Primitive Progression

Some say making arrows is up there with making bows in difficulty.  I don't agree with that but there is a lot of work and understanding involved in making a good arrow.  You have three main components to an arrow; arrowhead, shaft, and fletching.  Attaching the point and straightening the shaft are pretty straight forward but the fletching determines most of the flight of the arrow.  If you fletch it wrong your arrow will fly real wonky but if everything is symmetrical it will fly true and straight.

The eastern two fletch is the style that natives in eastern North America used and this was something that I wanted replicate.  I had tried many times before to fletch arrows like this but I always ran into issues when I tried the methods that were shown online.  These methods often involved splitting the feather and grinding it down evenly.  Sure that's easy if you have a belt sander but I'm not interested in using electricity to make something from the stone age.  That doesn't make sense to me.  Anyway, I knew natives were doing this a thousand years ago but I didn't have an exact replica in front of me so I had to figure it out on my own. 

I left the eastern two fletch alone for a while and experimented with other types of two fletch for a while then came back to it after a friend encouraged me to do so.  I tried different things with where I attached the sinew in the front but it wasn't turning out how I wanted it to.  It finally clicked though.  Why grind the vane down and make it flimsy?  Just leave the feather almost whole and flatten the vane where it attaches to the shaft in the front.  This was so simple!  I've never seen anyone else do this and when I figured it out I was baffled that I didn't figure this out earlier.  Anyway, above is the how-to video in case you're interested in making your own eastern two fletch arrows.

Gator Surveyin'

Riding around on an air boat at night shining for alligators isn't really my cup of tea.  It sounds straight up redneck to me.  On top of that I kind of hate air boats.  I'm convinced more of the energy produced from the engine goes into noise.  However, in the name of science I was willing to head out into the vast wetlands of the St. Johns to help conduct an alligator survey.

The main purpose of the survey was to determine how many alligator tags would be handed out for the alligator hunting season.  The survey was fun, but not all fun.  Most of the time I was inputting the data that I was constantly being given by the biologist that I was with.  Also there was a constant stream of bugs hitting us all over.  It was like bug snow rising out of the water.  It definitely gave me a better understanding of ecology and the importance of water.

On to the fun part though!  We got to catch alligators!  Apparently catching alligators is illegal but if it's for science it's okay.  We caught two and measured them to make sure we were accurately estimating their size.  These alligators were small enough to grab with one hand, around 3 feet.  I will add that the alligator I caught was the bigger of the two.

It was a good trip and we counted 513 total alligators from Lake Harney north to mullet lake park.  Although it wasn't all alligator wrangling I still had a blast and look forward to volunteering and building a positive relationship with the FWC in the future.

Primitive Tim | Busted by the Man

First off, I'm guilty.  I committed a crime and was sent before the judge and he dealt justly with me.  In fact, he was pretty cool.  I like Judge McGlashan, although I would hate to have his job.

After I got my new (to me) truck I procrastinated getting it registered.  Of course I had planned to do it but I just hadn't gotten around to it.  It was the next weekend after I bought it that I got pulled over.  I was pretty much oblivious as to why I was getting pulled over.  I had the tag on that I had planned to register it with so unless a cop really looked at the tag then I would blend in with everyone else... except the registration had expired from my last truck.  Up to this point I understand that I was just being neglectful and I was doing illegal things that I am guilty of.  I will be paying closer attention to this kind of stuff from now on :)

This is where I thought things got a little out of hand.  After showing the title and proof that I own that truck I am asked to get out of the vehicle.  Keep in mind I'm calm and respectful this whole time.  I just wanted them to hurry up and write my tickets so I could be on my way.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  There were two cops, the one that pulled me over and his sergeant who came later.  Once the sergeant got there he kind of took over everything.  Anyway, he asks me a few questions like why was I driving an unregistered vehicle with that tag on it and blah blah blah.  I explained it and he wasn't impressed and that's fine.  I just  wanted him to write me my tickets so I could get out of there.  That's when things escelated.

 He asks if I have cannabis with me.  I tell him I don't... because I have never ever been in possession of any illegal drug ever!  Drugs don't interest me.  He asks if he can search my truck.  I tell him I'd rather not.  So then he says he's going to have to pat me down.  I'm like okay fine I don't care.  After an intimate pat down he tells me to put my hands behind my back.  I'm like, "WHAT???" and I turn to look at him cause I'm realizing that he's about to cuff me.  He responds by saying, "If you move It will be considered resisting arrest." Why in the world would I need to be restrained.  I was perfectly compliant to everything.  So yeah, he cuffs me and then goes and searches my truck.  I was standing there on the side of the road cuffed for a good twenty minutes while he searched my truck and wrote out my tickets.  At this point I have no idea what's going on.  Am I under arrest?  Am I going down to the police station and put in jail?  Like what the heck!

The sergeant is done doing his thing  so he starts to leave and he's going to leave everything else up to the cop that initially pulled me over.  I still have the sergeants cuffs on and right before he gets in his care the other cop says, "Hey, don't you want to get your cuffs back?"  He forgot I was cuffed!?  So, he takes his cuffs off of me and leaves.  The other cop fingerprints me on the hood of his squad car, hands me my three tickets, and explains to me that I'll be getting a court summons in the mail.  He then tells me that since I had such good behavior they're going to release me there.  That seems great right?  It would have been but while I was cuffed he had called a tow truck to come impound my truck!  I'm stuck and hour away in Volusia county without my truck and left right there on the side of the road.  I'm not offered a ride to anywhere but left stranded.  Granted, they did give me my wallet and cell phone.

