Back-Tension Release

I never thought I would ever use one of these considering that I had to have a string-loop added to my bowstring, which would shorten my already pathetically short draw length. But here goes:



I'll post more later once I get even more intimate with this little gadget. This little Carter Evolution back-tension release will be with me quite a bit for the next several months. I did get some very intensive coaching on how to use it properly, but now it's up to me to really discipline myself and master it. I sure as heck won't be competing in compound for at least 6 months, if not more, at least if I want to really become a deadly spot-shooter!

X7 Eclipse, Size 1814

I love building wooden arrows. I don't mind exposing myself to MEK fumes to crest and seal them or spending 3-4 hours to compress the living daylights out of a wooden shaft that doesn't spin smoothly on my spin-tester or sorting arrows by spine. I actually like spending the time to build my arrows because I'm at my best when I shoot my blue and silver crested cedar arrows. Unfortunately, I don't have infinite time to build arrows, especially considering that I'm very hard on my arrows when I work on my accuracy and precision drills. Sometimes I hit my own arrows, sometimes I miss, and sometimes I hit an object that would shatter even an aluminum arrow. And sometimes someone at a shoot will hit arrow and shatter it. Carbon arrows are very costly and tend not to be very easy to repair. So I have to use something that will survive my shooting habits if I want to have time for all that I need to do. My shooting time got limited even more now that I've decided to incorporate a bit more of an exercise routine into my day after realizing that the dominant eigenvalue on my weight was pointing towards the path of exponential growth and it doesn't help that some of my professors want me to become sedentary. So I gave in and went back to a shafting material I thought I wouldn't return to because I had so much trouble re-straightening them and components got very finicky. Enter aluminum. Not the XX75 alloy I used to use like on the horrendous-looking Easton Jazz arrows (MIT purple... 'nuff said) but the X7 alloy, which is tougher and is built to tighter tolerances than I've seen on some carbons.

So far, I'm realizing that my accuracy and precision went down the toilet with these Easton X7 Eclipses, but it may also be from general lack of shooting time. These Eclipses are much lighter than my cedars or my CX Heritage 150s but I made sure they were still heavy enough to shoot safely through my trusty Chek-Mate Hunter I. As far as I'm concerned, my mate is a Chek-Mate -- a good huntin' bow is far better than the detritus I run into... the kind of detritus that wants to take away from my time to be alone, studying, or training to drag me into some hell-hole in the city and the kind of detritus that wants to interfere with my dreams and ambitions. I digress on that, but yes, I now have a set of nice aluminum arrows to serve as a back-up to my much-preferred cedars until I can get my next shipment and spend quality time turning these shafts into killer arrows for 3-D and possibly even hunting.

One major complaint I do have about my Eclipses is that finding inserts and points that actually fit them is a real pain in the arse! With my piddly 25" draw and 38 lb peak weight, I'm stuck using these really uncommon sizes to get the arrows to spine right at my draw length. Thankfully, I was able to use 1816 components in these 1814s, but even the 1816 parts were a bit hard to find! Another incentive for me to use wood as much as possible -- components are much easier for me to get my paws on, even if it does mean a lot of online orders! But yeah, as far as aluminum emergency arrows go, the Eclipses are pretty darned good, especially after years of bouncing back and forth between those god-awful Easton Jazzes and the relatively decent Platinum Pluses, Camo Hunters, and Game-Getters!

NAA Level 1 Instructor Certification

As of today, I am now a certified archery instructor! I got my training today in Apopka and even if I don't really teach the intended audience (kids at school or youth camp type things), I did learn quite a few tricks to make my own shooting deadlier. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do the stand-up-straight and don't-cant-the-bow with my Sorondil-Telcontar (my trusty Chek-Mate recurve) because longbow technique has been ingrained so hard into me, but I know for sure that I can easily apply what I've learned in the class to my compound shooting. I'm not the world's biggest fan of Olympic-style shooting, but I have to admit, it is a good style to pick up early on. I'm a much bigger fan of 3-D and wing-shooting, but then again, I'm much more of an instinctive shooter who'd rather go for the "kill" and run around relatively unencumbered. I do enjoy field, but I think a lot of it is because it involves more interesting shots than just standing and shooting across the field and there's a pretty good-sized hiking in the woods element to it. I think I have a bit of the hunt in my blood, just not quite the guts to take apart the carcass yet... maybe with enough lizard/bug kills, I'll be able to build up to it!

