Saturday, October 07, 2006
Bow Hunting Is Mostly Mental
Bow hunting is mostly mental. If we had to break it down into percentages, the mental aspect may account for as much as 85 percent of the hunting experience.
The mental aspect of the hunt is seldom considered my most hunters. For many, hunting is perceived as a mostly physical endeavor.
Many bow hunters get all wrapped up into gadgets and gear; choosing broadheads; different arrow rests; deciding between aluminum, carbon or wood, and other things.
They dream the bow hunter’s dream of shooting a big buck, and putting together the use of all these gadgets that are on the market—in addition to the bow and arrow—and using all of this stuff to take a nice buck during the archery season.
Bow hunting, as we know it, is done outdoors. Sure, some hunters will sit out in an open tree stand or sit inside an enclosed hunting coop, but we do our thing outdoors.
The physical part of the hunt is walking to our hunting spot, climbing into a ground blind or tree stand, drawing the bow back, releasing an arrow, climbing down or out of our stand, trailing the deer, field dressing the animal and dragging it out. Removing a field-dressed deer from the woods can be the most strenuous part of the physical hunt.
However, I maintain that bow hunting is more mental than physical. Most of the work of a successful or unsuccessful hunt is mental. What we do requires thought.
Being an accurate bow shot is mostly mental. Once our bow is sighted-in, and we know where the arrow will go if we practice good form, is mostly mental as we concentrate on achieving a firm anchor point, on holding the bow steady, and making a smooth release, and holding the bow up and steady until the arrow hits the animal in the proper spot.
All of this is mostly mental. This is something that must be thought about on every shot we take whether at a deer or a 3-D target. The mental gymnastics of accurately shooting a bow are more complex than most hunters suspect.
Long before any shot at game can be taken, we must achieve some harmony within ourselves. We can get excited when a deer is seen approaching our stand, but one part of the mental process must sift through all the pertinent factors that must come into play.
We must think better than a deer reacts, and must deliberate long and hard over where a ground or tree stand should be placed. We must judge downward angles when shooting from an elevated position, and we must think out the possibilities of deer travel routes based on available sign.
It’s all mental, you know. Thinking is what gives humans a slight advantage over deer, but with many non-thinking hunters, all the advantages lie with the whitetail deer.
The ability to think, to puzzle out where deer will come from and know why they follow the trails they do, is an important element in stand placement. Throw a stand up into a tree, and set there in hopes of an animal showing up makes little sense. Thinking ahead, and making decisions based on available deer sign, makes more sense.
We must learn to think about wind direction, and must know that wind direction in the unimpeded open spaces can be dramatically different that the flow of air currents through an open wood lot, creek bottom or swamp where vegetation (bushes and trees) can alter the wind direction a little bit or a great deal. We must know how the air moves at each stand on different days under different weather conditions.
Thinking about where to aim, and which shot to take, becomes second nature to experienced hunters. People in the hunting infancy seldom puzzle out these tasks, and shoot and hope for the best. This is not a wise decision, and hopefully this piece on the thinking hunter will give hunters pause, and allow them to puzzle out problems whenever the arise in the future.
Hunting, without any doubt, is more mental than physical. Think about it, and I’m sure you’ll agree that more thought goes into hunting than physical exertion.—The Whitetail Wizard