Bringing Back the Ancient Choctaw Hunt

The old time Tribal folks used to say that when a hunter harvests a wild animal, it’s only because that animal has chosen to sacrifice itself to help humans. Be this as it may, the animals don’t usually make it easy.

The hunter rested his forehead on his bow in the twilight. The bow was made from a tree cut just a few hundred steps from the spot where he now sat. His chin touched the bowstring, painstakingly made from the leg sinew of deer harvested on this same landscape. As the sun started to set, he knew it would be getting too dark to hunt soon. The deer glided through the shadows in the woods, quietly but not quite silently. Hearing their stealthy approach, the hunter quickly made sure his feet were well set and the arrow nock was in just the right spot on bowstring. A large, hyper-alert doe stepped out into the open first. She was followed by an only slightly smaller, slightly less vigilant doe. Last came two young animals that had recently grown out of their spots. As they ate a bit of corn left on their well-worn trail, they faced different directions, four pairs of ears and eyes constantly scanning for danger…or any sound or movement. From time-to-time, their probing gaze went right into the eyes of the hunter 10 yards away, as their ears strained to hear the slightest noise from his direction. He squinted his own eyes so theirs couldn’t make contact. Silence, and then the deer returned to eating again only for a minute before repeating the routine again, and again, and again. The hunter hoped the tree trunk right behind him was concealing his outline enough. A heavy deer, probably a buck, sauntered more noisily up through the dry leaves, remaining just out of sight. His presence took a bit of the does’ attention off of the hunter. The older doe slipped back into the woods. With her off of his case, the hunter knew his chances of being successful had gone up a bit, at least until the buck arrived on the scene to add his own vigilant pair of eyes and ears. Soon, the second mature doe moved herself up in front of the two smaller animals and gave the hunter a quartering away shot at her - an angle that would be less observable. He had managed to draw his bow back halfway when she sensed its movement and lifted her head to look straight up at him. He froze, trying to hold still enough with the weight of the half-drawn bow extended out there in thin air that she wouldn’t see any more movement. Eventually, she looks back down. The bow quickly goes to full draw and a stone-tipped arrow streaks into the warm twilight at 100 miles an hour. A cloud of dust erupts as the five animals burst away from the sound of the bow. The target runs with a Choctaw arrow buried behind her front leg ten inches deep.

This scene could have happened 1,000 years ago, but it happened here on Nan Awaya Farm last night. With the deer’s natural predators - wolves and mountain lions - effectively gone from this part of the world, there’s not much to keep deer populations in balance. The responsibility falls to human hunters. Over the past few years, we’ve harvested deer on this land several times with scoped riffles and antique-style guns. For more than half my life, though, I’ve dreamed of harvesting a deer with a traditional Choctaw bow and a stone tipped arrow. This post shares a bit of the the journey of going on a traditional Choctaw bow hunt in 2024.

I made my first fully functional traditional archery set at 16. I used to go out into the woods and stalk deer on foot to see how close I could get. As I practiced, I was able to get myself within arrow shot of an animal sometimes. Once, I came within two or three steps of a doe before I intentionally scared the animal, fearing she’d kick me if we actually touched. I planned to take my favorite bow with me one day as I stalked deer and that would be my first hunt. Then, at 22, I came down with a bad case of Lyme disease as a result of interacting with a landscape out of balance - 6 weeks of IVs, 4 years of strong antibiotics, and a doctor’s prohibition on eating deer meat ever again. So much for that dream, or so it seemed. I’ve been over Lyme disease for a long time now, and this summer I thought I’d ask my doctor to see if maybe I could eat deer meat again. Surprisingly, the answer was “yes”, as long as it’s well cooked. I decided to celebrate by going on that traditional hunt I’ve wanted to do for so long.

In our previous blog post, I shared the process of making my bow and most of the archery set from materials collected right here on the farm this summer. I grew up shooting a “D” bow all the time and was pretty accurate with it. With the prohibition on eating deer meat, though, I’d gotten away from target practicing with the bows I make, and instead tested their effectiveness mostly by seeing how far they’d shoot. To get my aim back, I fastened a paper plate onto a round hay bale as a target. I shot with a tertiary draw (traditional Choctaw), pulling the arrow to my mouth.

