Doc

Once a day ....... 24 shots (average). I have had other years when I shot so much that I would begin to shoot fatigued. That just made bad things happen, and then trained in form and shooting errors. So now I shoot just enough to keep the shooting muscles in shape and then quit.

Looking back over this spring and summer, it occurs to me that we had every variation of weather that could be imagined. We had soaking rain that rotted the seed in the garden along with colder than usual temps. Then at some point, it all turned to drought where the dirt in the garden baked up and cracked like bad concrete. I watched the little pond out behind the barn become a puddle and now just a damp spot in the bottom. Now we are seeing temperatures that are getting close to 90 and today it did hit 90. The grass is now getting a nice shade of tan. The new grass that I planted earlier is now quite dead. Summer is finally here, but the problem is that it is supposed to be going the other way ..... lol. What the heck have we got coming this winter. Nothing will surprise me.

My first bow kill was while I was still hunting my way home. However, my preferred style of hunting is stand hunting where I have more control over the situation (Known yardages around the stand, adequate cover for drawing, walking and hopefully unaware deer for the shot). Also, the older I get, the more I begin to sound like a charging rhinoceros crashing and thrashing around. I guess, I have lost my "sneak". With the right quality snow, I do a heck of a great job of still hunting with the rifle, but then I don't have to be sneaking around at 25 yards max from the deer with a rifle. Another nice benefit of stand hunting is that I can carry all those fried egg sandwiches and the pail of coffee to really enjoy myself.

The grass is ways greener on the other side of the fence..... or so it seems.

And of course we all know that if it is on the internet, it must be true ..... lol.

Point well taken. We all whine about the shortage of access to open hunting land and how crowded hunting conditions are killing hunting. Well, we have enough crowds without trying to attract more. Relax and hunt the piles of deer that we got and get over this trophy craze. You need guaranteed trophy deer takes, go to some game farm and get your trophy-fix taken care of.

Yeah, I was hoping you might have some room for dropping some pounds off the draw weight, but it doesn't sound like you have much room for changes there. I have kept my practice sessions down to a couple dozen arrows each day. I don't want to risk any injuries either.

I guess that depends on who you ask and their level of experience hunting other states. It also depends on what standards you use to judge the quality of the deer hunt. I guess if you are looking for a trophy deer behind every tree, NYS may not be the best state to hunt deer. But it sure isn't the worst. Frankly, I have a ball deer hunting here in NYS and enjoy every minute of it.

That's true! That message of getting as far away from the road as possible has been drummed into everyone's heads for so long that hunter patterns have changed over the decades. I get way back in there because I have an ATV to get me up the hill so I can walk back on the flatter top-land. And it usually is to no avail, because I still see plenty of guys dripping with sweat and huffing and puffing like a steam engine after having dragged themselves and half a garage's worth of hunting gear up that killer hill. So here we are all clustered up on top of the hill with all the deer snoring in the wild rose patches down next to the road.....Ha-ha. I got so sick of my wife telling me about the huge bucks running around the yard while I was miles up the hill. So now I make sure that I spend adequate amounts of time down near civilization.

Clothing variation is always a big problem with me. When things get cold, I start piling on the layers. Next thing I know, I am having collisions between the string and all the puffed out clothing. Also I can get so much clothing on that it starts effecting my stance and head positioning. Most times I wind up having to make sight adjustments depending on what I'm wearing. This year, I am going with a heated (electric) jacket to keep the bulk down, but still stay warm enough. The guys on TV don't have to dress too heavy because they just have to stay warm enough to last until the guys chase the deer out of the pen and past the stand.......lol.

I kind of like the gun season the way it is. Everybody thinks they are getting a big deal by having all those extra days, but the truth is that hardly anyone uses more than the first couple days of all that time. So we get a long season without any penalty and everybody is happy. And I do agree that if the gun season was shortened significantly, nearly the whole hunter population would enter the "if brown, it's down" mentality. That seems pretty obvious. The pressure would be on to grab up whatever venison becomes available.

So, what is the poundage that your bow is set at?

Ha-ha..... Is this a deer that is in an enclosure that you can shoot anytime you think is right? Where I hunt, this is a buck of a lifetime. I would be actually quite stupid to let him pass, because that for sure is the last time I would ever see him ..... alive. I don't even give a crap what age he is. That rack is a trophy in my hunting area.

I have an 8-1/2" x 11" cardboard backed target with four 1-1/2 inch bulls-eyes inside 3" outer rings for my archery practice. I want to see every arrow inside the 3" ring in order to feel that a particular distance is something that I would consider adequate for hunting. That's what I want. I usually am happy with the results, but once in a while things don't work out the way I want. So far I can keep arrows in that 3" ring out to 25 yards. Beyond that, not really all that satisfactory. So 25 yards is as far as I will shoot in hunting situations. For the rifle, I would like all the bullets to go in the same hole at 100 yards. Yeah right ..... lol. Again what I would like and what I get are two different things .... lol. But a nice elongated hole is nice. The fact is that I am never really satisfied with either the bow or the gun. I am simply looking for a reasonable group that leaves me with a fair amount of confidence when hunting a target that has the ability to move without warning or any of the other variations that don't exist on the target range. There are enough variables posed by actual wild game without accuracy being one of them.

Wouldn't it be nice if the manufacturer's would provide some guidelines as to poundage recommendations?

I have always seen the mechanical blade broadheads as a Band-Aid for poorly matched equipment, or poor shooting form. Otherwise there really is not any reason to dump fixed blade broadheads in favor of something with bunches of moving parts and more options for failure. However, I have to admit that there are some people who simply cannot seem to work out the shooting or equipment problems that send fixed blade heads going off with a mind of their own. When you have tried all else and are on the verge of giving up on bowhunting, the mechanicals are definitely a viable answer. But understand that you are paying a lot of money to open up another door to potential problems. To me it is a "last ditch" solution. It all reminds me of an old engineering adage. Additional parts in a design are a quality and reliability problem waiting to happen. And there is nothing in archery that negates that principle.

