My Page: Randy King

Hunting and Fishing

I shot a traditional bow and, for many years, I could not tell you why. It is a bent hunk of wood with a string and some straight lengths of cedar for arrows. I would love to extol the virtues of the longbow and tell you why it is a better killing weapon than a compound bow but I can’t in good conscious do that. It took me a long time to realize why I shot a longbow and not some fancy new compound. Then the answer just hit me – I want to escape from the modern; I wanted some perspective.

This escape comes from not having the fastest, deadliest, quietest bow. It comes from not worrying about my 40 yard pin. And from this escape - I am certain of one thing – I am a lot less deadly with my longbow than a fellow hunter with a compound bow. That brings me to the reason I write this: Shooting a traditional bow is not like shooting a compound bow and should be classified as a different weapon and, perhaps, even have its own hunting season.

I have only put a single arrow in a big game animal with my longbow. The reason for that is mostly distance. I cannot and will not shoot an arrow out of my bow at anything past 25 yards. In contrast, when I was shooting my compound, a 30-yard shot was a “gimme.” With today’s compounds, hunters can take shots in the 60- to 70-yard range with relative ease. I would have to aim about 3 feet over the back of an animal just to shoot that far with my longbow. 

Hunting & Fishing

It happens about this time of year, every year. No ducks, no grouse, no deer, no elk are able to be hunted. The month of June means that I am in the “between seasons” rut. Almost everything I live to hunt is closed. Except the lowly pigeon: Their season is always open in Idaho.

Most sportsmen decry the pigeon as a waste of good ammo and, truthfully, that is the way I looked at them most of my hunting life. The pigeon has little value to most people. For me, they provided great fodder for when I couldn’t find any chukar. But now I have come to have a greater respect for hunting pigeons for three reasons: the country I get to see, the challenge they are to hunt and the training they can provide my dog. 

Pigeons tend to like the single most uninhabitable places a human can imagine. Most pigeons in Idaho make their homes in the cliff faces of our mountain ranges. In my case, I hunt them in the Owyhee Mountain canyon lands. These rough cracks in the ground are perfect habitat for the birds. Sheer cliffs rise out of the desert floor and offer a protective habitat for the birds to roost and nest.