A kill that shows ancient traditions live on
Oklahoma bowyer focused on primitive archery skill for his black bear hunt
In modern history, it’s most likely a first for Oklahoma, though no definitive records exist.
What bowhunter Caleb Flies did on the opening day of Oklahoma’s black bear season might be an act of hunting not seen since the times only Native Americans hunted here, maybe before in the case of black bears. History and tradition tugged at the 26-year-old hunter’s soul as he drew on a black bear on October 1, 2023.
The weather was a stifling 89 degrees, and the bear was only a few yards away. Flies was a hunter with challenges ahead, but he was skilled, prepared, and, ultimately, a little lucky.
Before he gets around to telling the heart-stopping part of the tale when he arrows the healthy, fat black bear sow and how it took every bit of the 26-year-old Norman firefighter’s endurance to field dress what he guessed at 300 pounds and pack the meat and hide up the mountain in that summer-like heat, Flies’ relates how the history of primitive archery shapes his experience.
His bow, covered with copperhead snake skins, with a beaver-tail leather grip, and adorned with designs in crushed turquoise, was “primitive,” not simply traditional. It’s a bow hand carved by him from a stave harvested from an Oklahoma bois d’arc tree, what many folks call Osage orange. The string was hand-woven, 100 percent flax fiber, in a Flemish twist. He fashioned the Douglas fir arrow from a wooden dowel, feathers, glue, and sinew. The razor-like obsidian stone was a product of his still-developing skills at flintknapping.
Primitive vs. ‘trad’
He is one of a relative few on this continent who still works to keep alive a particular brand of primitive hunting tradition. It’s about fostering a kind of woodsmanship that not only heightens hunting skills and knowledge of the wildlife but relies upon a craftsman’s knowledge of the wilds, age-old skills at fashioning natural materials into lethal tools, and respect for Native American cultures.
“Primitive bowhunting,” even if common vernacular lumps it into “traditional archery,” is what its practitioners would say does not include store-bought recurves and modern longbows and arrows or other parts available in commercial production, or even those hand-crafted for boosted performance thanks to hi-tech materials.
“Probably, at least not since Native American times for a black bear in Oklahoma has someone done it all primitive, with a stone point,” Flies said. “It’s been done in Arkansas; they’ve had a bear season for a long time, but I wanted to be the first here; stone point, primitive bow.”
Other archers have killed Oklahoma bruins with primitive-style bows but used manufactured steel points. Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation biologists physically check every Oklahoma black bear taken during the October archery and muzzleloader seasons. None of them could recall, since the season first opened in October 2009, any black bear killed by an archer who fashioned all his equipment down to the stone point.
“In the records, we ask if it was taken with traditional or a compound bow or crossbow, but we don’t necessarily get into whether it was a primitive or whether it was a stone point,” said wildlife biologist Tres Phipps. That said, he agreed if such a thing took place, it would be common knowledge.
On the form for Flies’ bear, in addition to the checkmark next to the “T,” under archery, is the handwritten note, “Taken w/self osage longbow + self stone point.”
“It’s hard to find many people who still have all the knowledge to do these things,” Flies said. “We’re trying to keep those traditions alive.”
“I’ve been shooting trad archery as long as I can remember,” Flies said. “From the time I was a little kid, I don’t know, I was maybe 3 or 4? I had one of those little fiberglass bows my grandpa gave me.”
He was homeschooled as a younger kid, so he would do his homework and have plenty of time to fling arrows. He tagged along with his grandpa, hunting, fishing, and attending 3D archery tournaments.
But his first bowhunt ended poorly.
“I think I was 12 or 13. I hit a doe. I made a good shot behind the shoulder, but the arrow didn’t have enough penetration. I remember being sick about it, crying all night, worried about how I wounded that deer,” he said. “Of course, that doe probably ended up being fine, but I was upset.”
After that, he didn’t hunt much with the bow, but high school was a busy time, and playing baseball and football became priorities.
“After high school, I picked it up again,” he said. “I shot a little buck, and I was back in. I have been shooting traditional ever since.”
Going primitive
Flies said he was excited to go when he heard about the Oklahoma Selfbow Jamboree from friends who shoot traditional archery. He fell in love with the craft during the annual remote camp event. The Oklahoma Selfbow Society hosts hundreds of would-be archers and taps into the skills of dozens of talented bowyers and flintknappers throughout the region.
Coaches there walked him through the construction of his first primitive bow and, as he puts it, “I went, and I got hooked, and every year I get more and more primitive.”
Each selfbow is unique to its mother tree, and the archer who swings the splitting maul chooses a ring and pulls the draw knife.
“It’s a single bow from a solid piece of wood. The tree will make the kind of bow it wants to make,” he said. His hunting bow is a little “snaky,” not just from the copperhead snake skins he chose to adorn it, but from the grain of its origin tree.
The firefighter moonlights as a bowyer now, as well. He makes bows under the name Raven Claw Archery.
“Every bow is personal. No two are the same,” Flies said.
While a commercial bow is straight, tip to tip, the character of a self-bow shows that, while its arms may have curves, it still provides an even, balanced pull for the archer. Some have wildly snaky limbs; some even have holes or knots in the grain.
“Snaky” bows that shoot straight are admired.
His hunting bow is snaky, with a little dip in one section and a slight imperfection. It’s 59 inches long, and he tillered it to pull 55 pounds at his 26-inch draw. It suits him perfectly.
As much as he loves bow-making, Flies said flintknapping is more demanding in many ways, although he only started a year ago. He bought a kit from pro bowyer Ryan Gill’s HuntPrimitive website that included tools and stones. He watched YouTube videos but improved when he connected with local flintknapper Ricky Harris of Tuttle.