Consistency is a key. Once you have your shooting form down pat, it’s not necessarily about spending hours every day shooting. For a deer hunt, usually the only shot that matters is that very first one. I’d go out once or twice a day, shooting only three or six arrows, training to be able to step into a shot cold and hit the target the size of a deer’s vital area at 10-15 yards reliably.

I used to wonder how our grandfathers practiced with fragile stone points on the ends of their arrows. I’ve since learned that they didn’t. They practiced using a group of arrows with no tips at all. When they felt comfortable with their accuracy, they’d take a few of their favorite practice arrows and attach stone points. The tiny addition of weight represented by a small-sized stone arrow point has no significant effect on arrow flight. Once the stone points were attached, those particular arrows wouldn’t be fired again until pointed towards an animal or enemy. I did the same (for deer, of course).

This fall, taught me something else that I really hadn’t thought much about before. Hunting a deer with a traditional archery set is not the same thing as stalking close to one. To harvest a deer, it's not just getting close to it; you have to be close to the animal with an open path between you and it for the arrow to travel. You have to put yourself into that open path (meaning the animal can clearly see you if it looks in your direction). You have to lift your bow, draw it back and release an arrow, all without the animal running or ducking before the arrow gets to it. Deer have superhuman senses of smell, hearing and peripheral vision; they have super human speed, agility, and reflexes. Traditional hunting can be really hard.

I'm being mentored in hunting this year by our friend and neighbor, Michael. Michael is a Choctaw and an experienced bow hunter. Last year, he wanted to take on a new level of challenge; I taught him how to make a Choctaw bow. He’s been making and using some great self-made bows to harvest deer over the past two seasons. With Michael’s help, I built a brush blind of cedar trees next to a deer trail not far from our house. With a little corn in front, it’s not hard to get close to a deer this way. The challenge is that although the deer can’t see you, you can’t see them either. One morning, I was in the blind and a deer came up. I could see her outline through the brush. She was close enough that I could smell her and I knew she’d be catching wind of me any second. Watching her outline through the cedars, I saw her turn around. I rose out of cover with my bow half-drawn, expecting to see her flank. Instead of turning away as I thought, she had turned toward me! She was looking right into my face from 5 yards away! Blast off! A bound, a stomp, a snort, and she was gone. After many more hours, I finally got my first shot at a deer from the blind, but with her looking at me, it was at an odd angle over some brush. The arrow whizzed harmlessly a foot over her front shoulder.

Another lesson learned - If you can’t clearly see what the deer is doing before you move from cover, your chances of success with a traditional bow are very low. If more than one deer are on the scene together and you can’t see them, your chances are zero. I moved up into a tree a few feet away, again with help from Michael.

It was incredible to actually be able to see the animals up close. I got to watch some funny things. As a young deer ate, an even smaller one came up to join her. The first little deer took her front hoof and whopped the other deer on the back of the neck, pushing her nose into the ground until she moved away from the corn (Amy and I always talk about buffalo love when we see those animals treat each other roughly, I guess this is deer love). Another time, a wily, mature doe spotted me and was trying to figure out if I was a predator. She looked; she sniffed the air in my direction. Suddenly, she stomped all four feet into the ground, acting like she was bolting away, but she didn’t actually go anywhere - all while looking back to see if I was going to chase her. With few big predators around here; where’d she learn that move?

The very first night in the tree, I shot a big doe. It was not a good shot. The arrow hit her shoulder blade and stopped with almost no penetration. We spent most of the next day seeing if we could track her. 200 yards from where I shot her, I came upon a dead doe, same size, same age, lying in the area my deer had run. She was partially eaten by buzzards, but she clearly had no arrow wound. Somehow, this was a different deer! I’m out on this land all the time. I come across skeletonized deer here occasionally, but in 9 years, I’d not come across a recently killed deer with skin and meat still on even once. The chances of finding a deer like that on this day and it not being my deer must have been about a billion to one. As we continued to look, we found yet another deer, then a third, all dead on the same day and within 150 yards of each other. If you spend a lot of time out on the land, occasionally you encounter some really strange things. Coming across all of those other deer while looking for the one I shot was eerie. It felt like one of those Star Trek episodes where reality shifts. Some more scouting the second day turned up a cloud of buzzards over the neighbor's land, another dead animal at the fence line, and a collection beer bottles thrown from its position onto our land. A drunken, mass shooting binge, leaving wounded animals to travel hundreds of yards onto our farm to die? - I hope the real explanation is something completely different, but that’s what it looks like.

