 So why am I making a bow? I made probably five or six bows last year, learned a lot, just got into it, and then I was able to accomplish my goal of getting a whitetail deer with a self bow, with making my own arrows as well, and it was, God, honest truth, one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done. There's just something about that, you know, the more difficult task, always the better you feel about it, but it was just something I had to work on for so long, and then it was just something new, and I just developed so much respect for traditional archers, and trying to learn it, and everything. It's so hard, guys. You just got to get close, or be an incredible, incredible shot, but even then your arrows are just a lot slower, it's a lot harder to fool a whitetail with the trad bow, so I am trying to make one every season. I'm gonna try to make a functional bow every season that I use, get a deer with, I retire it, and hopefully one day have a wall of these things just hanging, and my trophies now are going to be whatever, like whatever steps out in front of that arrow, and whatever that arrow passes through, that's a trophy to me. I've really changed my perspective on deer hunting, and trying to get big deer over the last season, really, because that little six-point buck that I shot, I remember more than most of my other deer that I've shot. It was just boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom. So that's my goal, and that's why I'm working on this one. This is Osage that is about a year and a half old. It's got some nasty knots in it that I hate. I'm gonna try to work around it. This bow may not even be viable when I get done with it, but I just don't have that much wood on hand, so I'm going to, one of these days I'll find the perfect piece of Osage, and I could have bought a stave, but I wanted to harvest the wood myself, so I did, and I made another bow that shoots really good. It's 60 pounds out of this same log, so it's basically like, it has a twin, you know, if they were like wands in the wizard world. They'd be twins, but I made it for the guy that let me take his trees off his land. Now I'm trying to duplicate that model, because it was about 61 inches, felt really good, shot well, it's a little harsh in the hand with the bend through, but it shot really well. So that's what I'm trying to do here, guys, and it's tough. It is tough work. I'm trying to break through these knots. This is actually not a draw knife. It's a skinning tool that works pretty good at busting through this stuff, a little bit nastier stuff. So there's really no way that I'll be able to get this bow figured out today. I'm just kind of working on it and seeing if it's going to be a viable bow or not. These knots are going to cooperate, and I might get like 14 hours of work in this thing, and I bend it back and it just breaks, and that's just part of it. But I've learned, I've learned a ton, and next time I go to harvest a tree, it will be the most perfect tree that I could find. I was really just thinking, well, I could just take any tree and figure it out, and now I've just learned a ton. So this is going to be, hopefully, the bow that I take down a Whitetail deer with this year, but breaks, I'll make another one. Basically, a orcable stave now. It was a chunk of lumber. Now it's a workable stave, and I'm going to start shaving it with a rasp and basically get it to where it starts to bend, just barely starts to bend. Terrible knots in it, but taking out a lot of nasty spots. One side of it is perfect, like the wood is awesome, the other side is super knotty. It's just real knotty. It's a knotty piece of wood. All right, we've got a bad knot. It is cracked on the outer layers. It hasn't cracked the back layer, the back of the bow yet, but we're about to see where it's going to break. I don't think this bow is going to make it. It's just, I think it's going to pull apart at the backing right there. That notch is too bad. Just can't work with that. 15 hours worth of firewood. This is Hackberry. I had this stave laying around for over a year. Local Boyer named Austin gave it to me. I had a Hickory one that was similar. I kept the limbs wide, but I didn't back it, and I should have backed it because it broke. Pretty much every bow I make breaks. I'm searching for that one that is not this magic, but I'm going to start working on this one here. I've been just taking big chunks out with a chisel and some big tools. I'm going to try to make this about an inch and a half wide and see where it goes. I want it to be somewhere around 50 to 55. That's a dude of crafting. I've taken my time with it. We now have a bow now. It's no longer a stave. The initial bend on it, this thing was at 61 pounds, but it still needs a lot of work in getting the correct even bend. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to cut out the handle. What is so different between the bowdark bow, the Osage bow that I was making that broke, and this one is straight grain. Osage, you have to go with the feel of the bow. You've got to go with the flow of the bow. You've got to look at each little twist and turn. Go with that grain and it's more feel than anything. This, you can work more like a piece of lumber and you can lay it out. You can be more mathematical about it and draw exactly what you want on the back of the bow and then cut it out. Carve it out like a pumpkin. With Osage, it's just more feel. I like that. I like that more about Osage, but for me not having that much experience, it's obviously a lot easier to make one of these because you can measure it out and just by doing math, you can get a more even bend and less room for error basically. My goal for this by the end of this video is to have this thing shooting arrows. It's not going to be finished. I'm going to be tuning and probably adding a backing to this. Definitely adding a backing to this, but I want to be able to get a pretty even bend and start shooting some arrows to it. Hopefully, guys, this is going to be my 2023 initial bow harvest bow right here. So, now that we have the handle roughly shaped out, we'll put it on the tillering