HUNTING ARTICLES How Not To Be a Hit or Miss Hunter Written by Matthew Adcock When I told my hunting buddies I was writing an article on bow hunting accuracy, they just smiled. They remember just a few years back when I struggled with accuracy and consistency. They would watch me shoot great on the target range, but when I got in a tree stand and had a deer standing at 10 yards, I was anything but consistent. After a few years of hit-or-miss hunting, I realized that something was lost between my practice sessions at home and actual hunting situations in the woods. I had to find a way to become more accurate when hunting. After taking a wild hog, a turkey and 10 deer in multiple states with my bow last year, I think Iıve finally found the solution to my problem. I left behind my hit-or-miss history with a lot of help from bow hunter and archery expert David Billiter of Juliette. David has been the archery pro at Chuckıs Gun and Pawn, Bait and Tackle in Warner Robins for seven years. Besides being the ASA Shooter of the Year in the Open B category in 2000, David also won the ASA Semi-Pro Georgia State Championship and the IBO Triple Crown in 2001. David consistently kills mature bucks on public land with his bow and already has two Pope & Young caliber deer to his credit, a tremendous feat considering he only gets to hunt one or two days a week. I donıt think David ever realized just how much he was helping me as a shooter and a bow hunter. Just by talking, looking, and listening to how he hunted and how he prepared to hunt, I became a better and more accurate bow hunter. Anytime you talk, hunt or shoot with someone who is more proficient with a bow, listen and learn as much as possible. Use the knowledge you gain from them and incorporate it into your style of hunting and shooting. It will make you a better hunter. I sat down with David earlier this year to get his views on bow hunting accuracy and a few tips on what it would take for the average hunter to become a better bow hunter. He said, as most bow hunters have learned, things that can go wrong in bow hunting are too numerous to list, but a few important points need to be mentioned. Accuracy begins with your equipment. If you donıt have the proper set up, it doesn't matter which brand of bow or arrows you shoot. Having the proper draw-length is crucial for consistent groups, as is shooting the correct arrow. David says there are four important factors that determine the correct arrow and give good arrow flight. They are arrow weight, arrow straightness, arrow spine, and fletching orientation. Arrow weight has been argued many times over the years as to whether lighter and faster is better than heavier and slower. I'm in agreement with David that in most of our hunting situations, faster and lighter is better. Faster arrows don't rise and fall as much as a heavier, slower arrow. In hunting situations, this can sometimes enable you to "thread the needle" on a close shot in cover. You must know your own limitations on your shooting abilities and stay within those guidelines. Never take a shot you havenıt practiced multiple times. An arrow's straightness also affects accuracy. Arrows come in different straightness measured in thousandths of an inch. Some arrows are rated as straight plus or minus .001 inch, others are rated as plus or minus .006 inch. But at normal hunting ranges, either arrow would be sufficient. Only at longer ranges are the differences in these arrows apparent. Arrow spine is another important factor in bow hunting accuracy. As an arrow accelerates forward, the force of the string causes the arrow to flex or bend. If your arrow flexes too much, your fletchings might not be able to stabilize the arrow and you will get erratic flight. Add a broadhead to the end of the arrow and an arrowıs spine becomes even more important. To ensure that your arrows are spined correctly (stiff enough), use the charts provided by your arrow manufacturer. If you are shooting a one-cam bow, use the hard-cam category to determine what the correct arrow spine should be for your poundage. If your arrows arenıt spined correctly for your setup, either change arrows or the poundage on your bow. Fletching orientation is another part of your arrow that can affect accuracy. How well are your arrows fletched? I always took this for granted until I bought a dozen arrows at the Buckarama in Atlanta several years back. They were the same type of arrow I had hunted with the previous year, but I never could get but three of these arrows to group consistently. I ended up numbering each arrow, and the same three arrows grouped well every time. All of the arrows weighed the same and were straight, but I never did get the others to shoot as well. The only explanation I could come up with for why these arrows grouped several inches wider than the others was that they were not fletched correctly. I number my arrows today for that same reason. If one arrow isn't fletched properly and doesn't group, I want to know which one it is. I highly recommend getting your arrows fletched by a reputable source, or do like I do now and fletch your own. There are a number of good hunting rests on the market today, and I feel like I should mention one David and I have been using for several years now. It has helped me tremendously with my hunting accuracy. The Zero Effect Rest by Muzzy is one of the finest hunting rests you will ever see. Some people classify it as a fall-away rest, but it is actually a push-away rest. It has solid linkages that seem to be more consistent than some of the other fall-away rests that rely on inertia or magnets. Some people are willing to pay $500 on a bow but only $20 for a rest. The only thing that touches your arrow other than the string is your rest, so donıt compromise when it comes to a good rest. Bow hunting accuracy is all about consistency. You must be able to replicate your form over and over without having to think about it. When that buck of a lifetime is standing at 10 yards broadside, the last thing you want to think about is whether your form is correct. The key to success is to practice, practice, and then practice some more. It would be easier if we were just shooting targets, but weıre trying to shoot live deer from a tree stand in sometimes adverse conditions. In order to practice correctly, David said you must duplicate your hunting scenario as much as possible. That means practicing from an elevated stand wearing full hunting attire. This includes clothing, gloves, face mask, grunt tube, binoculars, anything you will be wearing when you are hunting. You even need to shoot the exact arrows with broadheads you are going to be hunting with during your practice sessions. Practicing with field points won't help you when you are hunting with broadheads. I was hunting with David a