Missing bow shots

Shoot the left buck while aiming for the off-side shoulder, and wait for this one to turn.  If shooting from the other side, the twig in snow could deflect an arrow.

It happens to everyone at one time or another. We miss an easy dog shot at a whitetail buck, and it runs off – alarmed and spooked – but unhurt. Many hunters can dredge up a dandy excuse for the miss.

Instead of trying to come up with a believable excuse for a missed shot, it makes more sense to go through the entire  sequence in your mind. Don’t let the fudge factor kick in, but analyze it from the viewpoint of learning from your mistakes.

If the scene is mentally replayed and you study the missed shot from all angles, you’ll probably find that something happened that could have been a contributing factor to missing the animal.

It happens to everyone. Learn from your mistakes.

Some hunters cut wide shooting lanes in all directions from their stands, and the coop or stand looks like the hub of a bicycle tire with spokes leading off in all directions.

Deer often are frightened by such cleared areas. Hunting in thick cover is much more difficult, and many of the stands in my hunting areas are in thick cover or very close to it. A few stands may be out in the open, but over many years I’ve learned that thick-cover locations can be very productive.

Hunting thick cover can lead to some missed shots. Often, in many tree stands, there will be only one decent shooting location. Often, that is all we need. But, know this: deer that move through thick areas can travel on any trail or make one of their own. Knowing where a shot can be taken is very important to success.

Always check for that one good natural shooting lane, and then start looking for other possibilities. Bigger bucks often are found in heavy cover, and learning how to pick a hole through the cover for a bow shot can be a lesson in frustration. Do it right, though, and don’t forget about leafy branches, twigs sticking out or that often unseen branch half the size of your little finger that can deflect a shot.

Study that area where a shot was missed, and do so from the ground and a tree, and there’s a good chance you’ll learn why you missed. Taking a shot in heavy cover means picking a hole where the arrow must pass.

If necessary, use binoculars from different anglers, to spot twigs.

My eyes are bad, and binoculars are a must for me to find these holes and any offending twigs or weeds in them. It also pays to examine such areas from different locations. Sunlight glinting off a twig may not be seen from one angle but will be visible from another. Look for them.

This means careful attention to detail. Don’t forget that it takes only a twig – a tiny twig – to deflect an arrow and cause it to fly harmlessly off course. Miss one of these shots, and it becomes increasingly important to study where the shot was taken and why it missed.

The most common reason for a miss is the arrow clipped an unseen twig or a branch that suddenly jumped out in front of the arrow. We know that one blade of grass or a tall weed, hit right, can deflect the arrow in mid-flight. These things  can and do happen. Learn to pick a hole where the arrow will pass through without nicking anything.

Know exactly where you can or cannot shoot & stick with the best spots.

Those little holes become increasingly difficult to see once the sun does down. The heavy cover is darker, and tiny twigs are virtually impossible to find. You must know exactly where they are located, and there’s no need to worry. If the hole is missed, the arrow will miss, and hunters will know what happened. Pinpointing the holes, and memorizing their location, is a big part of the game plan.

Blaming the wind, a piece of blowing dirt in the eye, shooting into the rising or setting sun, and a whole raft of other excuses are a waste of time. Learn to study the situation, replay the shot, and determine where the wheels fell off on that shot.

Studying missed shots can be a brutal piece of masochism as you beat yourself about the head and body, but knowing what went wrong makes it far easier to correct or avoid a similar problem in the future. Making a mistake is human nature, but brushing it away with some lame excuse simply enables the hunter to commit the same mistake over and over again.

And the cycle of missed shots will continue.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors