John I have seen in a couple of articles that you have some recurve bows in the background of I what might be part of your library. I was wondering what they might be. MT is a Schafer Silvertip state and I was curious if you had one or had had one in the past. Dave Windauer makes them now and I believe that they are extremely well made perhaps tops in traditional recurve construction. Just curious if with semi-retirement you might start moving over to write more archery articles. I have noticed that Layne Simpson who most often wrote about very flat fast movers like the 7STW is writing more in the archery magazines.

kabuko58,

Yep, that's what you saw--except one is a longbow.

The recurve is a Horne takedown, 50-pound pull at 30" . I usually pull 28'" so it would be more like 45. Got it from my buddy Richard Mann in a trade: He said at would shoot a wide variety of arrows well, and he was right...

The longbow is a PSE Heritage Sequioa, rated at 65 pounds at 28" draw. Haven't shot it much, but it also shoots well.

Started shooting bows at around 12, after my father bought me a fiberglass longbow that pulled around 20-25 pounds. Got good enough to hit all sorts of moving targets, and small game out to 20 yards or so.

Bowhunted with "traditional" gear through the 1980s, and the started using compounds. Had good success with both on game up to elk, but eventually realized bowhunting writing didn't pay much (even less than flyfishing, which I used to write about a lot as well.) Plus, the big reason for bowhunting in Montana is the elk rut, and I discovered would rather be upland bird hunting with my dog at that time of year

However, decided to keep my hand in, just in case. Decided if I did start bowhunting again, would prefer "traditional," the reason for those two bows. Like them a lot, but have only shot targets with 'em.