dbHunterNY

sounds like a good plan. yea both are meant to have odd vane up despite biscuit you can get away with more. biscuit I've found will last longer. you can just rotate the brushes on the hostage but wearing quicker didn't sit well with me as it'll change your tune a little. at least a season worth of shooting though to notice any wear so we're not talking about anything you can't deal with. my wife and cousin both had the diamond edge that the hostage came on.

Not mine. A friends hunting on neighboring co-op. Have posted it before. It had canine teeth. Thought to be 4.5 yr old. Cementum report came back at 5.5 yr old. Pic doesn't really do it justice. It was heavy.

meh... photos of a dead buck are still cool to look at.

basic hostage rests that aren't the pro model do wear out quick. whisker biscuit will wear too but doesn't seem like as much back when had both on bows. all of them work though. when you say flip the arrow for vane clearance... I haven't seen one yet aside from the original biscuit with same bristles all the way around that is meant to have the arrow any way other than odd vane up. hostage especially is odd vane up. if odd vane is off to one side or other, you'll still get vane contact one of the other vanes. biscuits now have the stiffer black bristles on the bottom that you don't want a vane to go thru.

i agree with what's been said. if you can improve your group size then move rest. otherwise move sights to point of impact. arrows that are square at both ends with good quality broadheads are necessary. if you're grouping well enough then your arrows are good though. fixed blade broadheads will exaggerate any human influence you're creating at the shot. if you move your d-loop by twisting up or down the string your peep alignment/height will be slightly off. you should keep your rest at a position sending the arrow through the center of the rest bolt /berger button hole. if you don't and move your nock point to tune around it, your bow won't hold on target as well. also cam timing and sync as well as tiller can cause nock high or low issues. check those first before moving the rest or nock point. haven't seen a bow that tunes nock low but nock point a touch high does happen, especially with single cam.

scout it with a trail cam easy to get to on field scan mode so you're staying out of there. only talking like 2 lanes.

like the others have said you're pretty much stuck hunting marginal winds. if the scrub field has shade with the deer bedding there mid day you could mess with it a little for low impact gun hunting. don't open it up to the road but go in a little and clear straight lanes north to south with ground blind or concealed tripod at the end closer to the road. plant a perennial like clover and over seed with an annual that has draw but nothing too tall and thick. especially during the peak of the rut deer will use it to stage and mid day feed. has to be concealed though from view of the roads though for poaching and so deer are at ease. kind of hunting texas style on roadways thru mesquite.

150gr 30-06 here. works great with good accuracy and puts them down.

I've got a photo of a 5.5 yr old 6 point I could share. aside from Moogs stance.... it does have plenty of mass. lol Nice buck Grow!

because everyone's anchor and form will be a little different point of impact will change slightly. know that some bow arrow combos don't paper tune as well as others. also your arrows even spined correctly do flex. someone who's one of the best in the world told me when paper tuning to shoot at different distances versus just one. I think he said something like 5, 10, and 15 feet. if you get into it, make sure your sight bubble level is set so you're not canting the bow at all. then do what's called walk-back tuning. at the end of the day paper tuning isn't the end all. you've got to inevitably shoot your bow outside, tuning it to shoot/group arrows down range. before you tinker take photos and write stuff down so you can get it back to where it was if need be. if things aren't going well, walk away and come back later.

this is a 3D bow but I always set them up so I can hunt with them too. I have a ritual that I take at least one deer with every bow I've got whether for 3D or not. I've got a backup bow setup for hunting on standby in case I mess something up. I shot a bare shaft with fletched arrows and it hit well within a couple inches of the others at 20 yards. the big targets were already there at the club range from a 3D event they had the day before. I had a bone head idea of shooting the bare shaft at farther distances but talked myself off the ledge. can't help the tendencies like you said. being an engineer the struggle is real. some days good enough is practically perfect though.

good luck Rob. that'll definitely kill deer. shooting a bow that's fit to you will make a world of difference. you'll feel like a deer reaper heading into the woods.

I've spent way more time tinkering with this bow to tune and fit it to me than any shop could do for a customer. I shoot throughout the year. also it was good day shooting. it could only go down hill from there. don't think it's the normal expectation. even for a better bowhunter. just practice correctly and work for it. if you know you're doing something wrong then fix it right away. results are based on what efforts you put in. following that, you'll get better I promise.