A hunter who has any respect or morals at all wants to make a perfect shot that will harvest an animal cleanly, without needless suffering. I felt bad about shooting the deer in the shoulder, she will almost certainly heal. As you hunt for a while without success, you realize that a shot opportunity like what I had with her is not just one missed shot opportunity. It’s a let down on all the months of time and effort that have lead up to making that shot opportunity possible. After you miss a couple times, the pressure builds. I set up traditional weapons tables at public events for the Tribe all the time. People always ask me if my equipment gets used in hunting. In the past, I’d let them know that I sometimes make hunting equipment for other people to use. Now, I’ll have to tell them, yes I have hunted with the things I make, no, I haven't harvested an animal, but one of my stone arrow points is lodged in the scapula of a deer, still running around out there somewhere. This is due to my lack experience in judging shot height, not because of any failing on the part of the Choctaw archery equipment. Of course, some people won’t see it that way. They’ll take it as a sign that Choctaw archery is primitive, that Choctaw culture is primitive, and maybe even that Choctaw people are… After two weeks without success, it’s not only the thought of loosing an arrow, or of wounding an animal, there’s also this mounting self-pressure from wanting your hunt to do justice to a traditional lifeway and to your community. You hope you’ll be able to keep these thoughts of the front of your mind the next time you pull an arrow back on a deer, but how? The only thing is some more practice.

I made a new set of untipped arrows and practiced with them from up in the tree stand. A quarter inch adjustment on my string placement, and I could hit a target the size of a deer’s vital area from the stand 9 out of 10 times from distances and angles reflective of what I'd likely get in hunting. Experience gained, and lesson learned. Time to get back up in the tree and try again.

Back to the beginning - The arrow releases and a cloud of dust erupts as the five deer burst away from the sound of the bow. The target runs with a Choctaw arrow bobbing from behind her front leg. In 10 seconds, I hear her go down. My heart is thumping. An hour later, Amy, Micheal, his son Brock, and I go look for this deer in the dark. There she lays; her run was less than 100 yards. Not that I have ever had a lack of respect for deer, but this fall's hunt is giving me even more respect for them. They are amazing creatures with their own, sometimes funny personalities. This doe took pity on me and sacrificed herself so that Amy and I will have meat, a gorgeous hide to tan, tendons to use for thread or bowstring, and bones to make flintknapping tools and pottery temper. I express my gratitude to her as she lays where she dropped. The arrow (title image) lies a few feet away, missing its tip and soaked in blood.

During butchering, we would find that my arrow went around a rib, centered through the heart, gashed a rib on the other side, hit a leg bone and stopped against the hide. Miraculously, other than just a microgram of material missing from the tip there is absolutely no damage to the point. It could go right back on the same arrow and be used again, but I’m going to keep them both just as they are, as a reminder of my first traditional deer hunt. This may be the only way I hunt from now on.

Choctaw traditional culture and food are being revitalized in exciting ways right now. Most of the focus has been on what were traditionally women’s contributions. This is as it should be, but men’s traditional roles are important too. They bring balance. Holding a traditional bow and arrow that you made while standing so close to a deer that you can smell her, knowing that one tiny flinch from you and she’ll be gone, having to stealthily draw an arrow in just the right moment, an adrenaline rush as your own heart pounds - this is a different thing from hunting with a riffle or even a compound bow. 300 years ago, any Choctaw youth would have probably harvested his first deer with a bow by age 14. My first traditional bow harvest came later, but now that I have finally done it, I feel a little more Indigenous.

I’m grateful to Michael for all of the help and patience he’s shown me. I hope that other Choctaw people will take up the traditional art of the deer hunt. I could see the Tribe offering some really deep cultural programming around that. That could be a life changing experience for some community members. It has been for me.