Raptors~ Fun Footage Friday 16

There is a lot I could say about this Friday's video.  Birds of prey/Raptors (ealges, hawks, owls, etc) are by far my favorites in the bird world.  They're the tigers and leopards of the sky.  They're some of the most incredible predators in the world!

With this footage a few animals gave me a chance to get up close and personal without flying off.  I think they're less likely to fly off on windy days so they don't have to fight the wind.  On the other hand they're a little more difficult to find cause they're not moving but just hanging out in shelter somewhere.  The ospreys are fairly active in certain areas so that wasn't much of a problem to find them.

The last few shots of a juvenile red tail hawk are not necessarily of a wild animal but it kind of is.  Right now it is in captivity but will be released by Summer time.  It's a hunting hawk that a friend of mine is using for falconry.  After the hunting season it will be released.  This hawk is so much fun to film hunting.  In the falconry situation I'm able to get shots of the bird that I would never be able to get in the wild.

All in all raptors are my favorite and I'm glad I live in a place that has a pretty good variety.

I hope y'all enjoy!

Primitive Archery Innovation

Working with bows and arrows has been a slower process than I would like.  While I have gained knowledge and experience pretty quick it could go faster.  The problem comes in when I want to find the absolute easiest way to do things.  With building bows there's a lot of grunt work that I must do and I accept that but when it comes to arrows there are more shortcuts that can be made.

The fletching is the part of the arrow that is made of feathers and stabilizes the arrow in flight.  I use a two fletch style which uses less feathers and takes less time.  At first I tried the eastern two fletch style, which is a native American style that was commonly used but I kept having a really hard time with getting it perfect and there was a fair bit of feather preparation before I attached the arrow.  Below is an example of that style:

  

 Finally I allowed this style to evolve with an idea I had.  I thought I could just split the shaft, which is hollow cane, and insert the feathers into the middle with just the feathery part of the feathers sticking out and the vane of the feather on the inside of the shaft.  I tried and I liked it a lot!  It was easy and quick.  I just stuck two identical feathers in the shaft facing away from each other.  It looked something like this:

I shot it and it flew straight and I liked it.  It was durable, strong and fletching never shifted.  This was great but I was missing one key element to a good arrow.  When shot, the arrow didn't spin.  Like a quarterback, an archer wants a good spiral on his/her projectile.  The evolution was not done.  I made a few arrows like this and shot them.  Finally I cut the two feathers in half down the length of the vane and only put half a feather on each side.  This way the two identical feathers weren't cancelling out each others tendency to force air over one side of the feather.  Now the two sides were working together to spin the arrow in flight.  I ended up with something like this:

You'll notice that the left side of the feather curves up and the right side curves down.  These curves force more air to one side of the feather than the other.  With the curves arranged facing in opposite directions they will be forced in opposite directions causing the entire arrow to spin.  I'd use a term like centripetal force but I'm about sick of that kind of talk for the day. 

So this is the latest development in my journey to make easy fletchings.  I am not the first person to come up with these methods but I didn't find that out until after I had done it.  If you make arrows with cane you should give it a shot and see how you like it.  Of course wrap on either side of the fletchings with sinew (especially the nock). 

A Day in the Woods with Primitive Tim

This will the be the title of one of my videos I'm making for Brian.  Last Saturday I filmed this episode and it was pretty cool!  We saw some stuff that was unexpected and it was a really nice day. 

The route for this day was determined by a rumor about a grove of guava trees.  So we headed out in search of these guava trees and filmed along the way.  We finally got way out there and found a large patch of guavas.  It looked like the pigs had been through there and I'm sure when the fruit is dropping they'll be in there pretty thick.

We saw a lot of cool things.  Some of the more notable things were a lot of birds, a pig, a deer, three bobcats, a few different types of frogs, an awesome sunrise and sunset, and a lot of wildflowers.  All in all is was a very interesting day.

It was made more interesting by our lack of water so me and my friend were struggling on the way back.  We made it fine though and it was good to see where our limits were.  Here are a few shots from the day.

