Hunting Ptarmigan With A Homemade Bow

Right now I'm hiking into the Chugach mountains with a bow that I made. I just finished it yesterday. This is a hickory bow. It's a stave that I've had since I was 12 years old and I just made a standard D-style longbow. I've got caribou antler tip overlays, otter fur silencers, and I've also sprayed it with spar urethane to try and keep the water out. I plan on camping for a couple of days and I didn't bring very much food. This valley is one of my favorites. There are marmots, ptarmigan, and black bears. Because I have dogs I'll probably switch to this little day pack. I put my fly rod, some extra camera batteries, and a water filter in there. I've seen a few ptarmigan already and I've heard a lot of marmots so I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to get close enough with my bow and arrow. I'll probably start with flu-flu arrows and I shoot 308 cartridges. I just hot glue those to the end of the wooden arrow shafts. Here we go. Ready? Let's go hunting. Hunting with the dogs gives me a serious advantage because they can smell birds that I can't see and so they point birds out that I would never have seen if they weren't here. But when you get close to ptarmigan they laugh right before they fly. Seeing ptarmigan now but I haven't had any shot opportunities yet. They're holding really tight in the willows and I can't see them so I'm just bumping them then they fly away but I've been within shooting distance which is cool. I might go down by the pond and fly fish for a little bit and then I'll do the other side of the valley back towards the tent. I've been hunting for about three hours. The boys spooked Check this thing out. I saw it. I saw its head in the grass and I drew back and I just saw one bird's head and when I shot like five of them flew up away and this one went up and then right back down and I went and I caught it with my hands. I can't believe I finally got one. I mean I've only been doing this for one day but it's been a tough day. This is probably the coolest thing I've ever done. Build a bow and then go hunt ptarmigan with it in the mountains in Alaska. I couldn't be happier right now. I do think it's a good thing that I switched from the blue flues, the ones with five fletchings, to this one. This is a lot faster and it just about stoned that bird so blunt tips are where it's at. Okay well we've got at least three hours back to the tent. I'm gonna start making my way back there now so that I can make it by dark and uh who knows maybe we'll get lucky again. I took a couple feathers off of that one. I made a rookie mistake on that one. There was five birds in a cubby and I aimed for the center of the cubby instead of picking a bird and I missed all of them. For the ceremonial de-stringing of the bow. I'm probably 30 minutes from camp now. You can see it's got a little bit of string follow. I'll heat treat it when I get home. That went well you know. I had a lot of shot opportunities. I've only been shooting this bow for one day. I finished it yesterday so to be able to get a ptarmigan with a bow that I made, I'm so stoked. See that right there? That's my tent. These long days in the mountains take a lot out of me. I keep having to sit down and take a break. It's just uh it's like a glycogen deficit or something like uh my muscles just feel tired and heavy. Cleaning a bird's really easy. Got all my meat right here spread out. I brought some chicken seasoning. I'll have to go get more water now. Leave it. That's the tenderloin. I'm tired of eating fish every day. This is the breast. This is the tenderloin. That's the best part by far. I can't imagine there's very much fat in this. Protein only does so much for you. But it's just like a cool thing to do. Go out and provide food for yourself. I'm pretty proud of myself. Now I'm gonna have to go get water before bed and then I'll just climb in the tent and play my air mattress and then go to sleep. I think a two-person tent is just barely big enough. It's a good thing that the dogs are dry. If you want to see the video where I built this bow that will be out next Sunday. Yeah thanks for watching. Pretty happy I got one and what a beautiful campsite.