tree and we'll just look for an even bend. Once it gets pretty close, I'm going to probably round off the edges on the handle and stick an arrow and a string on it and see what we can do. So, not too far away from getting an arrow through this thing and flying out of target. That's looking pretty decently straight and has an even bend right now. Still got a lot to take out in the mid limbs and then close to the tips, but we're right around 60 pounds, which is good because I want this bow to be about 55. I'm a little worried it's going to end up around 50. That's still okay. I'm definitely going to take some deerskin and I'm going to make a backing on this so I don't have any splintering and it might add some extra weight to it as well. I'm going to go ahead and take some, I'm going to just take a little rasp and take a little off the limbs, the mid, and the tips and then I'm also going to cut some knocks in it and then we'll put a string on it and then pull it back a couple times on the tiller tree to make sure we're even and then shoot some arrows. Okay, big moment right here. I've got an actual string that I measured that I like that is about maybe even a hair over brace height. This stuff's got some, this wood has some set so let's find out, let's find out if this one's going to break, huh? Got it tillered good enough where it should hold this. It's pretty much full brace right there. Yes, yes sir, I do like it. We are very close guys, very close. Looks like I need to take off a smidge. I don't know, I might go measure a little close. With my little scraper I busted one strand of my string. I hope that's alright. I'm at 28 right there so that's 52 at like 23, 54 at 25 so I think we'll definitely be around 60 at 28 inches which is about my draw. It's actually a little less than that the way I've been shooting with most bows. Knock to knock this is only 61 inches so I can't stretch it out too far but I just want to be able to hold about right there on my chin. That's where I like to anchor so. Okay ladies and gents this is the this is the moment right here. Let's see which side it's actually, it's favoring this side, throw inside to the weak side. This thing feels like brick right now. It feels like a brick shot straight. Not a lot of noise but I think I still got some still got some tillering to do on it. Works, shoots. I actually like the way it shoots. It doesn't feel laggy at this point. It is not bad y'all. Not bad, feels good in the hand. Ended up liking the handle width. Everything feels good on it. I mean it's sitting, the string is sitting just barely on that on the one side which is nice. That way I don't have to put a shelf in this thing. I'm gonna shoot it off the knuckle. I think that's how I'm gonna make most of my bows. Just primitive and if I want to get into putting shelves on it and all that then I'll just get like a, I'll just go buy a traditional bow. But for me this style is just primitive as it gets and I really like it. So I've also learned to be very patient with bows. You know I rushed my my first bow in this video because I wasn't really confident that it was gonna hold up. I really just wanted to see so I kind of rushed it. Of course we found out it would not hold up. This has a good back on it. I want to show you guys something. If you could see this starting to fleck right here. That is the, I believe it's called the Cambrium, some sort of word like that. And it's basically the layer in between the bark and the actual back of the bow or the tree. So I'm gonna go in and I'm going to take all of that off and that's actually gonna make it slightly uneven on the back. There's gonna be little dips and valleys but I'm gonna go in I'm gonna score it and score the outside basically scrape it up and I'm gonna add some rawhide to it. So I made some rawhide out of one of my deer last year and I think I'm gonna add that to this and that is that is a a week or two process getting it to dry and doing it properly. One thing I've learned is don't rush don't rush these bows. You get excited because you're like oh it's bending it's bending I want to go shoot it you know let's start flinging a bunch of arrows but if your tiller is not right it's just not good for the bow and you know rushing it with big tools and things like that trying to make it go faster usually end up making some mistakes. So I'm gonna take my time with the rest of the construction of this bow once I get the backing on it then I'll tiller it even more and get it exactly how I want it but I want to make sure I do have a backing and this bow is going to make it to hunting season that that's my goal. I really like this bow the way it's turning out so I think I want to make this the bow that I sit in a deer blind with it's not crazy crazy big I think I can think I can get it done here maybe a tree stand and go with it it'd be pretty cool to say I killed a deer with a hackberry bow as well you know most most of the bows out there Osage Hickory and hackberry let me show you what a hackberry tree looks like actually. This is a hackberry tree growing in my yard right by the chicken coop a lot of these trees you'll see are pretty straight so they make good bow wood and they have that white on the inside which is kind of unique as well and they're very bumpy and I guess the seeds are edible because I do see these all over Texas fence lines and trees that go grow on fence lines are most often from birds eating the seeds of the trees they fly and they perch on the the fence they poop and then the seeds start growing so that's why if you ever seen just trees after trees after trees grown on a fence multiple varieties it's because of that because birds are carrying those seeds so I'm assuming that they're edible but they look terrible I wouldn't eat one and the bark is just real bumpy it's real coarse I think I'm gonna end the video right here guys that I think this is my bow my 2023 hunting primitive hunting bow smash that like button for well not giving up all right not giving up and I'll continue to make this bow even better and keep you guys updated so thanks very much and I'll see you on another outdoor adventure