And now to convince myself that designing a study on seed predation or ecosystem restoration is as exciting as developing coupled evapotranspiration and carbon flux simulation models!

Don't Remove the Tape

Someone over in the wildlife department brought two incredibly cute little alligators as part of some class over in wildlife. I was a bit surprised at how soft these alligators were when I petted them. When their mouths are taped shut, it's easy to be unafraid of them, and even if they were untaped, I think the cold and their size would still make them relatively unscary. It's the ones that are a fair bit bigger that I'd be afraid of. One thing people seem not to realize is that a lot of animals do indeed have individual personalities -- one of the alligators (the one I'm holding) was a lot more shy and passive, while the other one was more interested in wandering around the professor's office and taking a better look at his social studies books and papers he had to grade. I was hoping I'd get a chance to watch these guys catch some little animal and eat it, but unfortunately the guy from wildlife merely stuffed them into a cloth bag and carried them off to his class.

Maybe one day I'll get to watch a snake catch prey and eat it... there's something inherently beautiful about watching predators catching and killing their prey. Or maybe I'll watch a raptor swoop down on its prey -- I was once lucky enough to witness a fairly large hawk, probably the one that was following me around for a while at Gator Bowmen, swoop down from the trees to catch one of the many robins and taking it apart. It was such a fascinating sight, even though it was from a pretty good distance and I didn't have my binoculars with me. One of these days, I'll probably catch something besides lizards that make the mistake of napping in the field targets!

Almost Asymptoted

I'm now at 46 lbs and 269 fps on my Bowtech Equalizer. I'm also starting to enter the "danger" zone in terms of dry-fire risks with my 225 grain arrow, which is putting me at about 4.89 grains per inch. The standard safe minimum weight is 5 grains per inch, which already incorporates a pretty good cushion, but it's enough to have me want to start using heavier arrows once this batch is nicely munched on. A lot of my compound tournament shooting buddies shoot between 4.6 and 5 grains per inch to maximize arrow speed, but as a traditional archer who cringes at going below 8 or 9 grains per inch and has a habit of shooting 550 grain arrows at a smidgen below 40 lbs, it is a bit unnerving. I guess that's what those stabilizers and other shock absorbing devices are for! While my coach was adjusting my bow, he indicated to me that I'm almost at the limit of what he can crank my bow up to and he hinted that I might want to upgrade to 60 lb limbs if I want to get to even more blistering speeds. I might just take that offer once I build up the strength.

And now time for me to start loading up like a madwoman on vitamins, fruits, and veggies. My coach looked like he took the equivalent of a sophomore (masochist track EE) courseload at Caltech (ACM 95, EE/CS 51, Math 2, Phys 12, EE 20), didn't eat for a few days, and then got locked up for a few more days in an organic chemistry lab... and he mentioned something about his boss having mono and someone in his family having the flu. Go figure -- with my luck, I probably picked up some viable germs from him when he corrected my shooting form today.

Commentary on "Solar"

I finally was able to get my paws on "Solar", the new Moenia album. Overall, it's an awesome album, very much like the other Moenia albums but also with a sound of its own. To me, it seems to be a more mellow and sad album than their past albums, but very much worthy of listening to and very beautifully done. When I first heard the two singles that have come out so far ("Lo Que Tu Digas" and "Sufre Conmigo"), I had no clue what to expect because the two songs are very different in style -- "Lo Que Tu Digas" is a very energetic, rock-y song while "Sufre Conmigo" is a slower, more ballad-like song. Besides the two singles that have been released of now, the other songs that really leaped out at me were "Me Equivoque" ("I was Mistaken"), "Subete" ("Raise Yourself"), and "Siempre Igual" ("Always Equal"). Part of the appeal Moenia has to me, besides a lead singer whose voice I really like and a wide range of instrumental effects, is that I can actually understand most of the Spanish, aside from a few weird verb conjugations. Also, maybe it's the weird stuff that's been happening in the background, but the lyrics on this album also call out to me, not necessarily for myself, but for all the characters that surround me. I'll let you try to figure this one out, but suffice to say, I may be doing a lot of translation for some of the people around me.

