Monday, February 05, 2007
Don’t Trick Out My Bow
Bows are are such a personal choice for hunters and target archers, and the choice is as important as the color of their new car, the style of toothbrush they use their choice of politics and religion..
There are a few things in life that one doesn’t do. Never insult another man’s wife, spit into the wind, don’t criticize another person’s bird dog or child, don’t try to pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger, or tell another person what they should put on their bow.
All I can do on this personal weblog is tell you what I do. I’m not here to influence your judgment tell you what is right or wrong. All I can do is lay out the three basic scenarios.
The first is to use a bare bow, no sights or other equipment, and learn to shoot instinctively.
The middle-of-the-road approach is a bare bow with a quiver attachment, a Game Tracker string tracking device and a red-dot sight or some form of sight pins. My personal preference is for a clean bow. The fewer gadgets mean the fewer things that can go wrong.
There is a small side issue for bows. Me and many of my friends choose to remove the arrow quiver from the bow while hunting. A quiver filled with arrows with feathers or vanes is simply a problem waiting to happen. Too many shot opportunities are missed when a hunter tries to swing his bow to aim and shoot, and the arrows sticking out of the bow quiver hang up in personal clothing or a tree limb.
That again, is a matter of choice. For me, the quiver comes off, and is placed out of the way. It can help getting on target faster.
My bow, other than the obligatory arrow rest, has a red-dot sight and the Game tracker canister. The bow is clean and responsive.
On the other hand, for them who like such things, a tricked-out bow can be a thing of beauty or a mess. Sights are a wonderful thing, and hunters choose what they are comfortable with. There are seemingly hundreds of bow sights on the market.
Some have three, four or five different pins. All pins are stacked one on top of another like cord wood. The major problem with sight pins is remembering the yardage distances of each one under the pressure of an impending shot at a great buck.
Let’s see now. The top pin is 20 yards, the next one down is 25 yards, and the third down is 30 yards. The next two are for 40 and 50 yards. Right, right? It’s easy to forget, and use the bottom pin for wrong distance, and miss the animal completely.
Before I led the red-dot sight industry into the 20th and 21st centuries, I used a single pin. It was set to be dead-on at 25 yards. If the deer was at 30 yards, the pin was held just above the heart-lung area. A hold level with the top of the back would insure a hit out to 45 or 50 yards.
It became less confusing for me to use a single pin. And frankly, using a red-dot sight is very similar to shooting with one pin. Gap the deer by holding a bit higher when the animal is out at a certain distance.
Many bows I see have a peep sight. The problem is they must be installed correctly or when the bow is back at full draw, the peep sight isn’t lined up with the eye. A peep makes it a bit more difficult to use when the shadows in the woods get long, and hunters are straining to see an exact aiming point. This can be solved somewhat by buying a peep with a larger aperture, but I found them to difficult to use when shooting light and legal shooting time is just seconds away.
There are other things used to trick out a bow: stabilizers, a flexible finger that holds the arrow shaft on the rest but releases its hold when the bow is drawn, lighted sight pins, fiber optic sight pins and other paraphernalia.
Someone once told me about the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid, and it must have sunk in years ago. A simple bow, properly sighted in, and your choice of pin or red-dot, and that what works best for me. - The Whitetail Wizard
Posted by
wizard on 02/05 at 12:07 PM
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Sunday, February 04, 2007
Don’t Trick Out My Bow
Bows are are such a personal choice for hunters and target archers, and the choice is as important as the color of their new car, the style of toothbrush they use their choice of politics and religion..
There are a few things in life that one doesn’t do. Never insult another man’s wife, spit into the wind, don’t criticize another person’s bird dog or child, don’t try to pull the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger, or tell another person what they should put on their bow.
All I can do on this personal weblog is tell you what I do. I’m not here to influence your judgment tell you what is right or wrong. All I can do is lay out the three basic scenarios.
The first is to use a bare bow, no sights or other equipment, and learn to shoot instinctively.
The middle-of-the-road approach is a bare bow with a quiver attachment, a Game Tracker string tracking device and a red-dot sight or some form of sight pins. My personal preference is for a clean bow. The fewer gadgets mean the fewer things that can go wrong.
There is a small side issue for bows. Me and many of my friends choose to remove the arrow quiver from the bow while hunting. A quiver filled with arrows with feathers or vanes is simply a problem waiting to happen. Too many shot opportunities are missed when a hunter tries to swing his bow to aim and shoot, and the arrows sticking out of the bow quiver hang up in personal clothing or a tree limb.
That again, is a matter of choice. For me, the quiver comes off, and is placed out of the way. It can help getting on target faster.
My bow, other than the obligatory arrow rest, has a red-dot sight and the Game tracker canister. The bow is clean and responsive.
On the other hand, for them who like such things, a tricked-out bow can be a thing of beauty or a mess. Sights are a wonderful thing, and hunters choose what they are comfortable with. There are seemingly hundreds of bow sights on the market.
Some have three, four or five different pins. All pins are stacked one on top of another like cord wood. The major problem with sight pins is remembering the yardage distances of each one under the pressure of an impending shot at a great buck.
Let’s see now. The top pin is 20 yards, the next one down is 25 yards, and the third down is 30 yards. The next two are for 40 and 50 yards. Right, right? It’s easy to forget, and use the bottom pin for wrong distance, and miss the animal completely.
Before I led the red-dot sight industry into the 20th and 21st centuries, I used a single pin. It was set to be dead-on at 25 yards. If the deer was at 30 yards, the pin was held just above the heart-lung area. A hold level with the top of the back would insure a hit out to 45 or 50 yards.
It became less confusing for me to use a single pin. And frankly, using a red-dot sight is very similar to shooting with one pin. Gap the deer by holding a bit higher when the animal is out at a certain distance.
Many bows I see have a peep sight. The problem is they must be installed correctly or when the bow is back at full draw, the peep sight isn’t lined up with the eye. A peep makes it a bit more difficult to use when the shadows in the woods get long, and hunters are straining to see an exact aiming point. This can be solved somewhat by buying a peep with a larger aperture, but I found them to difficult to use when shooting light and legal shooting time is just seconds away.
There are other things used to trick out a bow: stabilizers, a flexible finger that holds the arrow shaft on the rest but releases its hold when the bow is drawn, lighted sight pins, fiber optic sight pins and other paraphernalia.
Someone once told me about the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid, and it must have sunk in years ago. A simple bow, properly sighted in, and your choice of pin or red-dot, and that what works best for me. - The Whitetail Wizard
Posted by
wizard on 02/04 at 12:07 PM
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