Debra and I met Mike and Kristi at the local sushi restaurant 10 years ago on New Year’s Eve. I was telling Tim, the sushi chef, about how another friend had recently come down to hunt deer in the back yard with his bow. When I mentioned that I was looking for other hunters to help with our deer problem, Mike introduced himself as a bow hunter. I invited him to come by in the morning (the last day of bow season that year).

Mike showed up late in the morning, after spending a few hours out hunting at another location. He didn’t get a deer there, but he did show me a dove that he’d managed to shoot with an arrow.

The four of us have been good friends pretty much since the day we met. We regularly get together for dinner, and they invite us up to their north Texas property a few times a year, including the last four Thanksgiving holidays. It was there at the ranch four years ago that I grabbed a stick off the firewood pile and began to whittle, thus starting my foray into wood carving.

At the ranch last week I finished carving a bird from a piece of Aspen that had a worm hole through it. I knew that I wanted to do something with the bird, but hadn’t quite figured out what. Then Mike started talking about hunting, and I knew immediately what I wanted to do with that bird.

As I said, the bird is Aspen. I made the arrow shaft from a piece of Yellow Birch. I carved the arrow head from mesquite, and the fletching is Cottonwood bark. I whittled and sanded the shaft to fit through the hole, glued it in place, and then attached the arrowhead and fletching with glue. The whole thing received a few coats of spray polyurethane.

I have no idea where Mike is going to display it, but I hope he enjoys it.