Archery in Cameroon

Archery has so many different styles and many of those styles can be found in wide variety in Africa, with many regions having their own distinctive brand of archery. Below are some samples just from Cameroon, a wartorn region under threat from Boko Haram (an extremist group similar to ISIS which threatens Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad).

Due to the threat from Boko Haram, some locals in Cameroon have taken to protecting themselves with archery equipment.

Archery in Cameroon

Archery in Cameroon

Cameroon has a long history of archery. It is depicted within government symbols of power, on their stamps, as cultural icons, and local sayings and proverbs. It permeates their culture.

Archery competitions and events also display the skill of local Cameroon archers.

And send their local archers to the Rio Olympics.

Bowhunting is also quite common in Cameroon, but unfortunately that is often the result of white archers coming over from the United States and other countries, hoping for some big game hunting.

Because nothing tells the world that Americans have tiny packages more easily than going over to Africa to kill endangered animals.

Here is a thought. Why not go to Cameroon, but instead of being a prick and killing endangered animals, why not be nice and just socialize with the local archers instead? Learn more about their culture. Maybe buy a bow or a set of arrows made by a local Cameroon bowyer/fletcher. Learn more about local archery practices that go back millenia.

And then post photos of it and set a good example of what it is like to be an archery tourist as opposed to an endangered animal murdering bowhunter. Show that it is possible to travel the world, have fun, and not kill things during your travels.

Like this post? Leave a comment below and perhaps I will write similar posts about Nigerian archery, South African archery, Zimbabwe archery, and more!

Ballistic Bowstrings from Bradford Ontario

For years now I have been purchasing Ballistic Bowstrings from Tent City in Toronto, which apparently are made in Bradford, Ontario. I am currently looking for archery tourist locations to visit near Bradford.

I figure it is only a short distance from Toronto and should be worth the trip.

Plus when I buy bowstrings I usually buy 3 to 5 of them at once, so maybe I should stock up while I am there.

Arrowhead Souvenirs

One of the things I like to do is look for unusual arrowheads while on vacation. Like the amethyst arrowheads shown below:

Sometimes the arrowheads will be in the form of a necklace, other times they will be normal stone arrowheads made of a variety of materials.

eg. Near Hilton Falls (Milton, Ontario) there is a park called Crawford Lake Conservation Area, which has a museum / archaeological dig site for aboriginal Canadians. The site also boasts a gift shop which sells flint and/or obsidian arrowheads. When I was last there I purchased 20 flint arrowheads and 1 obsidian arrowhead. (I even went through them carefully and picked out flint arrowheads that were the same size and shape, and presumably, weight. I then took them home and carefully weighed them all to pick out a few for attaching to wooden arrows.)

I especially like finding unusual types of arrowheads. So amethyst arrowheads like the ones shown above make great souvenirs in my opinion.

Arrowheads on the ground, all across Mexico

A common sight in Mexico is to find ancient arrowheads on the ground. In places where flint or obsidian are plentiful, you can find lots of them. Such locations were popular with aboriginal flintknappers and the arrowheads you find will be "the rejects" that weren't up to their standards, but will probably still be a prize for your archery souvenir collection.

Arrowheads can be found almost anywhere in Mexico. Beaches. Flintknapping locations. Archaeological dig sites. Ancient garbage dumps. The sites of battles. Prehistoric campsites. Hunting grounds. And so forth.

And they can be made of a wide variety of stones, not just flint or obsidian.

Found arrowhead on a beach

How to buy Counterfeit Archery Equipment in China

Or How NOT To.

In 2014 China had over 1200 manufacturers making archery equipment. Factories churning them out in bulk. By 2016 that number has likely gone up, likely between 1300 to 1400 factories.

But not all of them are reputable. Roughly 50 to 70 of those factories are churning out counterfeit archery equipment. Counterfeits are everywhere in China. Over 4% of China's GDP is dependent on the counterfeit industry. Counterfeit cars, counterfeit cellphones, counterfeit computers, etc. It is all about the brand name and abusing the power of brand names to make fast money.

Counterfeit

偽造 or 伪造

Wèizào

When it comes to counterfeit archery equipment most of it, approx. 60%, is arrows, and the other 40% is bows, arrow rests, arrowheads, broadheads, stabilizers, quivers, etc. Even electronic gadgets can be faked, such as range finders usually used by hunters. All using brand names and then sold overseas as the "real thing" for either the full price or a discounted price in bulk.

A quick and easy way to deliberately buy counterfeit archery equipment is to go on websites like Alibaba and Aliexpress and then look for brand name items. It will be advertised as "wholesale products in bulk" and you will be amazed how cheap some of the products you can buy in bulk are.

The trick to counterfeit goods is that they are cheaply made and break easier. So bow limbs will break easily. Arrows will snap mid-shot. Arrowheads will get dented or break easier. That sort of thing.

In the case of mechanical / electronic items like range finders, those will be made with cheaper parts, and overheat easily, break after two months, etc. When that happens it damages the reputation of the brand.

When browsing Aliexpress I also noticed how often archery equipment will be mislabeled. For example I found an Olympic style recurve bow being advertised as "outdoor hunting equipment archery take down long bow 28lbs 70'' bow riser longbow"... Clearly a case of trying to use keywords to try and get more sales.

Because apparently they don't know what a hunting bow looks like. Or what a longbow looks like. It was a red and white Olympic-style bow with cheap wood/fibreglass limbs, being sold for $78 + shipping, for 1 unit.

Having browsed the costs of such bows before, the proper price of that bow should really be between $33 to $50 + the cost of shipping. $78 is a ripoff.

