Well it was around the year 1980 at New Mexico Boy's Ranch. My son Don ( the younger of two by 9 years) and I were down on the second ditch, which was a drain for the other four irrigation ditches that ran through the Ranch doing some bowfishing. Don was about a hundred yards up the ditch from me and we were watching some better "holes" for movement when he saw a muskrat on the far bank and shot a arrow just over it's back, then launched two more in almost the same place missing it again. He had to have those arrows back because they cost him 50cents apiece. We built the arrows in our shop and the practice was to charge for the arrows and the boys would take better care of them. Think about what it would be like if you gave them to the boys, there would be no way to keep up making arrows, Huh.
So Don strips down and in he goes in water just above the waist and retrieves his arrows and turns around to come back and low and behold, he spots two rattlesnakes
floating along downstream toward him. Since he can't get back up the bank at that point, he starts yelling for me and headed downstream as fast as he could knowing all the time that the snakes would overtake him soon, but I got to where he was first and handed him the end of my Browning Cobra Recurve bow tip to hold on to and hefted him up on the bank and the snakes went on past. He said if I had not got there in time , there would have been a hectic battle with them snakes because he would have been whackin them snakes with his arrow tips because he wouldn't have just gave up without fightin back. The little bow takes a 39" string and that was one of the very first short recurves made. It was my first bow and it still shoots good. Most of the carp that we shot went in the garden rows about eight inches down for fertilizer. Then there were the rabbits. I lost count of the cottontails after 220 something that I took with it.
Posted elsewhere is the story of when I went into the archery shop to buy a bow, a guy was lying on the floor knocked cold with blood coming from between his eyes.. He had been in the process of stringing a bow with the step through method and the tip under great pressure rolled off the side of his thumb and whacked him right between the eyes. We got the blood stopped and the guy came to, got up and paid the shop owner for the bow and left. Now I am thinking,"Do I really want a bow if that is what can happen?", Oh well it was probably just a freak accident and I bought the Cobra anyway.

__________________
Kermit the frog says " Time is fun when you are having flies. "

Be Positive-- I can do this!!