Yeah, and the archery opener is just 10 days away. Imagine arriving at your stand wringing wet from sweat, trying to swat mosquitos away without looking like a signal flagman waving his arms around. If this weather persists, I may voluntarily delay my opener. I know, guys down south hunt this kind of weather all the time. But there are some aesthetics to the sport that have to be met for me to enjoy the hunt. And sweat and bugs are not really a part of that. I don't even like 70 degrees....lol. How fast does venison go bad in this kind of weather if you have to take hours blood-trailing your deer (or maybe even overnight). I remember mentioning all that when we struggled and won the additional two weeks of season. Perhaps it is a case of thanks for nothing!

You know, when you think about it, if the sole reason for hunting is to cut animal populations, there probably is no justification for huge chunks of the hunting year being devoted to weapons that really don't do a maximum efficient job of doing just that. I mean why allow people to burn good productive deer-harvesting time using weapons that handicap the activity. I am speaking of recurves, longbows, compounds, crossbows and flintlocks, etc. Do away with all that nonsense and put a real deer hunting weapon in the hands of the limited hunter resource and get a real bang for your buck. Of course I'm being facetious, but just trying to put the idea out there that there are a whole array of reasons to hunt, with a whole array of expectations and internal individual ideas of things like fair chase, tradition, challenge, and yes even some individual judgments of what constitutes fairness. Different choices in weapons represent different reasons for hunting in a certain way to those who choose to hunt in a specific way. We all have our own brackets of limitations that we apply to the weapon of choice and some of that does consider some element of fairness. It's a pretty individualized activity, and people do get some very rigid ideas of how it should be conducted. What a trick it must be to manage that whole hunter population and keep all those opinions appeased. And yet it does have to be done if we are to maintain enough hunters to adequately come up with the necessary side effect of population control.

While you are driving around or sitting at stop lights, just glance around at some of the older (and maybe not so old) car makes and models that have that dangling rusty bumper or those lace rocker panels or the dangling rusty fender flapping in the breeze, and you will mostly note that it is an American car where the manufacturers are obviously relying on the "buy American" sentiments to peddle their cheap inadequate steel and paints. This has been going on for decades. I remember when Japanese cars were worse than any. And then some time after the 1970's the situation changed. The Japanese decided to go on a super quality kick, and the American manufacturers decide to talk about quality but only used that word as a smoke screen to continue cranking out rust buckets. So when I buy cars, I don't pay a lot of attention to how they look new. I know I will be owning these cars for a lot of years, so I look at the proof on, or along the side of the road as to what kind of gluing together I will have to do in the future just to keep the thing together. I've settled in on Honda products and haven't been burned yet.

I assume that you all do some broadhead practice each year just to ensure there are no surprises. But maybe you all don't. Do you do any shooting with broadheads before the hunt? What do you use that work well for targets and do not get all chopped up right away. Do you use actual broadheads or some of the "broadhead simulators" that most manufacturers offer for sale. I use a throw-away very open-cell Styrofoam commercial target that I buy every couple of years from Walmart. I also set aside a couple of actual broadheads for the final testing and practicing.

Frankly, my archery technique requires every bit of conscious intensity and concentration of detail that I can muster. I have to concentrate on physical aspects of step of form and execution, and emptying my mind is the exact opposite of what is required for me to properly and successfully shoot and hit the spot that I am aiming for. I think this Zen stuff would be more appropriate for those that are developing an instinctive method of shooting. With instinctive archery, you are trying to let your senses and natural internal guidance systems completely take over. Pretty much like throwing a rock, a baseball, or a football. No mental checklist is gone through.....You simply just do it and your instincts automatically perform the function for you. I know that instinctive shooting can produce astounding results. I have seen exhibition archers perform super-human shots that have nothing to do with shooting form and aiming and stance and steadiness and other shooting form concerns. It simply is a sight picture and an indescribable execution. If he were still alive, we could ask Stacey Groscup how it was that he could shoot aspirins and lifesavers out of the air, and I doubt he would have anything to say about anchor, stance, follow through, aiming, etc., etc.. In fact maybe he wouldn't be able to explain it at all because it is not a physically controlled process but rather a mental state. That's where the Zen stuff takes over and is used....not the methodical disciplines and check-lists and trained-in repetitive procedures that I am forced to go through.

I always park the ATV just under the ridge of the hill to contain the noise a bit and then walk 100yards or so up to the edge of the hilltop and then walk back on the relatively flat land. I have to say that I too have found all kinds of deer hanging around the vicinity of my parked ATV. I have no theories explaining why, but it is almost as though they are attracted by it. That sounds goofy, but it has happened often enough that I have to think there may be some sort of attraction.

I have re-read my post, and see nothing condescending in there. It was simply an expression of my preferences to experience the excitement of getting close to the deer. Try not to look so hard for something to criticize, and just enjoy the conversation.

What you are complaining about is an opinion, which last time I knew, I am entitled to have. I am not telling anyone to do anything. I am merely suggesting that up close and personal is something that is losing ground in bowhunting anymore and that I personally enjoy that aspect of bowhunting. I'm sorry if that concept offends you, but that is a personal preference of mine which I hope I am still entitled to express. I also should mention that I never entered the word "ethically" into my comment. Nor did I talk at all about legality or safety. I am not sure where your imagination conjured up any of that in my comment. Try not to attempt to read more into opinions than what is intended. Not everything needs to be considered some kind of offense. Consider the points in the reply, and forget about trying to manufacture some kind of controversy.