Outdoor Underground Presents...

Having traveled the world working as a purveyor of outdoor journalism and the finest, literary bowhunting stories for magazines too numerous to mention, I can state with the utmost confidence that I’m a better bowhunter than you.  But you already know this to be true.  My name is in the record books.  You’ve seen me on television. 

I am what the great medieval archer and hunter, Edward of Norwich, called “The Master of Game.”  But let us now, for a moment, consider why I am so great: 

Is it because I have an elevated understanding of game and their habits?  Yes.  Is my shooting technique superior to all other so-called experts?  Yes.  Am I more motivated, more determined, and, generally, a superior human being than you?  Without question. 

Throughout the course of my enviable career, I have been approached on the street, at tradeshows, and sometimes even at the front gate of my sprawling country estate by a multitude of new hunters seeking to be as great as me. 

I understand this is one of the burdens of being a bowhunting icon; people, naturally, want to be like me.   

Unfortunately, when you’ve been a bowhunter as long as I have—and experienced such unparalleled success hunting the biggest antlered and most dangerous game on every continent of this good earth—you know even as you are trying to impart some small degree of wisdom to these well-intentioned folks that most of what you are saying is bouncing of their gray matter like a blunt-tipped arrow shot at the side of a Holstein cow. 

Throughout my professional career, I have been asked to pen articles detailing my techniques for better bowhunting.  (Outdoor magazine editors tend to have an unspeakably distorted view when it comes to the intellectual capacity of their readers.  But, alas, that is another subject for another time…) Average bowhunters, they insist, could learn from me.  I seriously doubt it. 

Consider that your first challenge, dear reader.

Prove me wrong. 

I have come here to formally announce that, indeed, the rumors are true: I have temporarily agreed to pen a semi-regular column designed to elevate the venerable legion of bowhunters, like you, who seek to be as great as me. I am a man of quill and parchment—a writer in the literary tradition of Hemingway and Faulkner—but my editors tell me that in this modern age if God himself were seeking the best way to impart his divine knowledge to the greatest number of people He would undoubtedly use the internet to do it. 

I am set to depart to The Dark Continent where I expect to collect a mountain bongo that will better the Gold Medal specimen I killed last year in the wilds of central Kenya. Unless inspiration strikes otherwise between now and my return, I intend to further opine on the subject of confidence in bowhunting—specifically, why I have it (and you don’t)—along with my advice on how you might begin to develop the kind of ego (plus a contact list of outfitters and product manufacturers) I have found indispensable if your goal is to be a great bowhunter like me…or, at least, envied as a better-than-normal hunter by all your average friends.