About Truemark
So, why the personal background? Pretty simple, really. The following pages will contain bows, arrows, accessories and advice about archery. I want you to be able to feel confident when you buy something from me that it will be as described and will fulfill the function for which you are buying it. I want you to know I’m knowledgeable about archery and that I will stand behind the products and advice I offer. We all work hard for our money and it should be well spent. That’s it.
I started shooting a bow when I was eight. I guess you could call it a bow…seemed more like a olive sucker to me. But with a piece of kitchen twine and some smaller suckers, it made a right fine hunting weapon. Especially when you’re hunting big, old nasty dragon flies and grasshoppers. My Daddy had this monstrous bow that I couldn’t pull so, in frustration I went out and plucked the olive tree. I still have Dad’s monstrous bow, but nowadays it seems to be just a 30 lb fiberglass recurve that I almost broke in half when I pulled it again, 38 years after my first attempt. Makes a pretty fine war bow these days.
Now Pop, in his infinite wisdom, had decreed that all small boys must eat everything they kill, so shooting a olive-sucker bow probably saved the lives of many animals. But, since life is about bigger and better, it wasn’t long before I learned how to make real bows, with semi-straight arrows and enough fire power to attempt birds, rabbits and the occasional mountain lion. It was during this phase that I learned my first important lesson about using a bow to hunt big game: Rabbits can levitate! Really! If I had a nickel for every time a bunny levitated over my arrows, I could afford to retire instead of working two jobs.
The other big lesson I learned about archery (and maybe life) came via the farmers in the area. They would pay me a quarter for every pigeon I could shoot out of the rafters of their barns. Seems the pigeons liked to roost in those high-up rafters, and being bird-brained and none too sanitary, they would…defecate…onto the hay. This, of course, gave the cows all kinds of digestive difficulties. It also gave the milk a funny flavor. Anyway, the farmers were keen to keep these pests out of the barns and I was keen to make big bucks, so it was a marriage of convenience. It was years before I figured out it was costing me money, since almost every time I missed I left an arrow behind, stuck in those high-up rafters where only the pigeons were comfortable. We won’t discuss how many splinters and near-death experiences I had trying to recover my ammunition. On the other hand, doesn’t nothin’ taste better n’ charred “squab” after a hard day hunting in the barns and I ate more than a few of them critters.
Over the years I continued to shoot as much as time and circumstance allowed. Then, in A.S. 25, being 1990 Gregorian I believe, I discovered the Society for Creative Anachronism. I was buying archery gear at NorthWest Archery (go figure) and saw a newspaper clipping of a bunch of people dressed in funny clothes shooting traditional archery equipment.
The caption said they were members of a historical re-enactment group. Hmmm…history and archery? I was intrigued. Through dint of much detective work I was able to find representatives of this group, attended an archery practice at Master Julian Edward Farnsworth’s home and moved from intrigued to hooked. The rest, they say, is history….
Over the years I have enjoyed some measure of success at archery within an SCA context. My favorite highlights include winning the Kingdom Protector tournament, being the first archer in AnTir to achieve the rank of Ludicrous Bowman and being asked to join the Order of the Grey Goose Shaft in 1999. If you want details, I can recommend the Prominent Archers section of that excellent website On Target Online. While you’re at it, check out all the other very fine archers of AnTir. We’re a pretty impressive group, if I may say so myself.