I'll probably write something a bit more coherent once I actually finish up some homework and get my daily exercise in. I just had to empty my brain a bit.

Look'it this!

I got a lot of these kinds of groups at 30 yards and under today with the 26" Shrewd Stabilizer + back-weights + STS system... Still trying to do this for 40+ yards! As much of a blast it is to get this level of accuracy and precision with the Equalizer, there's still no substitute for shooting a traditional bow.

Something Else Changed

Let's see if you can figure out what else changed on my bow today, courtesy of my coach :)

Notice Anything Different?

See if you notice something different about my Bowtech Equalizer. I'll probably write more later after I finish making my presentation for tomorrow morning. Nothing quite as fun as presenting a paper on CANOAK, an SVAT-style coupled evapotranspiration-carbon exchange model at 0830 hrs on a Friday morning!

Is My Ceiling Gonna Collapse?

Apparently I've got neighbors upstairs who drop a lot of stuff on the floor and/or like to jump up around quite a bit. I also hear a lot of squeaking noises that suggest that something seriously needs to be oiled. Usually it's a non-issue since I'm usually either oblivious or blasting music, but every now and then when I'm trying to sleep, I'll hear squeaking and thumping from upstairs. I've come close to going upstairs and tactfully leaving a can of WD-40 at their door to let them know that the forester/archer downstairs actually sleeps every now and then. I do know that they're a bit uneasy around me ever since they saw me running around with my Bowtech Equalizer and my dear Chek-Mate Hunter I. For some reason, they don't like making eye contact with me either -- might have something to do with the fact that they usually see me with a weapon and/or singing very off-key. As long as my neighbors don't drop dead on me and stay dead for days at a time, I'm happy -- had a neighbor at my last apartment who did abruptly drop dead and left a pretty ripe stench in the complex right around the same time I was finishing up my senior thesis. I'll also be happy if my ceiling doesn't collapse on me because my neighbors upstairs are doing whatever they're doing make all those noises!

And now time for me to go back to working on my presentation on the CANOAK model and building a matrix-based population model of Iriartea trees based on different harvesting regimes! Maybe I'll also sneak in some more quality time with either the Equalizer or my trusty Chek-Mate (aka my other half) once I reach a stopping point in my work.

Oddly Fascinating Plus Other Bits

For some reason, I'm just oddly fascinated with this song (and video) by Moenia. I have to admit, I'm a huge Moenia (and Depeche Mode and Erasure) fan -- there's something really intriguing about their songs, plus their singer, Alfonso Pichardo, has an awesome singing voice. I'd even say that I like his voice better than Dave Gahan (lead singer of Depeche Mode) and Andy Bell (singer of Erasure), and they're both really good singers, at least in my book. I can't wait to hear Moenia's new album, Solar -- the bits and pieces I've heard sound great and I really enjoyed the two singles I've heard so far, especially "Sufre Conmigo" ("Suffer With Me")

I'm still preparing for a talk I have to give tomorrow on the effects of Serenoa repens cover at the base of Pinus elliottii trees on arthropods' utilization of trees to escape from fire. Three minutes is incredibly short, but I did a few practice rounds and I usually have about 3-4 seconds remaining on the clock, so I feel somewhat ready. I also need to prepare a talk on Friday about a modelling paper I read:

Baldocchi, DD, Wilson, KB, and Gu, L. (2002) How the environment, canopy structure and canopy physiological functioning influence carbon, water and energy fluxes of a temperate broad-leaved deciduous forest -- an assessment with the biophysical model CANOAK. Tree physiology 22 pp. 1065-1077

Things are definitely sizzling at school... and I'm already feeling an intense itch to go shooting and the last time I shot was Sunday afternoon! I think I'm going to go shooting as soon as I'm done with my presentation tomorrow so I don't turn into the demon that my office-mates and colleagues have come to fear!