I stopped using them and went to the portable ones strapped to the tree. more to carry at first but they don't damage tree and screw in steps left there year after year will get grown into the tree where you can't loosen them to unscrew them out.

that's awesome.

I don't actually pick them until hard antler. my hit list isn't that long for properties I mostly hunt. only a couple bucks. my doe hitlist is much larger.

how dare you shoot anything without antlers?! ....that's the mother that'll give us next years buck! ....you may have already heard that one. lol

there is, in that it does happen that you pass deer that your neighbor chooses to legally or illegally take. there is no validity in placing blame on your neighbor for your trigger pull based on assumptions. just because they saw it walk in a direction out of sight and then heard a bang in that general direction, doesn't always mean that deer is dead. fine to hypothesize, but if you can't or won't make it a point to simply go say hi to your neighbor and be able to ask how they did hunting, then you've got bigger issues to deal with.

no offense taken... we can subjectively come to a conclusion that the hunting is better, worse, or the same. when my dad was much younger they had real reason to get excited just to see a track. there were a lot of compounded issues in the area back then including poaching that didn't give much of anything to see or shoot. now it's much better. hind sight is always 20/20 so I don't completely know what the hunting will be like in the future where I am, but I'm thinking as good or better based on what I'm seeing. you took it in a completely different context that nobody in their right mind should argue with. Not coming up with some very specific and/or twisted exception, I whole heartedly agree. if a hunter sees deer, gets enjoyment from the hunt, and takes a deer they're happy with then it's a mission accomplished. another point you touched on is hunt with you and those close to you in mind. not just for that day but with future hunting in mind. not talking about antlers, quantity, or anything specific. in the simplest form, even outside of hunting, I meant what I said in wanting better for my kids and future grandkids. under that context I'd find it hard for you as a grandmother to disagree and most definitely not find "sad".

based on I guess rack size, neck, body in general proportion to the legs, and a couple other things i'll say 3.5 years old (or as larry says he will be this fall). some DEC staff and field techs are very good. others not so much. 4.5+ year old bucks take more than just luck to get to that age. things like how much muscle in the shoulders or thickness in his upper neck doesn't matter much. once he's juiced up on testosterone and hard antlered he'll look even meaner and a bit different.

we have youth hunters that take some deer to get experience under them and then it's like a switch flips. just like in school I give them an idea, media explaining it, an example of how it worked in the real hunting world, and they soak it up like a sponge. they're kids. if they're told something that seems off, they aren't worried about hurting someone's feelings, and will just unknowingly call the person out until they seek an answer that makes sense to them. they usually end up with some of the bigger sets of antlers on the wall too.

people take it personal when forced management decisions are made by a state or requested by other people. those requesting change feel forced into shooting anything legal. there's so much knowledge available right now at your fingertips it's inevitable that more sound trigger pulling practices are going to be understood and practiced. we have it great here and some can't understand how easily it could be better. some are "plugged in" to the deer situation more than others. it blows my mind that a few properties can cry the blues and accept subpar hunting experiences shooting anything legal. yet down the road a few others embrace sound practices, are shooting 200+lb bucks with 150+" racks and having piles of youth hunters seeing incredible things while filling the freezers with good bucks and plump adult doe. I was at local fair and had at least a dozen people tell me they'd love to pass certain bucks but they can't due to the neighbors. said the bucks cross the border and then they hear it get shot. so the next one that walks by gets taken regardless of what they'd prefer to do. I ask them if they talk to their neighbor or go see what they took. the answer .....no. people have wanted to believe the situation is worse and haven't done anything to help it. we're slowly seeing things turn around and it's awesome. my daughter, any other kids we have, and hopefully grandkids some day will have hunting so good I couldn't dream it.

There's a lot to yardage estimation but hunting ranges make it easier. Setup targets or at least objects at yards that are your pins and out past where you'd take shot at an animal. Every practice you burn it into memory. Then use range finder. In field. Range objects in from stand or blind before settling in. Quiz yourself while you wait. I do both these as well as practice randomly with rangefinder throughout year.

Hard to see but three arrows in 1st pic

Worked on new bow again tonight. Forgot pix of 1st shot. It was right in there at 20yards. Setting up HHA dial sight so after that it was a couple groups at 80 yards. Both groups about 2-2.5". I think i moved my anchor slightly for 2nd group. Moved sight and group should've came up but didn't. Too dark to verify anchor with peep. Just had to repeat it and hope for the best. Goes to show how important repeatable anchor is between shooting sessions.