“He spent a whole morning with me and really got me better,” he said.
Knapping that obsidian point, notching it, fixing it to the shaft, and spinning it to get the perfect balance in the finished arrow is a task few have the patience to complete. Sure, unseen imperfections in a bois d’arc stave might raise challenges in building a bow, but a clumsy nick to a stone point can break it in half, and, well, that’s that.
The point has to balance and be notched, along with the arrow, to spin smoothly on a tight axis and weigh within the measure of what amounts to ten grains of seed. “Grain” is a measurement of mass that harkens back to a historical unit. It is equal to .0023 ounces, or 65 milligrams.
“Out of 10 points, I might get two or three that are good enough to hunt with,” he said. He weighs his points to 60 to 70 grains to match his 70-grain steel target-practice points. He has shot stone points into a soft Styrofoam target but can’t do that with hunting points. Each is a primitive tool designed for a singular purpose.
Lessons learned
Flies’ Oklahoma bear was not his first. He arrowed an Arkansas bear during that state’s September season two weeks before his Oklahoma experience. He killed that bear with the same bow and a stone point.
Vital for his success was nightly practice at a target 12 yards from a backyard tree stand, sometimes a little closer. But that Arkansas hunt was an invaluable experience, he said. He learned an appreciation for how much more difficult it can be to process a black bear than a deer.
They gutted the bear immediately and put ice in the cavity, just as anyone would do with a deer. Still, he lost a quarter to “bone rot,” something he had never experienced. Knowing no one locally with much black-bear experience, he reached out to a meat processor in Maine for advice about the sour smell of one hindquarter.
“All that fur and fat, that meat can turn bad quicker than a deer. You have to get that hide off right away,” Flies said. “I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.”
He arrived at his stand an hour before shooting light, and bears approached his bait station within minutes. They were big cubs—the largest he had seen still with their sow.
“She never came in; she could smell me, or she heard me come in, probably, and she stayed out there chomping (popping her jaw and teeth) and trying to get the cubs to come with her,” he said.
Oklahoma game regulations prohibit shooting cubs or sows with cubs, but Flies said he would never be interested in killing a sow with a cub, no matter how mature. Arkansas, more focused on population control, allows hunters to take sows or cubs. Very experienced bear hunters can tell the difference between an adult boar and a sow between litters, especially with time to observe and examine trail camera footage. Still, it is rare to see boars-only restrictions in regulation.
“They’re so fun to watch. Those cubs are funny buggers,” Flies said.
He had hoped for a morning shoot, given the forecast for an 89-degree day, but he knew he would hunt all day. It’s a 9-hour round-trip excursion to his LeFlore County hunting spot, so he always packs a sandwich and makes it a day. Bears working to fatten up for winter will feed all day long.
His tree stand is positioned on a mountainside. “To my right, it’s downhill, and to my left, it’s up,” he said.
He first saw his bear working its way up the hillside, apparently eating acorns. Given that natural food source, he assumed she wouldn’t approach him. He watched her for at least a half hour and even had time to shoot a video of her approach and his killing shot.
Cubs did not accompany the fat, mature sow. Black bears in Oklahoma typically give birth every other year.
“That’s one of the good things about hunting with bait,” Flies said. “You can take time and observe and make sure.”
“She was an intelligent old sow,” he said. “She wind-checked and circled left and circled right. She never did fully go into the bait.… With bait, they always know humans are involved somehow. I usually leave a sweaty t-shirt next to the barrel so they get used to my scent. But that’s why it took her so long; she knew something was wrong. I’ve never seen one approach that slowly.”
The fireman’s carry
Her fatal mistake was to circle to the uphill side of his tree stand.
“She was about five yards out and probably four or five feet below me,” he said.
A good shot resulted in a near-perfect scenario for a bowhunter. The sow apparently never knew Flies was there and didn’t know what hit her.
“She was confused; didn’t know what happened,” he said. “She ran about 10 yards up the mountain and back to the left, almost circled back to where I shot her, and then she was on the ground.”
That clean shot and definitive drop to apparent death within sight of his tree stand allowed him to get out of the stand and get to work to save the meat and hide without delay.
After a quick photo, he skinned the bear and put the two front quarters on his frame pack, which broke and sent those sweet, fresh meat quarters to the dirt.
“It took hours cleaning those up later when I was processing it at home,” he said. “Thankfully, they have so much fat on them you can trim it away, and I didn’t really lose any meat.”
He rendered the bear’s plentiful fat for later use as an oil or in baking. He said he couldn’t understand the confusion people seem to have over the suitability of bears for cuisine and said, so far, he’s found it in some ways superior to venison.
He probably lost some weight of his own. The broken frame pack made a challenging job even more formidable. He hand-carried every quarter, and the bear's hide up the hill to coolers full of ice. From start to finish, it took four hours.
“Out there trying to get that done as fast as you can, four hours felt like an eternity,” he said. "I was spent.”
His Arkansas bear weighed roughly 200 pounds. With its thick layer of fat, he guessed this one weighed closer to 300.
“I could barely move her, and I pick up adult people as part of my daily job,” he said.
Biologists at the Wildlife Department check station measured her hide and the attached skull at 67 inches from the tip of the snout to the base of the tail and 25 inches around the neck. She was the fifth bear checked in by hunters on opening day.
“I could barely move her, and I pick up adult people as part of my daily job,” he said.
He took the bear to a taxidermist, who told him it would score Pope & Young record book size, but Flies said he was not concerned about trophy or size. It’s all about the hunt and the traditions. After that, hunting a bear is hunting a bear.
Next, hunting bears on their level might be his challenge. No tree stand. Maybe.
“This was definitely one of those experiences you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to top it,” he said.
Great story!