Bows: Tuning Up
By Mike Maynard
To borrow a line from America’s hardball Confucious; Yogi Berra, “It’s getting late early out here.” You think Yogi was talking about baseball? He wasn’t. He was talking about bow hunting. What Yogi meant was that if you haven’t gotten your tree stands up by now, you’re running an 0-2 count. Are your ground blinds in place? It might be a good idea; get them set up and then leave them alone. These things need time to marinate, to let the deer ruminate upon their existence; …ruminate on the stand’s existence, not themselves; otherwise, you’re asking a deer to explain what ‘I think, therefore I am’ means to them. Wow. That sentence got tortured, fast.
More pearls of general hunting wisdom from Yogi: Do we have our trail cameras in place and brushed-in? And speaking of trail cams, if you don’t mind springing for the ridiculous monthly fees, cellular cameras are the way to go. No more unwanted trips in and out of your hunting site in order to check the cards. It’s all a moot point for me anyway, none of my hunting locations has cell service.
The trail cams themselves don’t seem to bother the deer the way tree stands and ground blinds do. Every year when I put my cameras out, they attract a crowd. The first few nights the deer will gather out in front of the camera for a couple of group photos. “Hey, look who’s back!” they all exclaim. Then they all smile and wave at the camera. They walk up and touch a nose to the lens; “Just checking in.” Then, at some point in October, at 3a.m. on a frosty morning, a nice 10 pointer will walk up and stand in front of the camera as if to say, “You really think you’re going to see me in the daylight? You silly hunter…”
Tinkering
Perhaps most importantly, another thing we need to be done with at this point in the festivities is tinkering with our bows. Tinkering in August is shooting yourself in the foot. When I was younger, I would tinker with my bows endlessly, it was habitual, I simply couldn’t help myself. I would change arrows-from Easton to Gold Tip, shaft weight, tip weight, vane profile and length. If I thought it would buy me a single mph, I would cut a 1/16th of an inch off my shafts. Speed was the drug, and even with a 31” draw, I wanted more. There’s a new stabilizer on the market? Buy it! Carter has a new and improved thumb button release? Buy it! I’ve lost track of how many times, just before the season opened, that found me waffling between a multi-pin site and a moveable single-pin. And I would engage in this foolishness right up to opening day!
But as the endless tinkering and the years slowly percolated, I learned a valuable truth: pick a flavor and stick with it. Spend the time immediately following bow season to tinker. Build a simple and straightforward hunting bow, and then let it be. Just shoot it. Shoot it a lot. Practice, practice, practice. And when you have a bad day, and you will because you’re human and we’re going to suck occasionally; don’t look to your bow for the problem. The bow is almost immaterial at this point; it will shoot the same way every time. The wild card here is us. Instead, Put the bow down and look to your form. Are your feet squared up? How is your grip? Are you pulling off your anchor? Trigger panic?
Very few, …alright, none of us, are the second-coming of Dan McCarthy or Levi Morgan; we need all the practice we can get. Morgan and McCarthy are machines; they also leave their set-ups the same, all year long. What they do is shoot, shoot, shoot. Familiarity with our equipment is key, and if we are forever changing things, we can never attain our personal version of perfection. I don’t change things for the sake of change any longer; that doesn’t work, it never did. I know the world is a busy place but we need to try our best to find the time to throw a dozen arrows downrange a few times a week. Especially when you consider that we’re going to be shooting at live animals.
Practice, practice
When you find yourself struggling, and you will, don’t perpetuate the frustration and keep shooting. Put the bow down and grab your range-finder. Go for a walk in the woods and range a rabbit or something. Practicing our yardage estimation is just as important as our shooting form. Take it with you everywhere you go. Range the cars in the parking lot. Range your dog, your wife, the neighbors. I used to be dead-nuts on everything out to 50 yards, but once I stopped practicing, my numbers fell off; quickly, too!
Almost all of us carry a range-finder into the woods these days. But what happens when you leave it in the truck? What happens when that big racked ‘Booner walks out and gives you a shot? You had better be able to tell the difference between a 35-yard shot and a 40-yard shot because those 5 yards are going to make all the difference in the world if you can’t.
I know, I’m being preachy, but these things matter, they really do. So, stop tinkering with your bow; it’s August, just go out and shoot it. A lot!
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