• Fri. Nov 8th, 2024

Get Hunt Ready By Putting The Finishing Touches On Your Shooting Skills

ByInside Archery

Aug 30, 2024

Get Hunt Ready By Putting The Finishing Touches On Your Shooting Skills – By Patrick Meitin – With archery-only seasons fast approaching you’ve no doubt practiced smart and practiced hard. Your shooting form is whetted to a fine edge, your bow super tuned and arrows flying true. Now is the time to put the finishing touches on your shooting approach to boost hunting success this season.

Shoot 3-D

It’s time to “Get Hunt Ready”. With hunting seasons just over the horizon, I drag out my realistic 3-D targets and strive to ruin a replaceable vitals core. Bowhunting, performing under pressure, is all about healthy visualization skills, and you do not hone that mental muscle by plunking mindless arrows into blocks and target walls. For the most part, I ignore score rings—unless they are placed properly, which many are not—and concentrate on making killing shots, especially in relation to angled shots or shots over slanted ground. 

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That is part of this as well, striving to create realistic shooting scenarios. If you spend most of your time installed in treestands, practice shooting while seated in a lawn chair or on a 5-gallon bucket. Shoot from a step ladder or climb a ladder to shoot from the roof of your house—using all due caution of course, as you don’t want to injure yourself with a fall just before hunting season! When at all possible, take your 3-D target into the country, whether National Forest or your deer lease, and practice shooting uphill and down, through branches or across open gullies—anything to make shooting as realistic as possible. This is also a good time to shoot some broadheads, ensuring they hit to the same point of impact as field points.      

Vary The Pace

After conducting a lot of stand-up backyard practice it is easy to fall into a measured pace while shooting. What this means is that drawing your bow, anchoring and cutting the shot all take place in a set timeframe. You may be completely unaware you are doing this, but hunting opportunities seldom play to your set timing. Any shot that takes longer than your accustomed timeframe can cause anxiety and target panic. At the other end of the spectrum, you might miss a fleeting opportunity at trophy game because you are unable to pick up the pace (more on this in a moment).

During backyard practice, pick a number between, say, 3 and 60 before you draw your bow. This becomes your shot timeline. The count begins as soon as you pull your bow into the stops. Count evenly in your head, not allowing yourself to begin squeezing the release trigger before that number is reached, while also—for the love of God!—avoiding punching the trigger as soon as that number is reached. The trigger doesn’t have to be tripped the moment that number is reached, just think of it as waiting for a deer to clear cover or turn to give you a better angle, and then executing the perfect shot when you are ready.  

The point of these exercises is that should you hit full draw and a deer turn to present a less-than-ideal shot angle, you don’t feel compelled to mash the trigger when your ingrained timeline has expired, risking a wounded animal. 

Get Hunt Ready

Let Down Periodically

Hand in hand with varying shot timing, is making yourself let down occasionally while shooting. You must never allow your brain to believe that a shot must be taken every single time you hit full draw. This can prove disastrous in hunting scenarios for obvious reasons. 

I recall a gaggle of wild hogs arriving at a Texas corn feeder. I would wait for a hog to clear and turn broadside and draw my bow, only to have that hog turn in his greedy desperation to eat more corn than its buddies. I drew and let down seven times, growing more frustrated each time. Without the ability to let down without shooting I might have been inclined to force a shot and wound a hog. On my eighth draw cycle my target hog held still just long enough to get off a clean shot, rewarding me for my patience. 

Hurry-Up Drills

At the opposite end of the spectrum, sometimes in bowhunting shot opportunities are short lived and only the archer who can get off a quick shot comes home with the prize. Now, understand, I am absolutely not advocating sloppy shooting. That will get you nowhere. It is just that I watch so many archers who are so methodical in their approach to shooting I cannot envision any wild game animal standing still that long.

The same shooting form applies, the same solid anchor, the same precise peep/sight aperture alignment, the same trigger squeeze while striving to create a surprise cut-away—only it is done in a shorter period than normal. You don’t have to be lightening quick, just a little bit faster than normal. With a bit of practice, you will find you are getting shots off much faster and with the same degree of precision. I find stump shooting in a safe area with a Judu Point or rubber blunt is the best way to conduct these drills, as missing does not endanger life or property. It could make all the difference to a successful season this year.        

Get Hunt Ready

Get Hunt Ready – Squeeze & Follow Through

No matter how slow or fast your imposed shooting timeline it is imperative that you squeeze the trigger in a controlled fashion, avoiding punching or snatching, especially in the old 1, 2, 3-Now! approach. Let the pin float where you want your arrow to hit, looking through and never directly at the pin while mentally burning a hole in the target, begin squeezing and simply let the shot happen. 

After the release cuts and the string is away, again whether in a hurry or taking all the time in the world, continue aiming, burning a hole through your spot and attempting to hold your pin on that spot. Pretend your arrow is a wire-guided missile or you can mentally will it into the spot. Keep this up until your arrow sinks into the target. This will eliminate bobbles and “peeking” and ensure your arrow flies true.    

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