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Traditional stickbow shooters make up a small portion of the bowhunting fraternity, and I’m a happy member of this group. Most traditional hunters carry longbows and recurves that have wood limbs backed with fiberglass. Within the stickbow culture is a smaller band of bowhunters who favor wood bows. I hunt with all types of traditional bows, but the self bow gives me the greatest satisfaction.

A self bow is made from a single piece of wood. No glue, no laminations, no fiberglass. Although a self bow is not as fast as a modern recurve or longbow of the same poundage, it is deadly enough to take on any North American big game animal. Pope and Young proved this in 1920 when they killed grizzly bears with homemade yew bows.

If you love to build wood bows and hunt with them, as I do, you never turn down a free stave of osage orange, the premier bow wood. A stave is a split from a log from which you make a self bow. Kevin Tuton, a stickbow hunter from Ironton, Ohio, offered an osage stave to me when I met him at the house of a mutual friend in February of 2007. I thanked him and made off with the stave like a bandit.

I whittled the stave into a self bow in April of that year. It measures 64 inches nock to nock and pulls 56 pounds at my short 25-inch draw length. This is the bow I carried into the deer woods during Ohio’s 2007 season.

Work and other commitments kept me out of the woods through October. I finally had an opportunity to draw my self bow in November. I was in my treestand just before daybreak. The morning broke clear and calm, a spectacular autumn dawn with a full riot of colors.

I had been on stand maybe 90 minutes when a small 6-point buck sauntered in and crunched red oak acorns only 8 yards from my tree. About two hours after that buck left, a spike walked through my shooting lane.

It was nearly 11 a.m. when a big doe passed on the other side of my stand and nosed for acorns 15 yards away. She was broadside with her head down when I sent an arrow through her ribs. I had made venison for the freezer with my homemade self bow. The feeling was one of pure satisfaction.

After shooting the doe, I went into buck mode. I had several close encounters with bucks that season, but I didn’t see one worth shooting until a heavily overcast, late-November afternoon.

I was in a treestand that overlooked a ledge on a steep hillside where there was a string of scrapes. About two hours before dark, I heard the buck as he rushed through the woods 80 yards below me. He was on a mission to find an accommodating doe.
When the buck stopped and raised his head, my eyeballs popped. Its heavy rack was nearly 2 feet wide and it carried 10 tall points. I grunted softly, hoping to lure the buck closer. It responded as if it had been slapped on the backside and bounded downhill out of sight. Apparently some other hunter had educated it to the danger of grunt calls.

I was in bow range of several smaller bucks and does that season, but I never saw the big buck again. My season ended without taking another shot.

Self Bow Challenge

My wood bows typically draw 50 to 60 pounds and throw arrows at 140 to 150 fps. Compare that to a modern compound that zips arrows at more than 300 fps. A compound bow matched with sights, a mechanical release, and a stabilizer can be shot much farther with greater accuracy than any stickbow.

A compound bow also has a shorter learning curve. I’ve watched newcomers shoot 4-inch groups at 20 yards in a matter of hours with a compound. I know many compound hunters who kill deer at 30 to 35 yards with minimal practice.

Most traditional hunters must shoot often to get 6-inch groups at 20 yards. Few would shoot beyond 25 yards at a deer, and self bow advocates who can repeatedly hit the mark beyond 25 yards are rare.

So, why do I handicap myself with a self bow? First, I don’t regard it as a handicap. I’m not an exceptional shot, but I feel confident that I can drive an arrow through a deer’s boiler room out to 20 yards with a self bow. Since most whitetails are shot inside 20 yards with any type of bow, I figure the odds are good that I’ll have opportunities.

I also like the challenge of building a wood bow and getting close to my quarry. Then there’s the esoteric side of it. I’m shooting essentially the same weapon that primitive man used to survive in the wilderness. I don’t thump my chest when I take game with a self bow, but sometimes I get the urge to do so.

I admit to being addicted to the flight of the arrow. Compound bows shoot so fast that you barely glimpse the arrow in flight. With a self bow (and any stickbow), you watch the graceful flight of the arrow from the moment you release the string until it hits the mark. The arrow seems to spring forth from within you. It’s a magic trick that never grows old, which is the reason I find these bows so much fun to shoot.

However, if you don’t focus all your concentration exactly where you want the arrow to hit, you can easily miss at 10 yards. I know this because I shot over the backs of three whitetails at about that distance when I started hunting with traditional bows. I was so overwhelmed at being close that I aimed at the whole rib cage instead of picking the smallest spot I could see in the kill zone. That’s an infallible recipe for shooting high.

I was never discouraged by those early mishaps, probably because I was having too much fun. If anything, they made me more determined to succeed. That’s why you’ll find me happily building bows and practicing with them throughout the spring and summer. It keeps me in touch with bowhunting all year.