so I'm here at Damon Bungard's house we're getting ready to go to the
Tennessee classic we've got turkeys gobbling across the road got the truck
loaded up and we're about ready to head out
this guy right here looks familiar!
How are you doing?
the Tennessee classic
is a 3d archery shoot that takes place a little bit north of Nashville in May of
every year and one of the coolest things about the classic is an event they call
the selfbow challenge where you have to build a bow on sight and then shoot
the course with it and this is my first time to the classic so I thought I'd
give it a try.
well I need to get some more folks signed up for that it's actually doing
pretty good. I mean most of these are good I mean this is good wood.
for something real easy you'll look for something that splits real
clean like that. like you see how this one's got some grain tear out I mean
those will make good bows but they're not it's not gonna be quite as easy as
something like this I mean that's clean this is clean that's good. I want to look at the growth rings
one's you need to go down a couple of rings but this I'm asking good piece
it's got a little bit of twist to it but you can take that out
my pile of stage at home looks pretty rough compared to this. when you cut
Osage that's inevitable you're gonna have a bunch of.
one of the best things about going to this kind of event is just getting to meet and hang out with
really good like-minded folks and this event in particular draws a lot of
people that are really into selfbows a lot of folks from the primitive Archer
forum to come to this event just to hang out and meet each other
swap ideas and just catch up if you're interested in making your own bow this is
a great event to do it at there's a lot of guys that really really know their
stuff when it comes to self bows they've got a lot of tools a lot of work area
and there's plenty of knowledgeable folks to help you through the process I
went ahead and roughed out a bow on the first day and just to do something a
little bit different I decided to go ahead and make a recurve and got a lot
of questions and interest about putting in curves with dry heat which is what I
have been doing for the last couple of years these were some fairly tight
curves to do with dry heat but what I found is if you heat just the sides and
avoid heating the belly you can you can put in some fairly tight curves without
raising splinters or cracking the belly side when you bend this wood over
aside from the bow building there's a ton of other things going on. there's the
3d course that they have set up there's flint knapping going on there's
great food and just great people to hang out with
welcome to Tennessee in spring time
the second day of the event it has just rained like cats and dogs but it did
clear up a little bit towards the afternoon and we got to shoot some a
James Parker's horn belly bows which I've never done before and they were
absolutely amazing. what's the weight on this approximately? Oh, I don't know if I
can get this sucker back. This sucker is slinging them. Just the stress that the
sinew horn combination will take and the speed that you can get out of these
bows is phenomenal. let me see that other one. Can shoot that one? Now this
is target bow. He shoots carbons and it spits them out like rockets.
James does some amazing work.
that's cool! and ain't no big secret on building these were easy to build put the
sinew on, open them up. They're tillered with heat and shaped with heat so that
bow, unstrung before it ever ever was strung while it was seasoning the handle
don't change that limb come up like this and the hooked as it dried it come
down here so all this is put in with heat.
After you put the sinew on? Yeah it's all done with heat over a . brassiere.
It's like a little pot with just coals and you put a lid on it so there's no smoke
it heats it up. And this heats up in like ten seconds.
It conducts heat more than copper does and then that's
how you form your limbs
appreciate your taking the interest oh
those are absolutely beautiful
so after the rain stopped Damon and I and Nathan Coleman would seek outside grabbed her bows and went out and shot the second
half of the course
Damon, how did you do that? that's amazing! I'd actually shot the
I'd actually shot the first half the day before while it was raining and because my my self bow
wasn't sealed against the weather I went ahead and shot a laminated glass bow and
so I wasn't able to turn in my score for the selfbow challenge.
But that doesn't matter. The best part is getting out and having fun with your buddies.
There's like a blade of grass coming up
like the tip of it is right on the perfect spot
Heckk I didn't even hear foam on that one Damon. Miss high on the honey badger!
You don't need to be going to Vegas. no I'm not good in Vegas.
I was up a few hundred bucks once and I bet it all. My friend was like, what are you doing,
I wanted to know what it's like to bet it all and I lost it all but now I know
what both feel like
I'm gonna shoot him again. this is kind of like when we were hunting those,
shooting arrows at those groundhogs in Idaho and they just kept popping up and
going away. he's moving on me is what he's doing. I'll go with that.
If you're into traditional archery and you've never been to one of these traditional 3d
shoots you really got to get off your butt and get to one because they are a
ton of fun and if you are interested in going to one of these things all you've
got to do is get on the web get in contact with the local archery club and
if you can't find them get on some of the forums. traditional bow hunter forum
trad gang leather wall primitive archer all of those all those places have
knowledgeable folks that know what's going on around the country and they can
put you onto some good events. so with that go ahead and subscribe to the
channel if you haven't already and we'll see you next time