“Let me know when you are ready to take off your training wheels and shoot something that takes some skill,” Raife said, mocking the modern compound bow he knew Reece had been spending time with lately.
“You mean this old struggle stick?” Reece asked. “Mind if I give it a shot?”
“Be my guest. When you’re ready we’ll head down to Colorado and have South Cox measure you for a Stalker and stop in to see Tom Clum for some lessons.”
One of Reece’s favorite things to do was surprise his old blood brother. Unbeknownst to Raife, his guest had been spending time in Glacier Archery working on his traditional bow technique.
Reece gripped the ancient weapon, pretending he was unfamiliar with how to properly hold it, registering Raife’s folded arms and smug look.
Slowly picking up a beautiful wooden arrow from the stand, he took a breath and centered himself. His short routine had become subconscious: load, anchor, back perpendicular to target, bent slightly at the waist, elbow inside the string; arrow, target, string, archer as one being, one natural system.
Reece’s fingers scraped along his face and past his ear into the follow-through and finish position, his arrow slicing through the mountain air before striking the kill zone of the 3-D mule deer target at thirty-five yards.
“Nothing to it,” Reece said to his astonished friend with a smile. “Remember, the arrow that is not aimed… See you tomorrow.”
* * *
Reece maneuvered through the trees toward his section of the ranch and thought through the rest of his day. He planned to head into Whitefish to run some errands while Raife scouted for deer and elk. The Hastingses’ family attorney had set Reece up with a bank account and post office box in the name of one of the family’s corporations to help conceal his location. His military pension and CIA paychecks were direct deposited into his account under the alias David Hilcot, courtesy of the CIA’s director of Clandestine Services. There were no documents that placed his name on the cabin where he lived and the utilities were all billed to the Hastings family, making him virtually invisible in a modern world, where privacy was all but dead. Once a week, Reece would make the hour drive to Whitefish to check his mail and fuel up on caffeine at Montana Coffee Traders. He would sweeten it up to his heart’s content, browse the local bookstore, and spend some time talking shop with the resident bow-hunting experts in Glacier Archery. If anyone recognized him during his forays into civilization, they didn’t let on. For Reece, the “keep to oneself” culture of northwest Montana certainly had its benefits.
Back at his cabin, Reece approached the line and took a breath. Though he loved the challenge and purity of traditional archery, he also couldn’t separate himself from the adage he’d learned on the battlefield: exploit all technical and tactical advantages. His compound bow blended the past and present for him in a way that felt natural.
Archery had always been a pursuit that centered him, calmed him. A place where all worries and stresses were put aside, a meditative state where archer, bow, arrow, and target were connected. To the uninitiated, archery looked like a hobby. To those who lived the way of the bow, it was much more. Archery was discipline. Archery was freedom. Archery was Zen.
Stance, grip, shoulder, anchor, peep, pull, and finish, Reece thought, reviewing the basics. As with anything in life, the best do the basics exceptionally well.
The range was set up with multiple foam shapes of realistic-looking animals at distances from ten to one hundred yards. Reece had never taken a hundred-yard shot with his bow at an animal but being competent with his setup out to that distance certainly increased confidence when his prey was within forty.
Reece looked the forty yards to his target, a foam-shaped bull elk.
Build your foundation, Reece, he remembered his friend and one of the best archers on the planet telling him years earlier. Winning starts from the ground up. Reece had hit it off with John Dudley years earlier at the Total Archery Challenge, a 3-D archery shoot held at various locations around the country. Reece had been a solid archer, growing up with a bow in hand, but he was primarily self-taught. “Dud,” whose life had been the pursuit of excellence in the science and art of archery, had passed along lessons that brought Reece’s skills with the ancient weapon to