I as two miles from blue springs where I was going to do some freediving that day so me and my friend walked down to the springs and did what we had intended to do in the first place.  I called another friend to come pick us up when we were done.  I'm blessed with good friends.

Fast forward a few weeks.  I get my court summons.  Court starts at like 8:15AM and I figured while I'm in the beautiful county of Volusia I may as well go to the one place that makes it worth stepping foot in that county, blue springs.  Another friend comes with me to court and we planned to go freediving afterwards.  I go before the judge, show my registration, tell him I have insurance, and he drops all charges.  The government made no money off of this, just the towing company where my truck was impounded.  The whole thing was ridiculous.  We were out of court a little after nine so we headed down to the springs and enjoyed what only nature can provide.

So there it is, I tried to write this with as little bias as possible to portray and accurate representation of my experience in Volusia county.  I've concluded that their law enforcement sucks and their judicial system makes up for it.  I am now a free man with little to no trust of cops now.

Here's a picture of me freediving at Blue springs

Please pardon any typos or grammatical errors.

Freeze Frame

One thing I really enjoy about filming is that it captures everything.  I'm shooting at 60 frames per second so whenever something happens I can grab a frame out of that footage and the results are sometimes hilarious.

So I'm editing footage from my recent road trip of the southeast and I come across a segment where a snake is going wild.  Often times there are things going on that happen too fast for the naked eye to register.  I paused the segment to switch windows and grab another piece of footage but when I paused it the segment happened to land on the below frame.  I had just watched this segment and never realized I made this face.  Not only was I making an exceptional expression but the snake was at full strike with its mouth wide open.  I grabbed the frame and saved it.  I thought it was humorous and it gives anyone interested in my videos a preview of what's to come.

Southeast Road Trip: N. Florida, Tennessee and Georgia

This trip had three basic parts.  Everything went according to plan for the most part.  The plan was to go to Apalachicola and meet up with all the Southeast folks of NAFHA and look for reptiles and amphibians, then head up to Tennessee where the 17th annual primitive archery classic was being held then go back down through Georgia and visit family and hunt hogs on some family land.

Apalachicola was fun!  We found a lot of cool stuff.  If you want to see lots of pictures check out my facebook page.  I was able to stay with my brother and his family and meet up with some other folks that were there for the event.  All in all during that event over fifty species of reptile and amphibians were found.  That's a lot for just one weekend.  Here's a shot of one of my favorite finds:

Next stop was Tennessee but I spent the night at my aunt's in Atlanta, where I also got a flat tire.  That was a fiasco.  My bank thought it was suspicious to buy a tire in another state, because that's the first thing that an identity thief would do???  After I got that taken care of I headed to the Tennessee Classic.  The primitive archery folks there were awesome!  It was also cool to be recognized by a few people from my videos.  I had several good trades as well.  My goal was to talk to folks that had hunted with stone points and had experience with the primitive hunt.  I certainly learned a lot and met some really cool folks.  Pappy is the man that runs this event and I was honored to put an arrow on his arrow rack among other arrows that had been given to him.  Mine is the one with the green fletching on the right

Now on to Georgia for the hunt.  Well, the hunts were unsuccessful.  This wasn't terribly unexpected.  I wanted to spot and stalk some pigs.  I had gotten some advice on this at the classic but this is something that must be practiced a lot before you can even think about success.  The first two days I was able to see some pigs and get fairly close.  I never got close enough for a comfortable shot though.  I never want to wound an animal, even if it is an invasive and is causing damage to farms and the local ecosystem.  I did have a good time being out in the woods and checking out some cool plants that are unfamiliar to me.  This being one of my favorite finds:

This trip also coincided with my cousin's graduation so it was a lot of fun to be able to be there for that.  She's a sweetheart

All in all it was great trip and even though I had some curve balls and failures I was able to learn from those experiences.  Now it's back to work editing footage from the trip.

The Smart Phone: A Sign from the Heavens

Just a few weeks ago I was guiding a kayak tour and a freak storm comes out of nowhere and hit us.  Naturally I had my stone age flip phone that cost me all of $15 in case of an emergency I would be able to call 911. This storms sweeps through and most everyone was on an island except for a couple boats.  So I head back out into the storm to help out another guide with rescuing an elderly man that had flipped and got separated from his kayak.  Anyway, during that whole process my phone got drenched.

I put the soggy phone in rice and waited a while.  After a few days I realized it wasn't worth waiting the few days so that it might work and being phoneless also meant work couldn't ask me to work.  I took this wicked storm as a sign and went on to purchase a smart phone.

Life will never be the same....  :)

Selfies???  Not sure if I did that right... but go follow me on instagram where I will NOT be posting selfies and twitter.  I'll be keeping things updated as I go along via my new smart phone. :)

Been Taking a lot of "knaps"

Flint knapping is the process of creating a sharp edge on any knappable stone.  For the most part I make stone arrowheads and knives by flint knapping.  Obsidian is probably the most well known knappable rock as it is the sharpest edge known to man.

I've been working on some hunting points so I made a variety of them to show to some of the pros to see which ones they liked the most.  The points are shown below.

I use only bone and antler to work these points just like our ancestors would have used.  It's been a fun challenge and I've learned a ton!  I'm still not so good at identifying the different types of materials but it doesn't really matter so long as I can make an arrowhead with it.  The favorite from the pros that I asked was number 10.  They liked that style the most for hunting.  For now I'll keep aiming for ones like that.  I may be doing some hunting soon so I need to get my equipment up to par!