I was able to.
21:40
Not on Hydroid though. There is you up here for sure.
21:45
It's not nearly as common as it is in the Comox Valley.
21:52
I feel like it's because of the the way the logging practices
21:55
changed when because I lived in Cumberland, that forest there
21:59
was logged predominantly at the turn of the century when they
22:02
were building the coal mines. So they use that for building
22:07
houses, building stuff in the coal mines, all the bracing and
22:11
all that stuff. And they didn't just cut
22:14
everything then they'd cut what they wanted and left.
22:17
It was more selective. So they didn't cut the trees
22:19
down because it it was just more of a hassle to get it out of the
22:22
way once it was down. But there is changes in forest
22:26
practices in the 50s and 60s and that's when this place got
22:29
really logged hard when when it got mechanized and they just cut
22:33
everything. And there was the yew trees also
22:36
because a big tree would fall on a Yew Tree because it's so
22:39
strong. That tree would just sit on it
22:42
and it caused a lot of injuries. Was that suddenly that tree
22:44
would just the Yew Tree would just spring back and throw the
22:47
bigger log or, you know, Yeah, it was just so that there was
22:53
logging practice changes and they cut everything essentially.
22:56
So you don't walk through a second growth here and find a
22:59
random Yew Tree just growing there like I did on Vancouver
23:04
Island. So I think the majority of it is
23:08
was wiped out. And I also heard a lot of people
23:12
were here cutting the yew trees for the bark for that Taxol for
23:16
the the cancer drug. Yeah.
23:19
I've heard a couple people mentioned that lately that they
23:21
used to do that, yeah. Who's they like, Pharmaceutical
23:25
industry or people selling into the pharmaceutical companies?
23:28
Yeah, people just selling it to the pharmaceutical companies.
23:30
I guess there was, there must have been buyers here, sort of
23:33
like how people go mushroom picking now and then there's
23:35
buyers for the mushrooms. Yeah.
23:37
So they would go out and they said they'd go through the cut
23:41
blocks before it got logged, which that maybe they did, but
23:44
once you take all the bark off, the street's gonna die anyway,
23:46
so. Yeah.
23:47
There's no chance of it surviving.
23:50
It's a sad state. I was with Jamie and Pell River
23:54
probably June. July, July, I guess.
23:58
Well it could have been August anyway, this past summer and he
24:00
took me into the logging roads near his place and, and these
24:04
are the, the, the network of roads is incredible.
24:08
And these are, I don't know for me, I guess I always kind of
24:11
thought a logging Rd. was like this, just like this rough
24:14
little one lane thing that's cut into a, a mountainside.
24:17
But no, these are, these are like highways going through 4050
24:21
kilometers of this highway network of dirt roads with these
24:24
huge log trucks. And Jamie took us to see one of
24:27
his favorite U spots and it was gone.
24:31
They were, they were literally cutting it down as we were
24:34
driving in. And so he, he took us to see
24:37
some other areas, but we would see these huge stacks of fur and
24:41
mostly it was fur trees huge. And then like sometimes growing
24:45
out of the stack was like this Yew Tree, tiny little Yew Tree
24:48
that they just like buried under the stack of all the cut fur.
24:51
And all around the perimeter, you can see these little
24:54
scraggly yew trees that had not yet been cut down, but they were
24:58
all going to be going eventually.
25:00
Yeah. And it's just as far as you can
25:01
see, like the mountainsides are just being absolutely ransacked.
25:06
Yeah, it's, I don't know, I I think about that and go under
25:09
how many millions of bow staves were just.
25:12
Oh man. Destroyed on these islands, you
25:14
know. Yeah.
25:16
The fellow that taught Pete Woodland how to build bows, he
25:19
lived up here and so he was, I think he was a fall or two.
25:22
So he. Yeah, Adendorfer, Yeah, I can't
25:25
remember his first name. Yeah, Andreas.
25:27
Is his Andreas? Yeah.
25:29
So he had the first pick of all the choices would and so that's
25:35
how he got you know, I think he came here and went, whoa,
25:38
there's a resource here and I need to do something with it.
25:41
So that's what he did. And and people around here have
25:45
you would stashed in their crawl spaces in basements.
25:48
They brought it home and thought they'd get trim made out of it
25:50
milled up someday. And so I imagine there's lots of
25:54
super dry wood around here that just start asking the right
25:57
people. It also makes really good
26:00
firewood, so I imagine a lot of it just went in people's wood
26:03
stoves. Yeah.
26:06
Did you mostly make bows out of you or are there other woods
26:08
that you used as well? Mostly you I had I got a few
26:13
Osage staves from Ryan was your goat.
26:15
We did trades for various things.
