FIELD NOTES / 02
FIELD NOTES / 02
HE LOVED ARCHERY
By Andri Elko
When I was a kid, I dog-eared a Bear Archery Kodiak Cub recurve in the Cabela’s catalog. I saved my pennies to buy it myself. I never really had an allowance, but I took babysitting jobs when I could. My friend Chelsea and I painted rocks and walked around town trying to sell those to people we passed by. We also made and sold friendship bracelets and lemonade.
I look back on those early years and smile at our youthful entrepreneurial spirit. But mostly, I smile because there are people in our community who were kind enough to buy rocks from kids; and supportive enough to shell out hard-earned money for a Dixie cup of lemonade. Chelsea and I, joyfully oblivious to our surroundings, sold that lemonade out of a ramshackle weathered-wood stand we set up right next to a husky’s old dog house. The memory in my mind is a quaint and quintessential picture, but, in all honest likelihood, the reality of that dog yard was probably not so quaint and not so quintessential. Lol.
I still have that Kodiak Cub. I plinked with it on the beach in front of our house for summers on end as a kid. I ripped DuctTape into X’s for target-marks on cardboard boxes. With that little bow, one or two good-sized rocks set inside a box was enough to weigh it down. If I shot well, I’d peel off the X’s and bring them in to show my Dad. For years — like maybe 10+ years — one of those “good X’s” was stuck onto the cover of his address book that he kept in the corner shelf near the kitchen. It’s interesting, the little things life chooses to keep around.
My next bow was a Jennings Star compound bow. I still remember the day it arrived at our home in a large homemade wooden case. I anticipated that bow with such deep and barely containable excitement! This compound bow was a BIG deal! It was also the first time I ever negotiated a trade of any magnitude.
His name was George P. Mann, a bowhunter from Alabama. He was visiting us in Unalakleet for a grizzly hunt that he had booked with my Dad. I was 11 or 12 years old at that time. My swarm of curiosities and questions about bows and archery were met with such patience and kindness from Mr. Mann.
Before he left Alaska (after a successful bowhunt) he made me an offer. The deal was this: First, I would tie 100 Egg-Sucking Leech fly-fishing flies and send them to him. Then, he would send me a compound bow set-up. Honestly, a place remains in my heart that still — still —can’t believe it.
I spent the next few weeks in my bedroom covered in fuchsia chenille fibers. My fingers dyed purple from marabou. Gosh, I cringe looking back, thinking how pathetic those flies must have been. I was just a kid, of course I thought they looked absolutely incredible, but now I’m old enough to know better.
It’s only in hindsight that I now see the legacy in Mr. Mann’s gift. He didn’t make that trade because he needed flies to fish with. He didn’t give that bow to me simply because I wanted a bow. No. He gave that bow to me because he loved archery.
By giving a kid a bow, and making me work for it and value it — he was planting seeds and cultivating the next generation. By this, I mean both the next generation in terms of my own sense of value and pride in accomplishment and also in terms of the next generation of archery.
George P. Mann is a legend. He is. He lived and breathed bowhunting and conservation. He shared it as naturally and freely as air. His enduring legacy is beyond any person or comprehension, really. All I know is that his love of archery is reflected in my own love of archery. And I know, for certain, that my life would be unimaginably different, void in an unknowable yet perceptible way, had he not been a part of it.
When I outgrew that Jennings that he gave me, I gave it to another young girl in our village. It was never really mine anyway. It was a seed, a seed that grew and dispersed — like dandelion swept up by a gust of wind.
I’ve had other bows since, some traditional and some compound. I’m not a purist when it comes to traditional archery — but I do prefer it. Just like I prefer swinging dry-flies for grayling, but I also slug out blaze-orange Pixies and chartreuse Vibrax when I want to limit out on salmon and fill the freezer. And there’s the newer magic lure, the Flying-C (my now not-so-secret secret weapon.)
Subsequently, as I write this it has me thinking back…
Mr. Mann is also who taught me how to cast a fly-rod and fly-fish. He offered his rod for me to use, gave me casting advice, and let me have-at-it as long as I wanted. I remember standing there near sundown on the edge of the dock, surrounded by the sound of crickets and warm southern air, practicing my cast on the Alabama catfish pond.
I think there’s room and reason for all ways, and a well-suited way for the right occasion. And, if we’re lucky, we’re blessed with people who teach us the right way along the way. Our world is made by what we make of it.
Perhaps one simple crux this story has to offer is this: Gifts and choices alike, are enriched not so much by their what, but by their why. And their true value, the kind that endures, is imbued by the giver of the gift and by the person behind every choice. It’s people that matter most.
Read about Mann Wildlife Learning Museum here: https://www.montgomeryzoo.com/mann-museum/the-mann-museum
* Photo of today’s early May snow.