Also it was being sold under the brand name "Bear", as in the Bear Archery company of Indiana, USA - one of the biggest American manufacturers of traditional hunting bows and compound bows.

Here is one of the photos that were shown with that listing. (Anyone familiar with Bear Archery knows they don't sell anything that looks like the photo below. See http://www.beararchery.com/bows/traditional to see what I mean. In the case below, they are using the name "Bear" in an effort to sell more, ignoring what the bows even look like.)

 For fun I decided to search for "compound bow" on Aliexpress and see what came up... Here are the results, in the order I was presented with them:

1. Aluminum arrows with camouflage on them.
2. A children's recurve bow.
3. "Camo Dream" set of compound bow with various items with it. "Some assembly required." I have the strange feeling everything comes in a Lego box, but with no instructions of how to put it together. Ha!
4. Mechanical release, caliper style.
5. An arrow rest that looks like those made by the "Hostage" company, but under brand name it was labelled "Brand New".
6. Mechanical release, caliper style. (Looks exactly like the one above, but is $4 more expensive.)
7. Twelve carbon arrows with 340 spine, pre-fletched with arrowsheads. Price $37.99. (Price in Canada for equivalent should be about $80 to $100+, depending on the brand and model type.)
8. Mechanical release, caliper style. Finally, a slightly different style!
9. Set of 6 fibreglass arrows for "compound bow". Seriously... fibreglass arrows on a compound bow? Get ready to pull broken fibreglass out of your arm after they break midshot.
10. 9 feet of D loop nocking string. 9 feet of the stuff.

Okay, so out of the top 10 results shown, only 1 of those was actually the item I searched for, a compound bow. The other things had something, maybe, to do with compound bows.

I continued scrolling down and most of the remaining items were arrows and arrowheads.

Arrows being the most commonly counterfeited item as far as archery equipment goes. Arrowheads I am guessing probably ranks up there too.

Thus lets pretend you are traveling in China as a tourist and you decide to stop and buy some archery equipment, what should you buy? Well...

#1. Go traditional. Don't buy anything "brand name" in China because chances are likely they are counterfeits. Instead try to find locally made traditional equipment. Chinese bowyers who don't work in a factory, but instead make their own bows, their own arrows, and do it the traditional way.

#2. Contact the companies back in the USA (or wherever) and ask them if there are any reputable stores in China that sell their equipment. This way you can go to the store, buy what you are looking for, and you know the company in question supplies products to that store and it is indeed the "real deal".

#3. What the heck, lets just get cheap bamboo arrows! No seriously, bamboo arrows are so cheap you can buy a large number of them for very little. On Aliexpress you can get 12 shafts for $20, but that is actually expensive by bamboo arrow standards. eg. On Alibaba I found a seller who was selling 100 bamboo arrows for $10. That is 10 cents per arrow... but sadly I know you can find them even cheaper, to the tune of 1 cent arrows if you are willing to buy in bulk. If you buy a hundred of them so cheaply, are you really going to care that they break easily? Especially when a normal "good arrow" in North America is about $10? Probably not.

 However before you decide to buy super cheap bamboo arrows, remember that those bamboo arrows were probably put together by children working in slave labour conditions where they are beaten if they do sloppy work. Huzzah, you just supported slavery in China. (Technically China outlawed slavery decades ago, but the practice continues to exist.)

#4. Find the local archery clubs in the big cities around China. Go there. Meet someone and use your limited Chinese (or their limited English) and find out where the "good archery shops" are located in that city. Then go there and buy equipment which should be locally made, hopefully not in sweatshop conditions.

#5. When in doubt, ask an old archer. Not to be ageist, but elderly archers often know all the best places to buy archery equipment. Definitely don't ask some 20 year old or a teenager who barely even knows how to shoot. No, ask the guy in his 60s who has been shooting for 40 years and he can probably tell you the best bowyers and the best fletchers - or better yet, he might BE a bowyer or a fletcher.

Hot Tip!

Do not buy archery equipment in "souvenir shops". Those are fakes not meant to be shot at all. They are just for looks.

One Last Tip!

If the price looks too good to be true, it is probably a counterfeit.

The Jarawas - Archery in India

The Jarawas / Sentinelese people of India are highly protective of their culture and way of life, living as they have done so for approx. 10,000 years, their culture virtually unchanged during that time.

How do they manage to stay isolated and unchanged?

Lots of arrows and vigilance.

Intruders on their land are often met with a very large number of arrows. Those few who have encountered them peacefully have witnessed them bowfishing, some impressive feats of archery and some unusual methods of bowmaking and stringmaking. (The image below shows a man wetting his bowstring with saliva to make it tighter and more durable.)

The Jarawas are not the only people like this either. But they are one of the few who remain isolated and virtually untouched.

Visiting them as a tourist however is not recommended. They are just as likely to shoot you. A fellow archer however, coming in peace - they might get them curious however.

Above a Jarawas man shows off his ever-present bow and arrows. 

Note that they don't fletch their arrows, since fletching interferes with bowfishing accuracy.

Below a Jarawas man sharpens a metal arrowhead made from scavenged metal.

 Above, a group of Jarawas men and women are fishing with bows and nets.

Below, two Jarawas men show off their pre-draw archery form. Note the very wide open stance.

February 23rd - International Samurai Day

In a fitting tribute to February 23rd, International Samurai Day, aka "Day of the Samurai", we offer the following images of samurai archers.

In addition to swordsmanship and archery, samurai were also expected to master horsemanship and many other skills, and they were expected to honour the ways of Bushido, the samurai code of conduct.

While being a samurai was predominantly a male occupation, it was not unheard of for women to also become samurai, like the photograph below of a female samurai.