Time to get ready for bow season: A few tips for improving the experience

With whitetail archery season only a couple months away, we bow hunters are making plans to arrow that mossy horn old buck or fat whitetail doe.

I plan to begin the season in a ladder stand strapped to an isolated oak tree situated on a little spot of whitetail heaven at Squaw Mountain Ranch in Jack County.

A couple of trail cameras strapped to trees tell the story.

There are some bruiser bucks in the area and they are still running in bachelor groups; all are still in velvet but showing excellent antler development. This fall, when the hormones begin to flow and rut begins, these good old boy bucks will break away and actively pursue does in estrus. When this annual breeding ritual begins, the whitetail herd (especially the bucks) can be likened to dominoes being shuffled. The bucks abandon their pre-rut patterns that were so easy for bow hunters to decipher a few weeks earlier.

For the first few weeks of archery season, bucks will be in pre-rut and much easier to pattern.

Their daily habit of traveling from bedding areas to staging areas to feeding areas will remain almost as constant as the Polar Star. I like hunting bucks during the rut, but I love the pre-rut when things are a whole lot more predictable.

The invention of the trail camera has revolutionized the way many of us hunt whitetail and educated a bunch of us old hunters as to when deer truly are up and moving.

The moon plays a big part in predicting when to be on stand. I’ve learned this, through osmosis if nothing else, after hunting deer more than four decades. When the moon is shining brightly, it’s a good bet deer hunting will be best during the first 30-45 minutes of daylight; when the deer are heading back to their staging and bedding areas to digest the food they spent the night eating.

Close scrutiny of our Bushnell trail camera proves that when the moon is bright at night deer bed up earlier in the morning, but are often back up feeding around midday.

Hunters that remain on stand during midday often harvest the biggest bucks.

I have a real problem with setting all day in a deer stand. I can stay put until around mid morning, but by 10:30 a.m. I’m ready to head back to camp and enjoy a cup of coffee.

I just have to be on stand well before first light, regardless of the moon phase.

When hunting during a full moon, I am convinced hunters like myself would do better to sleep in and get in their stand around 10 a.m. and stay put until early afternoon, then head back to camp, relax and get back on the stand in time to catch the deer when they get up to feed during late afternoon.

We that love to hunt deer with archery tackle are sticklers for practice.

All aspects of good shooting form are perfected through practice. It’s one thing to pick up a center fire rifle that’s properly been sighted in once every month or so and achieve accuracy; shooting a bow is different. The muscles in the back and arms used to draw a bow are usually not used in other endeavors. Shooting regularly is the only way to keep these muscles strong and to perfect the skills of settling the sight pin on the proper spot and releasing the arrow.

Even if you have not had time to practice much lately, you have plenty of time to get ready for the opener.

Shoot as often as possible and make sure to practice from positions you will encounter under actual hunting conditions. If you will be hunting from a tree stand, make sure to spend plenty of time shooting from elevated positions. Know where to place that sight pin under every conceivable angle and distance that’s practical.

Whether to hunt with mechanical or fixed broadheads is a personal decision.

Through many years of searching, I’ve found a fixed broadhead that flies to exactly the same point of impact as my field points. Innerloc Broadheads offers The Carbon Tuner broadhead which, with a tiny Allen wrench, can be adjusted so the blades are in perfect alignment with the vanes on the arrow. I’ve done a great deal of shooting with these broadheads and found them to be my favorite, hands down. I also carry Innerloc’s EXP mechanicals in my quiver. These mechanicals come razor sharp out of the box and employ a ClipLoc system rather than O rings. I’ve taken several game animals with these ruggedly built mechanicals and plan to use them in Colorado in late August for elk.

There are many fine broadheads on the market today.

I suggest you do as I did and experiment until you find the brand that works best for you.

After arrowing over 60 head of big game animals through the years, here are a few tips I consider to be important:

Make sure you know which pin to use at every distance from 5 yards out to your maximum shooting range (usually around 40 yards)

Know where to set your sight pin from elevated positions as well as ground level

Consider setting one sight pin dead on at 25 yards. On most modern bows this setting will suffice for a center of shoulder hold on game from point blank out to 30 yards. Make sure to check your point of impact at all distances.

Wait 30 minutes before taking up the trail. This can be tough to do, but it’s the best policy to avoid spooking game

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