Legend of the hunting bow

Every hunter needs a bow. Northerners think so. A real hunter is like a frosty snake - he lurks for a long time, and then strikes for sure. And if the game is large and fast, he chases it until it is exhausted, and then stings with one sure attack. After all, there is no one more dangerous than a hunted animal; it does not forgive mistakes.

Bone miners believe that a hunter needs only a bow and a knife for his craft. They despise traps, snares and wolf pits. The last ones especially. Hunting is always a one-on-one duel. Otherwise there will be no honor in the hunt. And northern hunters put their honor above all else.

For a hunter, a bow is not only a tool of his craft, it is his faithful friend and adviser who will never betray and will always lend a shoulder. Northerners make bows from brown snow birch - brittle and capricious wood. They don’t make houses out of it - after all, the roof will tend to collapse on the head of the unlucky builder. And in general, brown birch is only suitable for firewood. If you don't know how to talk to her.

First you need to find a special tree - not straight and slender, but twisted into three deaths, buried by an avalanche and resurrected in the spring. The future bow should be guessed in the tree trunk itself, in its knots, cracks and bends. When you have found a suitable birch tree, you should ask its will to become a friend to the hunter, and after the answer, if it, of course, agrees, cut it at the root, and fill the roots with pitch - each onion should have roots immersed in the frozen soil of the northern wastelands.

Then a bow is turned from a single trunk so that its body consists of a twisted and knotted core. The workpiece is then wrapped in cloth soaked in fat and honey from killer bees, as well as sprinkled with fresh thawed earth and the ashes of a sacrificial fire, and then buried five spans into the ground and left for a whole year. After this, the onions are dug up, peeled, polished and smoked over low heat. And then they wrap it again in greased cloth and bury it in the ground again until spring, and only then take it out and put a bowstring on it. Such a bow will never break in the hands of a hunter, will not fail and will never send an arrow past the target.

The string for a hunting bow is woven from wolf hair, women's hair and birch bark. This unites the three worlds that the northerners believe in - the world of the living, the world of animals and the earth, which many consider the world of the dead. Such a bowstring will never break and will never hit the hunter’s hand. Unless he points his bow at the defenseless.

The northerners believe in this, and invariably follow the traditions of making their bows. Scientific minds have long proven that it is impossible to make weapons from brown birch, however, all the samples that they were able to obtain from a tribe of bone hunters showed that they are in no way inferior in strength and strength to modern compound bows, and in accuracy and speed of arrow flight are far superior to them. However, when tested in battle, these bows instantly broke, and their fragments crumbled to dust before the arrow flew off the string.

A northern hunter would say that a bow is needed for hunting, not for battle, that they kill with it only out of necessity, and not for the sake of anything else, that honest hunting is the only way. But who will seriously listen to northern hunters who believe in fairy tales and make bows from brown birch?
Decide for yourself who to believe. But this hunting bow, made of brown birch, in an embroidered quiver with a dozen arrows feathered with peregrine falcon feathers is yours. Who knows, maybe he will bring you luck in your hunt. I believe in it.