Years of training and persistence paid off for an Oklahoma hunter after he harvested a 300-pound black bear using a primitive bow, string, arrow and stone point earlier this month.
According to information from Fox 23 in Tulsa, Fox Caleb Flies, 26, pf Norman has been crafting primitive longbows by hand for several years and is the owner of the online retail store Ravenclaw Archery.
Flies regularly makes hunting trips with his longbows and during a recent hunt in LeFlore County, he tracked a 300-pound black bear and was able to shoot the bear from only seven yards away.
Flies said in a social media post the bear expired about 20 yards away from his hunting stand. Flies used bear attractants to draw the bear in.
The longbow used in the bear hunt was made out of natural materials, including a 55-pound Osage self-bow with copperhead skin, beavertail grip and shelf, Douglas fir shafts with self-nocks, Obsidian heads he knapped himself, sinew wrapping and hide glue for hafting, Flies said in a social media post.
In the late 1900s, black bears began making a comeback in Oklahoma after the successful reintroduction of black bears in the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, according to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. Biologists with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation have collected biological data mainly from bear surveys and research projects.
lies said the bear kill could be the first primitive bear kill in the area in over a hundred years.
The archery season for bears ended on Sunday.
