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dfox
When I found myself recently invited to prepare for an African Safari, I telephoned Anne Reeve and told her I already owned a good pocket knife but, as I did not want to use a rigid knife on this trip so I wanted a really strong folding hunter, very high quality but not too big and able to be stripped in the field. It had to be a Sebenza, a working tool and the benchmark against which all others are judged.
Anne is a charming conversationalist; the generous result of our discussion was two Sebenza 21 models for review, one large one small, both named to commemorate twenty-one years of manufacture.
These knives are plain and in photographs which could not possibly convey their subtlety, frankly look it. However, to see them in reality is to see how they came to be the recipients of so many prestigious design awards. The underwhelming illustration on the page manifests incarnate as an eloquent expression of precision, robustness, functionality and understated elegance. The grind-lines of the heavy-gauge blade are perfectly symmetrical in exquisite hollows which curve down to a perfect edge.Read more.....
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In late September of 2008, my good friend, John Dale from Natchez, invited me to participate in the first private lands alligator hunt ever held in Mississippi. Although I had only one night to hunt, I eagerly accepted the invitation. The Dale camp on Brierfield would be our hunt headquarters. The club caretaker, Scott Skipper, would be operating the boat; I would be manning the crossbow; John would be in charge of the video camera.
The weather turned foggy and cool - not the best situation for hunting alligators at night. The big lizards simply would not cooperate! Every time we got within range, the gators would silently slip beneath the surface and disappear. I did manage to get one arrow into a big alligator, but he managed to pull off after a brief fight in the thick brush and aquatic vegetation. I had to leave the next day, but Scott was able to fill all the club tags during daylight hours with his rifle over the next few days while the big ones were sunning along the shore.
Fast forward to Friday, September 18, 2009, this would be my second attempt at getting an alligator on Davis Island with a crossbow. This year I would be shooting my new Horton Vision 175. I arrived early in the afternoon, and Scott and I prepared our equipment for the hunt. Boat batteries had to be charged, arrows and buoys checked, and the boat launched before dark.
My curiosity about TenPoint’s new Defender CLS immediately went off the scale the moment I laid eyes on it at the 2009 SHOT Show. My first thoughts were: this looks a lot like my TenPoint Phantom CLS, minus the camo pattern on the riser and barrel. When I read the specs on this new crossbow, I knew I had to have one. My test sample arrived at home base not to long after I had finished unpacking my bags after returning home from the SHOT Show. I eagerly opened the box, and began to assemble the crossbow. It was still early enough in the day to take it out for a test run. I quickly laid down a layer of string wax and rail lube, grabbed my chronograph and headed outside to the test range.
Greetings Dan! - Hope this note finds you and Karen doing well. Our elk season began September 1st and is now over. I called in a spike for Judy on the 4th and as luck would have it, her arrow clipped a small branch and she shot under him. 4 days later I called him back up and Tim Martell, a friend of ours managed a 20 yard shot from his Hoyt. Then on September 16th Tim called in a cow for me. I'd been practicing shooting with either hand and it paid off!The cow had apparently seen me move and came in out of range on my strong side then began circling. When she disappeared behind some cover I switched to shoot left handed and had to lie on my side to get the opening I needed. She stopped broad side about 40 yards out and stared at me. Tim called again and when she looked back at him I released the arrow from my Horton XS, the same bow I was shooting when you were out here. The arrow hit it's mark and she went less than 100 yards.
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Read the rest of this member story here....
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Every year, smack dab in the middle of October, a half a dozen ACF members gather for the Fall Rendezvous in Houston, Missouri, the home of Ozark Mountain Outfitters. Jim and Darlene Wilson and son Eric play host to our group in some of the most beautiful deer and turkey country that America has to offer. The hunt allows the taking of a whitetail buck and doe as well as a wild turkey. The hunt this year was a three day hunt, but in 2010 it will be expanded to five full days of exciting hunting with toasty-warm hospitality, lots of great home-cooked food and plenty of wildlife being seen by all who are sent out to guard Jim’s lush food plots.