few years back when I told him about my broadheads grouping several inches away from where my field points grouped. I asked him if his broadheads grouped differently than his field points, and he casually replied, "I don't know, I've never shot a field point out of my hunting bow." He didn't think anything of it, but I was floored. You mean all he shoots out of that bow are broadheads? It was then and there I decided I needed to get serious and put a little more time and effort into my practice sessions. One thing that most bow hunters neglect to practice is shooting in low light. You need to know your limitations, and low-light conditions are a big limiting factor. David is a firm believer in peep sights, and they can be your best friend, or your worst enemy, when shooting at dusk. Practicing at dusk will give you an idea of how late you can hunt and how accurate you are when it gets late in the day. David says when looking through your peep sight, you should line up the inner circle of your peep with your sight bracket creating a circle-in-a-circle effect. This will put your eye in the center of the peep every time and is just a way to give you the same sight picture for each shot. You can't do this on some of the older, square sight brackets. David says the most important factor in bow hunting accuracy is consistency. He says you can have terrible form when shooting, but as long as you have terrible form every time, you can shoot great. The most common mistake made when hunting and shooting from elevated positions is that people donıt bend at the waist. Instead, a lot of archers bend their bow arm down and their head rides back slightly and they ease up to see through their peep sight. This changes your form and results in a high impact point. One item that has helped me conquer this problem is the No-Peep from Timberline. It has completely changed the way I hunt and shoot. Itıs a fluid-filled circle that mounts near your sights, and inside the circle is a floating dot. When you draw the bow to your anchor point, you glance at it before sighting. If you've anchored properly and you haven't torqued the bow left or right, or anchored high or low, the dot will be inside the circle. It takes an extra half second to use, but it is worth it to me. David says it is so effective, it is almost like cheating. Everyone has a different form when shooting, but there are a few tips that can help you become more consistent. David likes a triple alignment for anchoring to your string. The triple alignment consists of a peep sight, touching the tip of your nose to the bowstring, and some type of hand/face contact. As long as your hand touches your face in the same place every time and the tip of your nose is touching the bowstring, you should be consistent. This isn't the only way to anchor your string, but one that works. This almost forces you to bend at the waist to maintain consistency when shooting from a tree stand. I was hunting a bottleneck during the rut last year when a doe stepped out about 25 yards in front of me. She was slowly browsing toward me and even though I wasn't going to shoot her, I was waiting for a chance to get in position to shoot. Just before I started to stand, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I slowly turned my head and standing at seven yards was a heavy-beamed 8-pointer. He was on full alert and I knew I didn't have time to stand. I slowly drew my PSE Firestorm and came to full draw. The deer was so close to my tree, I had to move my leg so I could position the bow to shoot almost straight down. As I anchored, I made sure the triple alignment was in full effect. The severe shot angle when sitting was one of the toughest positions I had ever shot from. A quick check of my No-Peep and I squeezed the release. I made a perfect shot and after a 75-yard blood trail, I had my trophy. Another problem a lot of people have when shooting is bow torque. Bow torque is simply a sideways force exerted on the bow when drawing. Bow torque is correctable once the bow is drawn as long as you don't grip your bow. David says you should never grip your bow and the only job of your bow hand is to keep the bow from coming back at you. Just think of your bow arm as a forked stick holding the bow. David says the fewer muscles you use when shooting a bow the better, and he shoots a low wrist. He lets the bow rest against the butt of his palm rather than shoot a high wrist where the bow rests between the thumb and index finger. As long as your hand is relaxed and in a comfortable position, it doesn't matter which way you hold your wrist as long as you hold it the same way every time and don't torque the bow. Bow torque is a major cause of poor shots when shooting from a stand. Some sights and devices are designed to help reduce bow torque, like the EZ-Sight from Scrape Juice and the No-Peep I mentioned previously. When they are used correctly, they all but eliminate bow torque. One thing David doesn't do is hunt with a quiver on his bow. He feels that a quiver can affect the balance of the bow as well as create extra noise. If accuracy is what you are after, the quiver needs to be attached to something other than your bow. One problem that can affect accuracy after your bow is set up is string stretch or string creep. Standard one-cams have strings from 83 to over 100 inches long and are much more prone to stretching than their two-cam predecessors. David recommends using strings made out of 450 or 452 from BCY or Brownell Ultra Cam. These strings are less likely to stretch, but they do have a few drawbacks. They are slower and sometimes noisier than the faster, more elastic strings. One thing you can do to watch for string stretch is to mark your cam with a waterproof marker along the limb edges. David would often use a razor blade to scribe the cam along the edges of the limb. This just gives you a reference point to see if your string has lengthened. It only takes 3/16 inch of string stretch to cause all kinds of accuracy problems. One thing that has helped me out as a bow hunter is patience and shot selection. I have become much more patient the last few years, and the proof is in the freezer. I no longer try to force shots, and this has increased my success rate tremendously. If a good shot isn't there, I simply donıt risk taking a bad shot. Last year, I drew on seven 8-pointers that I did not shoot. It is sometimes tough explaining how I let a nice deer walk because I didn't get the shot I wanted, but it is a lot easier than explaining how I took a bad shot and wounded one. Take my advice and David's: be selective on shots, practice every chance you get, and do what it takes to avoid being a hit-or-miss hunter. Originally published in Georgia Outdoor News, July 2002. | |
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