Bows, Arrows, & Hunting

Bows, Arrows & Hunting

This is our listing of all our classes in this category, on the ones listed in the Current Classes Section are scheduled the rest are TBA.

Current Classes

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Event Date
Flint Knapping Stone Tools
  • July 15, 2023 10:00 am
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Roots Rendezvous
  • September 2, 2023 9:00 am
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Traditional Bow Hunting Intensive

Build your own wooden bow and arrows from natural materials and learn to hunt your own food. Getting into hunting, especially bow hunting can seem a daunting goal. This course is designed to meet many skill and experience levels as we take you through tracking, scouting, hunt planning and tactics, conservation plots, camouflage, stalking, bow and arrow building, archery, and more.

Hide Tanning

For most of the Homo sapiens timeline on earth, humans have been transforming the skins of animals to meet a wide variety of material needs.  One such need is to provide one of the most basic levels of shelter: clothing.  These days the skills of leather-making remain a mystery for most people, regardless of how often we depend upon it.  In this 3-day workshop you will learn how to transform a fresh deer hide into soft, luxuriant buckskin.

Animal Processing

Join us for day of learning the entire process of bringing an animal from whole to breaking it down into its many useful parts. Learn to get over the confusion and fear of what to do, and learn to take part in the creation of your food from the most basic level. We will cover some basics of slaughtering and then focus on skinning, gutting, cleaning, basic at home butchering techniques, sausage making, jerky making, caring for your tools, as well as some basics on how to utilize the hide, bones, and sinew.  Expect to get hands on!

Flint Knapping Stone Tools

Shaping rocks into beautiful and functional tools is a fun and challenging skill that has been practiced for over 3 million years! This course is a basic stone tool class for beginner and intermediate flint knappers. We will learn the basics of percussion, indirect percussion, and pressure flaking as our methods for reducing the stone. We will then look at the process involved for making hide scrapers, wood scrapers, saws, knives, blades, and projectile points such as arrowheads and spear tips. Tools and Materials are provided. Participants are welcome to camp right before, during, or after the course but food is not provided so please bring a bag lunch.

Bow Building

A four day class where students start with a stave and end with a beautiful and functional wooden long bow. During the class students will learn stave selection, bow design and performance, drawing and rough shaping, profiling, floor tillering, tillering, string making, and finishing. We also take a quick look at instinctive archery. Expect long days of hand tool use and a totally new understanding of wood.

Arrow Making

Traditional hunters often spent more time perfecting their arrows than their bows. In the act of hunting it is the arrow that delivers the killing blow, and its quality and precision are of the utmost importance. Thus, the process of building primitive arrows is an intricate art that is often overlooked. In this course we will cover shaft harvesting, preparation and straightening, pitch preparation, fletching and hafting.

White Tail Projects

The White Tailed Deer is the most commonly hunted ungulate in North America. Like all the mammals we eat, it has many fantastic materials sources beyond the meat and tanned hide. In this course we will dive into those most useful resources that can be taken from deer and other mammals. We will process bones and antler, working on projects such as knives, awls, fish hooks, and more. We will get into raw hide projects, learning how simple it is to turn a fresh skin into raw hide, as well as how to shape containers with this mold-able yet durable material. We will look at sinew processing and use, as well as produce some hide glue. This is an awesome class for anyone who is looking to learn how to get the most from and animals they have raised, hunted, or scavenged.

Raw Hide Craft

There are many ways to utilize an animals skin. One of the most easily accessible and useful techniques is crafting with rawhide. In this short one day course we will go over processing rawhide from a fresh skin and how to source materials. Then we will get into several approaches to using rawhide, from straps, to bags, to sheaths, to boxes and other containers. All materials are included.

Advanced Flint Knapping

If you have taken knapping before and want to grow your skills, this class is for you. I will work with everyone individually at their skill level, and my job is to help you take your knapping to the next level! This class will focus on a slew of advanced topics such as: refining accuracy for percussion and alternate supporting methods, adding power for pressure flaking, learning indirect percussion and several different punching types, fluting, and blade cores. We will also heavily our attention on bi facial reduction techniques and strategies to help student  control over the center contours and thinning process.