Squirrel Treefrog

Guava Grove

Aquatic Reptiles~ Fun Footage Friday 15

When I film I always prefer to film in the animals' elements.  If the animal is aquatic I'm getting in that water and if it's arboreal you can be sure I'll be up that tree in no time.


In this video there are two locations represented.  They are Cherokee Sink and Silver River.  These are both beautiful bodies of water.  While the scenery is cool it's the creatures beneath the surface that really intrigue me.  Some animals tend to have a bad reputation like alligators, snapping turtles, and snakes.  When encountered on land they can be very defensive creatures with their hissing and snapping.  However beneath the surface you get to know a different animal.  Underwater is where these animals are content and comfortable.  They tend to be much more calm and apt to run away if they feel threatened rather than lash out as they might on land.

I hope y'all enjoy this week's Fun Footage Friday!

Resources

One of the biggest resources in my quest to learn primitive skills has been the primitive archer forum.  Not only has this forum helped me with understanding different concepts but they've also helped me acquire materials that I couldn't otherwise get.  I was able to trade arrow shafts that I collected for sinew, stone, and bow making tools.  The stone and sinew I use in making arrows.

There are some of the most knowledgeable people on the subject on this forum and they're willing to answer any questions.   What's even better than that, is I can post some of my work there and they will critique it and give me advice specific to the bow or arrow that I've posted. I even made a Facebook friend that lives here in Florida that is very helpful with answering questions of all kinds.

I've gotten immensely better at making bows and arrows and I would have never progressed so fast without them.  I still have a long journey ahead of me as I get better and better at these primitive arts.

My First Ghost Hunt

Every so often I like to get on google earth and look around for new areas that look like they might be fun to explore.  There was a small road that cut through some dense forest that caught my eye.  Its name was Volco road.  I wasn't even sure if it was open to public access so I googled the name of the road.  The first result was that of some kind of ghost website.  That sparked my interest so I checked it out.  Apparently the place is haunted.

I've never had any experiences with ghosts or super natural things like that.  I never thought it was impossible for there to be spirits roaming the earth and "haunting" certain areas.  There are just loads of obviously false reports and poor data.  We don't have any solid proof so I never bothered with it wondering about these things.

We turned onto Volco road at about 11 PM.  Midnight is supposed to be prime time for supernatural activity but we're getting old so we weren't going to stay that late.  Videoing as we slowly drove down the dirt road the preconceived ideas of witches and satan worshipers' souls wandering the woods really started to get me nervous.  Ahead we saw a sign indicating a bridge.  We slowed down as we approached it and my friend's car made a weird sound.  Apparently that was normal.  It still startled me.  We stopped on the bridge, shut the car off, and turned the headlights off and waited.  There was the normal sounds of crickets and frogs calling.  With nothing out of the ordinary occurring we ventured out of the car, looking over the sides of the small bridge.  Still nothing.

It basically went like this the whole night.  We didn't come across anything weird or supernatural.  We just found a nasty animal carcass that someone had dumped... or sacrificed!  After exploring the rest of the road we left.  Maybe next time I'll have to light a fire on the bridge at midnight with a caged black cat on friday the thirteenth on a full moon.

I guess my initial beliefs haven't changed much after this experience.

Bad Days

Saturday I was out filming for almost 10 hours.  For that kind of time I didn't feel like I had gotten the kind of footage I should have.  I had two target species for the day and didn't find either.  On top of missing my targets I got about ten minutes of sunshine and it drizzled off and on.  I can't film while it's drizzling. 

Even though it was a bad day I still learned from the experience and that's what is important.  I made a few mistakes of my own and now I know exactly how to avoid them.  For example, never go to an area that is frequented by air boaters as your sound will be useless and especially don't go to those places on a Saturday.  Overcast days generally have less animal activity and getting up at 6 was kind of useless.  These experiences make me better though and I'm learning quick.  I've noticed a definite increase in my experience and skill at getting good shots.  I think I'm learning so quickly because I'm making a lot of mistakes very rapidly.  Soon I'll have most of them out of my system.

Here's a shot from the ten minutes of sunshine I got from Saturday.