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

Finally Finished!

Along with building arrows on my own, I've spent the last few months (going one step a week) building arrows with a friend of mine and finally finished them last night. I also got my paws on a nice back-quiver after near-embarassing accidents with hip quivers and loose pants. The only problems I'm having with the back-quiver are that it's a bit hard to reach back there and pull the arrow out in a nice graceful motion or put the arrow back in a graceful motion. It is worth it though -- I like having the extra bit of mobility and not having to worry about my pants dropping by accident when I stick my heavy traditional arrows into my quiver!

And now time for me to go back to working on homework so I can spend some quality time with the non-academic love of my life on the range tomorrow after plant ecology seminar... I've got a special engagement with my sweetie the weekend after this one, assuming academic duties don't over-ride my plans for shooting at the Traditional Bowhunters of Florida shoot!

Day 1 With the Sword Scope...

I started sighting in the sight that I got at the shoot yesterday and let's just say I forgot how difficult it can be to get it sighted in compared to my field scope! On the other hand, the effort was well worth it and it's great because I don't have to remember to adjust the scope if I'm shooting within a certain range (20-50 yards the way I configured it) but it's also hard when the pins all look like they're on top of each other. The fibers are especially bright, which is a huge plus in poor light conditions, but they also make it a bit more of a challenge to aim. I really like this sight a lot better than the ultra-basic fixed-pin sight even if trying to make adjustments is a bit more challenging because of the long fibers. Of course, though, for 3-D I still have a serious bias towards my trusty recurve!

Forest Archers Shoot

It was an absolute blast even if my score was pretty low compared to the really hard-core shooters -- 178/400. I missed a few "gimmies" when I realized that the nock-set on my bow had gotten loose at the end of the morning round and I was getting really erratic errow flight. Some fellow traditionals helped me get the nock-set back into place and get good flight back, although it took me a few shots to re-adjust. It was still a real blast -- only missed 30% of the time and I was even getting some 8's and 10's! I did have a lot of arrows ricochet though, especially on this one alligator target in the afternoon round where all four of us in the group were having trouble getting arrows to stick on the alligator... and there was a deer target that my arrow should've penetrated but instead bounced off and ricocheted most spectacularly into the grass behind the target. It was by far the best and we made several attempts to re-create it, but to no avail. The smart thing: aim for the nose. What we did: aim for the kill zone on the back. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't get pictures :( But I did get pictures of the stuff I won in the raffle once I got home... The biggest prize was the Sword fixed-pin sight, which I actually bartered for with someone who wanted a stabilizer component that I had originally one but ended up with the sight, so we swapped.

All in all, it was a great shoot, even if my score was borderline embarassing compared to the legendary traditional figures who showed up... but it's a personal best in terms of the rate at which I hit the target! I can't wait for the Traditional Bowhunters of Florida shoot in 2 weeks, assuming one of my profs doesn't decide to put in a field trip for that weekend! It was also a huge blast being able to see friends from both the compound and traditional side of shooting -- I feel a whole lot more comfortable around my fellow shooters and wilderness-types than the overly refined bar/club-hopping peers I'm surrounded by at school.

I Want A Barf Bucket Or At Least a 700 nm Filter For My Glasses

I tend not to remember most holidays until they hit me right in the nose or the eyes. Valentine's Day was no exception -- it took me a while to realize why there was so much abuse of pink, white, and red as well as rather tasteless images of hearts and almost-naked winged babies (eeewww!!!) I can live with the red and white, having gone to a high school whose school colors were just that. Plus red and white are a pretty good combination for fletching colors if I want to find my arrows again. For some reason, I get really nauseous when I see all the Valentine's Day stuff all over the place, including around the nice little forest corridors I like to hide in when I get fed up with being around too many people and being indoors for too long but can't quite leave campus because of some academic commitment or another. When I saw all that tasteless stuff all over campus, there were three possible courses of action that ran through my mind: 1) run into the bathroom to purge the ickiness out of my system before proceeding 2) bolt into my office 3) hide in my apartment. I ended up with taking the 3rd one -- the 1st one wasn't going to make me any more productive, the 2nd one was tempting until I realized that my office-mates were enthusiastic about it and I'd get very little work done because I have an office-mate who's struggling with Python programming and linear algebra, so I opted to just hide at home to get work done. Plus I figure my office-mates won't exactly enjoy the conditions that help to write: blasting music, frequent pacing, and acting a lot like Gollum/Smeagol.