26:17
So I've built actually for a long time I had no U bows on my
26:23
rack. They were all Osage bows, which
26:25
was kind of funny being from BC coast.
26:29
Yeah. So now I built, yeah, I built AU
26:33
Longbow a couple years ago and that one's on my rack.
26:36
So at least I have one example of a U Longbow I was trying to
26:40
take, you know, and I just take my arrow pictures.
26:42
I like to add a bow into the picture 'cause it looks kind of
26:45
sharp. And context.
26:47
Yeah, I know. What?
26:48
I don't have any bows made out of you.
26:49
Wood. This is so weird.
26:51
So better do that. Yeah.
26:56
So I've used you and Osage. I messed around a little bit
27:00
with a few other white wood species.
27:02
Tried one out of Pacific Dogwood, broke, made a couple of
27:09
little kids bows out of Hazel. I tried one out of Douglas
27:14
Maple, but I don't think I ever got it finished.
27:18
Yeah, that's probably about it. Yeah.
27:21
What is your? Preference the between the Osage
27:23
and EU for carving. Probably U it's a little bit
27:31
softer. Yeah, it's definitely softer.
27:34
Yeah, but I don't know the Osage or just something cool about it
27:38
because it's so different than any other wood I've used.
27:41
So yeah, the Osage was that. It was a very unique experience
27:46
to do that. And my first Osage bow, I built
27:49
that one of our gatherings with Ryan.
27:50
So that was really cool to just, you know, my first opportunity
27:53
to use it. He brought me a stave and that
27:55
weekend I built a bow with it. That was pretty rad.
27:58
I still have. It flat bows.
28:00
Flat bows. And it's got like 3 inches of
28:02
reflex. The thing's ridiculous.
28:05
I used to shoot it really well and then from not shooting so
28:09
much, it's pretty heavy. It's like a high 50s bow.
28:12
It was actually 64 I think when I finished it originally, and
28:16
then I retailed it, took some weight out of it.
28:19
But The thing is, that's my fastest bow for sure.
28:22
Yeah, that much reflex. It's just it's got so much hand
28:25
shock to us. I don't know why.
28:28
I thought it was really nice to shoot for a while, but I sure
28:30
don't know. Isn't that interesting?
28:35
Yeah. Every time I pick up a bow that
28:37
I've been shot for a while, I'm always critiquing like, oh man,
28:39
I remember when this thing was, you know, fresh out of my
28:42
workshop and it was the the apple of my eye.
28:45
I couldn't believe it. I made it.
28:46
Now I'm just like that thing needs to be reworked or burnt.
28:52
Yeah, this one that it's, it looks great.
28:55
And yeah, I like how it turned out, but it's, it's good.
28:59
That beautiful dark orange color now from oxidization, it's
29:03
because I built it I think in 2017 or 2018.
29:07
So it's been around for a while now.
29:08
And yeah, it's just wonderful. And then I have another one that
29:13
I built, but it's got some, some stress fractures on the belly.
29:20
So I just, I didn't build it wide enough.
29:22
That was my mistake. It is a really cool snaky piece
29:25
of wood too. So that one I don't shoot
29:27
anymore. And then I have another Osage
29:31
that I was given in a trade from a fellow from Ontario and that's
29:34
a really nice big wide limbed flat bow and that one shoots
29:38
super nice. No hand shock, it's really
29:40
smooth. Right.
29:42
What do you hunt with traditionally when you bow hunt?
29:46
It's been my you self bows predominantly.
29:51
I've hunt you with a glass bow a little bit too.
29:55
Yeah. But you're not hunting right now
29:57
with a bow. No, yeah.
30:00
I'm just not putting the time into shooting.
30:01
So it's sort of. Yeah.
30:05
What's the difference for you though?
30:06
As far as the I don't know the I'll call it the the emotional
30:11
rewards. Hunting with a gun versus with a
30:14
self bow is there. Yeah, I think with a rifle
30:23
there's more relief because it's you shoot it and the what I, I
30:27
next shoot there. So they just drop right where I
30:30
shoot them. So there's none of that.
30:31
What if it's just there? It's dead.
30:37
I don't have to track it. You don't have to worry about it
30:41
just hiding in a hole and disappearing and not being able
30:44
to find it. So that part is easier.
30:49
But I don't know, I've actually quite enjoyed rifle hunting
30:53
since it's fairly new to me because I was always hunting in
30:56
this shotgun area. So it was either a shot, a
30:58
shotgun or a bow. And so rifle hunting is actually
31:02
kind of unique to me, which is funny because I've haunted a lot
31:06
of my life. So actually quite enjoying it.
