pine sap

He took the arrows out and rummaged around in the survival pack for his feather stash. He had found early on that foolbird feathers from the wing and tail worked the best for arrows and he had saved every wing and tail feather from every foolbird that he had shot and he took them out now.
  These arrows were different. They were heavier and he worried that the width of the point would catch the air and counteract the feathers in some way. The solution, he felt, was to make the feathers longer.
  He selected only two feathers for each arrow but left them a full six inches long and shaved a flat side with the knife the full length of each feather so that it would fit the arrow shaft.
  He attached the arrows with pieces of thread from his old windbreaker, wrapping them at the front and the rear and then smearing them with bits of warmed pine sap — a trick he had learned when he had leaned against some sap on a tree and stuck to it — to protect the thread.
  He did three arrows, working slowly and carefully before going at last to sleep. Once again he slept so hard that he awakened with his head jammed into the ground and his neck stiff from not moving all night.
  Because of all the meat from the doe he did not have to hunt for days now, at least ten or twelve, maybe two weeks, and he worked all day on the arrows and bow, sitting next to the shelter in the warm sun, snacking on the jellied meat now and then.
  By dark this day all nine arrows were finished. He had used the hunting knife as a scraper to shape the limbs of the bow more equally and to put in notches for the string to get it ready to string the next day for the first shooting trials. He was just leaning back, half cocky about how well things were going, when he smelled the skunk.