This year I was joined by ACF members, Jackie Seale of Alabama, Harold Webster of Mississippi, Bob Jacobs of Minnesota and Randy Archer of North Dakota for four days of what turned out to be wet and colder than normal weather. Still our dedicated hunters managed to drag six whitetails and one turkey to the meat pole. Harold Webster and Bob Jacobs each took two whitetails and Jackie and Randy each took one. The big bucks managed to evade the arrows on this go-round. Plenty were seen, but they were either out of range or else really lucky. The last night of the hunt, Bob had a really big buck grazing just fifteen yards from him, but behind some heavy brush. As the animal slowly began to move into the open, a herd of spooked whitetails sped by, taking Bob’s buck with them. And that, my friends, is why they call it hunting.
I watched as the animal meandered through the dense brush, disappearing occasionally only to reappear closer than it was before. Suddenly I thought that I saw sun glinting off an antler. I raised my crossbow to my shoulder, located the deer in the scope and was delighted to discover that the fat doe I had been watching was a “Poke `em Young” buck. It was show time! Immediately the context of the moment changed. The first surge of adrenaline immediately swept over my system causing tremors to ripple through my body as an increase in blood pressure made my eyes feel like they were being squeezed in a vice. Oh how I love the very instant the decision is made to shoot! It is the point in time that all hunters work towards and live for, the moment of truth and ultimate test. And as the buck continued to close the gap that separated us, I prepared for my final exam.
The nearer the animal came, the more it angled directly towards my position. Straight out in front of me was a 4-wheeler trail that would give me a clear shot out to forty yards, but as the animal angled closer, I knew that it would probably be under twenty when the it cleared the brush. As luck would have it, the whitetail stepped onto the trail right in front of my twenty-yard marker and then started to turn away from me. I had been focused on the spot even before the fledgling buck entered the kill zone so when it began to turn, my finger quickly applied pressure to the trigger of my bow. As the bow’s bark shattered the quiet landscape, the arrow was launched, entered the hapless whitetail at mid-body, just short of the rib cage, exiting behind the scapula on the opposite side of the animal and buried its head deeply into the rich, black soil.
The GT Flex crossbow is made by U.S. Crossbowyer TenPoint, but they label it “SixPoint” a logo type reserved for bows marketed within the lower finish of their price range. Interesting as that may seem, somebody who reads my reviews will know that I recognize & applaud high quality; what is less widely known is that I warn companies to take care over what they send me. If they need a nice review it had better be a nice product. & there, on my doorstep, I see an cheap bow from a company famed as the marketer of the Cadillac of crossbows. Cheap is a relative term, but the GT Flex is around a third of the price of some.
The box felt light. In it was a crossbow in three main parts, a recurve prod & a mainframe with stock attached, & some bits & pieces.
A striking feature is the fact that fact of the barrel of the bow being in three separated sections with the deck & the lower part (to which the fore-hand is attached) secured only at the latch finish, & otherwise free-floating, like a giant tuning fork. SixPoint or not, all of the machining & general quality of the engineering were up to normal TenPoint standards & a joy to behold.
Click here to read the rest of this review of the Sixpoint GT Flex Crossbow by Geoffrey Toye...
Miss fast or eat well. It sounds a bit silly, but this is a query that all modern archers must think about when purchasing new equipment. It seems that every new bow on the market hypes its speed capabilities. Though the feet per second that a given bow has the ability of throwing an arrow is fun to know & even to joust about with other archers in the off season.
I submit to you that the real query is “how accurate” is this new bow I’m thinking about. The fastest arrow in the world won’t ethically harvest your animal of choice, if it isn’t married to the accuracy of the archer. That’s right; it is still the responsibility of the individual archer to become proficient with the outfit that is finally decided on. Sure you do require to do your due diligence when shopping for new equipment & there's a whole lot of great new gizmos & gadgets that possibly could help you become a better shooter.