And when I got a bit too saturated from work, I spent a bit of quality time with my trusty Chek-Mate recurve at Gator Bowmen. I'm back to working on my thesis proposal with several papers on evapotranspiration and carbon flux modelling, a few papers on artifical neural networks, and several pieces of scratch paper to sketch my conceptual model with. And my Chek-Mate is sitting next to me. I love shooting my compound and I can shoot extremely well with it, but the Chek-Mate is my non-academic love! I'll take a good, reliable bow any day over a human... In fact here's a top 10 list of why a bow is better than a human, in no particular order:

-- Bows are perfectly content watching me study or write proposals
-- They're extremely honest about me (ie, if my form is off, it WILL tell me!)
-- They don't call me during class and wonder why I don't ever pick up the phone
-- They understand the concept of "do not disturb"
-- It's much easier to really get to know the bow really well (ie, no need to go on lengthy dates that interfere with studying when a good test-shoot will suffice)
-- Bows share my taste in the kind of place I want to live in (ie, not in a *.* big city)
-- Bows don't have random baggage to give me grief
-- Bows transport very well
-- Bows don't try to get me to go to annoying/useless social functions
-- Bows don't try to interfere with my ambitions by wanting to start a family with me

If I Could Do This More Consistently...

Not bad for someone who hasn't been practicing nearly enough... and this was, of course, from my Bowtech Equalizer. The top one was a 30-yard field target and the middle one was a 48-yard hunter target.

Burn, Baby, Burn!

I got to go to a real controlled burn yesterday with my Ecosystems of Florida class and did my little fire ecology experiment. I was looking at how much trees (slash pines, Pinus eliottii) were utilized as fire escape routes for bugs and other small animals as a function of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) cover. Basically saw palmetto, besides being not fun to hold by the stalks and providing some awful tasting emergency food, makes for great fires and might be an un-incentive for little critters to go underground, but at the same time, maybe can also make going up trees a lot more dangerous and actually encourage more critters to go underground. So my way of testing this was wrapping the tree's cicrumference about 3 meter above the ground (as high as I can safely reach with the ladder) and manipulating palmetto cover by hacking it up and dumping the hacked up bits elsewhere so I'd have full cover, half cover, and no cover within a 1 meter radius. I had 6 replicates of 3 treatments and my gut-instinct conclusion is: put the duct tape much higher up the tree, although I did catch a few bugs, but the real prize was a little common anole. Most of my tapes were either severely melted, or in two of my replicates, completely burned away. I might post my results after doing a real analysis :)

And I Dub Thee... Lizardbane

I did it again -- killed a lizard at the range again. This time it was from 10 yards and for some reason I thought it was a really green leaf or some random detritus that someone had placed on the target face. I took a shot at it and it started twitching so I knew it wasn't what I thought it was. I decided to put it out of its misery by taking a few more shots at it knowing that at 10 yards, my accuracy is pretty darned good. The second shot already finished it off but I figure I might as well finish my accuracy/precision drill. I felt a strange sense of pride in being able to make that kill once I realized what it was -- in terms of scaling, if I can get that kind of accuracy on a lizard, imagine what I can do with a deer or a hog!

What made this even more interesting was that this happened while I was testing a theory someone had about why my aim was so off with my trusty Chek-Mate recurve even if the flight looked pretty good, namely that I was way underspined with that batch of arrows. So I had taken my longbow and my 30 lb Martin X-200 (aka the Little One even if it is longer than my Chek-Mate) to do a bit of a comparison to see which bow my last batch of arrows fit. Without a doubt, I had much better results with the Martin X-200, which I semi-expected because I'm only getting 20-25 lbs out of it with my piddly 25" draw, although for that little draw weight, it sure sends those heavy arrows flying pretty well out to 35-40 yards. I had the same leftwards bias with the longbow as I did with my Chek-Mate recurve, while I generally hit where I aimed (give or take a bit of a stochastic error function) with the X-200 with this batch of arrows.