i keep saying, "maybe next year I'll try Archery"......you know how that goes... ~
Seeing that reminded me of some fond memories . . .
I grew-up archery hunting, well, dinking around since 9~10 yrs old, but I think we had hunting permits at 15 yrs old. My dad, a Boeing Engineer, made my first several bows for me. He and his buddies used to actually make recurve bows in our basement, as well as their cedar arrows. They'd steam and clamp the laminated layers of the exotic woods they used for making their bows. He also made our first several sets of skis - nearly as beautiful as the hunting bows, with perfect shapes and dimensions of the tip, thickened waist, hip, camber, cntr groove &c - with the same basement manufacturing process of steaming & clamping the wood - in wood jigs that they made. Don't ask me how !:~\ They started me skiing at 17 months old.
Gosh how me and my sisters took all that for granted !:~\ But now thinking back, it was really special. He was really special.
Anyways, one of my favorite archery hunting trips every year was for deer & Roosevelt elk on Long Island in Willapa Bay, WA, an archery-hunting-only island (via our 19' Evinrude Rogue 210 inboard/outboard), adjacent to Long Beach & Oysterville, Washington, and part of the Willapa Bay National Wildlife Refuge, due north of the Salmon & charter fishing village of Ilwaco and the mouth of the Mighty Columbia along the Pacific Coast.
We'd catch Salmon and/or Steelhead nearly everyday, and collect - in buckets right off the beaches - all the huge Willapa Bay Oysters and Clams you could ever want; and typ bag a few Ruffed or Sooty Grouse and pick wild mushrooms most days to grill and sauté whilst boiling the clams & sweet corn over the campfire every night to enjoy with the Salmon or Steelhead, until the hot campfire—cool late September or November night air—and full tummy slumber filled my head to the point that it was literally all I could do to crawl through the cold night air under the ga-zillions of twinkling stars to my soon-to-be-toasty sleeping bag. =))
Long island is about 6 miles long with a land area of 21.666 km2 (8.365 sq mi).
"Long Island is the Pacific Coast's largest estuarine island. The island is 5,640 acres and includes a rare 274-acre remnant of old growth lowland coastal forest. Many of the red cedar trees in this grove are over 900 years old. ~ "
A three-day adventure to this uninhabited island became a personal Swiss Family Robinson escape.
www.seattletimes.com
en.wikipedia.org
P.S. — There's a somewhat humorous story whilst we were hunting on Long Island in Willapa Bay one year. I'd probably ruin it in the telling, but will share it if anyone's in the mood for another Ol' Huntin' Yarn. ;-)