[Illustration: SEVERAL STEPS IN ARROW MAKING]
Often we have shot at hawks and eagles high up in the air, where to
reach them we needed a very light arrow, and they have had many close
calls. For these we use a five-sixteenths dowel, feather it with short,
low cut parabolic feathers and put a small barbed head on it about an
inch in length. Such an arrow we paint dark green, blue, or black, so
that the bird cannot discern its flight.
It is great sport to shoot at some lazy old buzzard as he comes within
range. He can see the ordinary arrow, and if you shoot close, he
dodges, swoops downward, flops sidewise, twists his head round and
round, and speeds up to leave the country. He presents the comic
picture of a complacent old gentleman suddenly disturbed in his
monotonous existence and frightened into a most unbecoming loss of
dignity.
Eagle arrows can be used for lofty flights, to span great canyons, to
rout the chattering bluejay from the topmost limb of a pine, and sooner
or later we shall pierce an eagle on the wing.
We make another kind of shaft that we call a "floo-floo." In Thompson's
_Witchery of Archery_ he describes an arrow that his Indian companion
used, which gave forth such a fluttering whistle when in flight that
they called it by this euphonious name.
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