31:12
But the archery hunting is it's way nicer to carry a bow in the
31:20
forest, that's for sure. It's so light and easy and yeah,
31:28
I don't know, it's like I just like being out in the woods and
31:32
and hunting, but I don't love being out in the woods and
31:34
hunting all the time or just a little bit and I'm satisfied.
31:40
Yeah. So that's, that's, yeah, that's,
31:43
that's kind of how I've evolved into it.
31:45
You know, I used to just want to be all the time, all the time,
31:47
all the time. And now I'm just more content to
31:50
be closer to home and just go and when it's the right time of
31:57
the year and for the rut. And we can also hunt here in the
32:02
summertime. Our hunting season's nine months
32:04
long, so we can hunt in the summertime.
32:07
And the the buck, you can hunt bucks in the summertime.
32:10
And they're very nonchalant and just kind of there and they're
32:15
not too hard to hunt. But at the same time, it almost
32:19
feels not cheating, but it just doesn't give you the same thrill
32:24
as seeing them when they're hard horned and they're just majestic
32:29
with their big neck and they're in the rut and they're just, and
32:33
there's something about that part.
32:36
Yeah. Do you do anything with the non
32:39
meat part of the deer? I haven't, no.
32:42
Or the antlers. No, I I usually keep the antlers
32:45
for various craft projects, but I haven't done anything with the
32:50
hides before. Yeah, cool.
32:54
Yeah, I don't. I've never haunted.
32:56
So it's something that I'm growing up, it was never like a
32:59
thing that anyone in my family did.
33:01
And I wasn't in archery then and now that I'm in archery, not
33:04
really living in BC that much and just haven't done it.
33:08
Not sure how I would how I would feel about doing it either.
33:10
I know it's a, it's a big step from being able to take a life
33:15
and, and having never done it. So like I have, I have a farm in
33:18
BC, so you know, farm animals that I've had to put down, but
33:22
it's different from from hunting.
33:24
Yeah, well, you probably have a certain number of deer running
33:27
around your farm. Yeah, we had a deer fence and
33:30
that still is not highly successful, right.
33:33
So partially successful, yeah. So there have been days where
33:37
I'm there in the summer, I'm like, deer just keeps eating all
33:41
of her vegetables. And so, yeah, I've been tempted,
33:43
but I, I also don't want to, you know, do a poor job at it
33:48
either. So.
33:50
So yeah, they're pretty spooked. I grew up my my dad wasn't much
33:55
of A hunter, but three of my uncles on my mom's side and my
33:59
grandpa, they just, they were hunting all the time.
34:03
So it was, and everybody in my community there was just, it was
34:08
a pretty big culture of that there.
34:11
So it was not uncommon for sure. There was always, you'd show up
34:17
at somebody's house and there's a deer hanging on the porch or
34:20
you know, there was always rifles and pickups and boxes of
34:24
shells and it was pretty nonchalant.
34:26
And it's not like that now. Just part of a life, yeah.
34:31
It's, it's a little more like that up here, though, because
34:33
people hunt so much. It's not uncommon.
34:38
Did we walk? Just walking around town and a
34:41
truck goes by with the deer hanging, You know, you can see
34:44
it in the box of the truck or you know, so it's quite
34:49
commonplace up here. I had one quick question though.
34:52
You were saying you wanted to make arrows out of non milled
34:55
shafts. What type of material?
34:58
Mostly Ocean Spray from. But you said you don't have that
35:02
there, right? We don't have it here, no.
35:05
SO mostly I've used Ocean Spray in the past.
35:07
I have some shops at home that I've brought up from bank
35:11
around. We do have Red Ocean Dogwood
35:13
here in limited quantities. There's also Nut Carros around
35:17
and that's pretty much it for what I could get for shoot
35:20
Chefs. Cool, that sounds fun.
35:24
I've never tried to do that. Natural arrows?
35:27
That sounds really cool. Yeah, it's really fun.
35:31
Yeah. Do you have to like bend the
35:33
shafts at all? You have to steam them at all or
35:35
you just find the straightest ones.
35:36
I use dry heat. I actually use my alcohol burner
35:40
and alcohol burner that I'd use for putting the points on my
35:42
shafts like on my finished arrows.
35:44
I use that and I just heat up spots on the on the OR the the
35:49
chute and that will allow you it makes the wood elastic key so
35:52
you can bend it OK and then as it cools it'll hold that shape.
35:58
Cool. Awesome.
36:01
Well, dude, thanks for taking the time to chat with me today.
36:04
Yeah, you're welcome. And I've heard about you for
36:06
quite a number of years, so it's good to finally connect with you
36:08
and meet you. Totally.
36:09
Yeah. OK.
36:10
Thanks a lot, Todd. It's good to talk to you.
36:13
Yeah, you too, Blaine. Thanks.
36:23
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