Traditional Bowhunters of Florida State Championship

Was up first on this target on the Fred Bear range and had a hard time seeing the whole target so I guessed which end was the front. Apparently I picked the wrong end of the target (left-most arrow in the tender spot) to aim at! I was wondering why the rest of my group (3 males) suddenly clutched themselves in pain... and it wasn't the first target that I did that too!



This was on the fun-range in a hunting blind. A short, maneuverable bow makes life a lot easier at TBoF, especially on the non-competetive fun-range where there's shots from hunting blinds and similarly cramped areas! I need to work out more though, my butt nearly engulfed some of those hunting stools!


There's nothing quite like shooting a traditional bow for relaxation, even in competetive settings and there's few thrills bigger than knowing that I nailed an animal from 25 yards in the 10 point kill zone with my trusty recurve. My performance wasn't exactly brilliant but it was a huge improvement over my very first TBoF shoot -- scored 275/600 on the main competition (8th out of 13), 35/100 on the coon shoot, and 2/10 on the wing-shoot. I'm glad I went to this shoot even with all the work sitting on me -- I got to see a lot of friends I hadn't seen in a while and made a few more friends in the archery world.

The coon shoot was a real hoot for me because I actually hit animals instead of trees, soil, or the lantern like I did the first time, where I had a perfect zero :) Basically, it's shooting small foam animals in the dark and aiming in the dark is a lot more difficult, but it's also a lot more rewarding when I hear that satisfying soft thud on the animal.

The wing-shoot was really interesting because it's basically a moving, aerial target. There's a catapult on a truck that launches a cardboard disk and then the archers shoot flu-flu arrows (huge, spiralled fletching) with blunt rubber tips (darn, wish my camera wasn't dead then!) It's a real test of instinctive shooting and I was able to hit two of them, which was pretty darned good for someone who had never done this before and was using arrows that weren't spined right! The thrill is beyond description -- that nice "thud" sounds great especially when there's also a flu-flu arrow and a disk falling down.

The competition itself was also an outright blast -- I may've not hit as many targets as I did in the previous two competitions, but it was still an impressive performance for me because I'm so used to completely clear/open lanes and in TBoF, there's lots of obstacles like trees, branches, palmettoes, and shrubs as well as not-so-comfortable spots to shoot from. It's easy enough to shoot when everything's open (assuming I judged distance right) but it's a real challenge to have to crouch down, kneel, or squat to get a decent shot, and there's an even larger element of instinct in trying to decide between the really safe butt/gut shot or the much riskier kill shot. There's an element of purification in traditional archery that's lacking in the compound and there's no real way to explain it -- the joy of traditional archery, especially in a 3-D or wing-shoot situation where it's purely instinctive, has to be experienced to really understand it.

Excitement and Other Randomness

I can't wait for the weekend to go to the Traditional Bowhunters of Florida (TBoF) shoot... 2 days of 3-D shooting plus a coon shoot =) I don't get anywhere near enough exercise and shooting these days with the kind of schedule I've been holding lately and I'm just itching for some time where I'll get plenty of both!

Random Things That Should Be Illegal
-- Skin products that aren't required for real health conditions (ie, something for severe eczema or chickenpox is acceptable, something for acne, slightly dry skin, or non-cataclysmic blemishes are not)
-- Infants that cry for more than 15 seconds (must... fight... huntin' instincts)
-- Parents who allow their infants to cry long enough to irritate the living daylights of everything within earshot (must REALLY fight huntin' instincts)
-- Clothing and/or shoes that make it dangerous to run, climb, and go through dense vegetation
-- Excessive use of pink or lavender or other pastels
-- Fashion magazines unless they revolve around really functional attire that can survive a good hike through chaparral or other scrubby vegetation or can protect from toxic chemicals
-- Parking or idling in bicycle lanes (and people wonder why some bikers refuse to leave the sidewalk)
-- Odorizing chemicals not designed for camouflage or hunting purposes
-- Bad hip-hop / rap / lite rock that makes people want to live in the city, develop wilderness areas, go to overly crowded hell-holes called "clubs", dress like idiots, and generally act like jack-asses
-- Mandatory humanities / social studies classes