Practice Makes Perfect - Increase Your Odds Of An Archery Harvest By Shooting Year Round

All right guys we're out here today in the backyard. It's end of June. Got the longbow with me today. Just something out there for your archery hunters. Deer season. You know it's not just a few months in the fall. If you're an archery hunter you need to practice year-round especially you know if you're hunting traditional with a longbow, recurve bow and even you compound guys out there. I made a mistake years ago younger. I can tell you I've been irresponsible for two or three days before archery season opens. You're out in the driveway in front of your truck with the headlights on trying to sight a bow and that's just not a good thing to do. You need to be real familiar with your equipment. A lot of archery is definitely repetition, muscle memory, anchor points, release. This takes time and practice. Guys I don't have much here in the backyard. I've got a few targets set up. Every evening or two I try to get down here after work. Maybe shoot 10 to 15 arrows an evening just to keep my mechanics going and trust me this right here is going to pay off dividends when it comes deer season. This is something it's a skill that diminishes over time. So basically if you can shoot year-round. I turkey hunted with this. Actually missed a well grazed I guess you would say a gobbler. Guys use your equipment. Use it year-round. Try to be as proficient as you can with your bow. The animal deserves that for you to make a good clean ethical shot. Don't overshoot your equipment and just get out there and practice man. Every day or two get out here sling some arrows. Know what you're doing when you get in the woods and that's what I'm getting ready to do today. This is my my longbow. It's a black hunter. Cost me about maybe $120. I love this thing man. It's very accurate. It's very quiet. It's light and after some time man you can become very proficient with these bows. No sights. It's really primitive style hunting. I love it. You got to get close to your prey. Right now in the woods I'm looking at about 25 yards max shot. I feel pretty confident out there. So today we're going to do some shooting. We're going to shoot at 25, 20, 15 and probably 10. Shoot a few downrange and just make sure we're doing good. So let's see where we get today. Guys like I said you don't have to have much in your backyard. As you can see I went up to co-op. Got about four hay bales and I've got a turkey target. I've got a deer silhouette target. We're at 20 yards so we'll fling some and see what happens. So it don't it don't take much. Let's see what we got. That's a good little group. Two and a heart. One right above the heart at 20 yards and like I said this is something I do. Shoot a dozen 15 hours a day. 20 yards. We'll do some different yards and see how it pans out. All right guys we've moved a little closer. We're at 15 yards we got. Pretty pleased. Looks like pretty good pretty good group right there. All three I'm gonna call kill shots. That one maybe a tad low. I'll take it. All right guys we're back out here 20 yards and uh you know you may not always be hunting uh have a tree stand or a blind where you're somewhere where you're standing. So a lot of times I like to break down. Take a knee. Shoot a couple from the knee because uh when you're in the woods you know you're walking in get on something. You may have to shoot around a tree. You may have to shoot on both knees. So uh it's good to meteorize yourself how you're going to shoot really in any scenario. So uh we'll see how we do here. So one of them felled a little low and uh I knew when I released it and it was about an inch low Two dead center in the heart though. Can't beat that. Yeah that one's not a very good shot. But you guys you shoot archery enough you know you're gonna make a marginal shot here and there in the backyard. But uh shooting pretty good today. Like I said mix it up. Shoot standing. Shoot kneeling. Shoot whatever. Uh you just never know what position you're gonna find yourself in the woods when you're on animals. So uh let's take a few more shots here and we'll be done with it. The guy's gonna shoot a couple more 15 here. We're gonna call it a day. So we've shot three decent today. About half a dozen times. So the day. No correct photography here. What you see is what you get. Not too shabby. Camera's having trouble focusing. So it's a dead deer. Not too shabby. Two in the lung. One in the heart. Not the best group. But after about 15 shots or so try to hang it up. Start shooting more. You can develop bad skills. Bad habits. Guys like I said it don't take much in your backyard. As you can see I've got a few hay bales. I've got some different type targets there. So it's pretty easy. You get home from work. Don't take you 10-15 minutes. Fire you off half a dozen. 15-16 rounds. Keep the rust knocked off of you. Deer season it's not just something you start shooting a week or two before you can. But that's not that's not a real good recipe. So get out here every other day or two. Shoot your be familiar with it. Know your mechanics and it's going to pay off in the fall. I guarantee it. Good luck out there.