Practice for the Upcoming Bow Season

Its time to wipe the dust off your bows if you haven’t already, our season here in the Hudson Valley is just over 3 months away and its time to start practicing! For those of you that don’t shoot all year round, I’m going to discuss the methods of practice I like to use, almost breaking them down month by month ’til the upcoming season.

Before you hit the range…

If your bow has collected dust since last season, its time to take her out, give her some T.L.C., wax the strings, give it a visual check over making sure everything looks in good working condition. If your bow is in need of any type of maintenance, tune up, new strings, or if your going to change any accessories such as sights, rests, arrows, anything like that, now is the time to get that done at your local shop so everything has time to settle in. Your bow should be in the same setup as it is when your going hunting, sights, rests, arrows, if you want to hunt with a quiver on your bow then practice that way, so your not making changes to your equipment  in your upcoming practice sessions.

First sessions…

I break my pre-season practice down basically down into three 1 month sessions. After you’ve had your bow and arrows all brought up to speed and are in good working condition its time to start shooting. how ever, if you haven’t shot all year long, you need to start slow, because just like you had to clean the cob webs off your bow, you need to do the same to your shooting muscles. Some guys like to turn the weight down on there bows in the beginning of practicing, I don’t like to do that at all, stay shooting just the way you are going to be during the season, just limit how much you are practicing initially. The first type of shooting I do may sound a bit weird to some. I start at about 5 feet away from my target. Your going to be shooting with your eyes closed, yes closed! Make sure you have a good target and a large safe backstop. If your target is small maybe get some hay bales to go behind it, you don’t want to use them as your primary target as today’s bows may go through them, but they will considerably slow the arrow down. What I like to do here, is have a buddy stand next to you watching your shooting form. Come to full draw and aim at your target. Now is when you close your eyes, everything in your shot right now is going to be done by pure feel. You need to take the time to make sure everything is your shot feels perfect, from your grip, your anchor point, settling your finger on the trigger, to squeezing the shot off, and finally your follow through.  Have your buddy watch your every move, telling you what your doing wrong or right. I like to do this for about ten shots. I use this technique, in the beginning of basically every practice session for the first month, also all the way til the season starts if I either don’t get to shoot for a few days, or I am having issues with my shooting. doing it with your eyes closed makes you concentrate very hard to executing each step perfect. After I’ve taken my few close shots, I move it back, to normal eyes open shooting. I step back to about 20 yards, group shooting, 3 arrows to a group at spots. I rarely shoot further than that for the first month, as for now you are just molding your body back into your perfect shooting form. Don’t over do it to early, shoot maybe 15 to 20 shots a day, a few days a week, increasing a few shots every few sessions. as soon you begin to get tired, call it quits for the day, as you can damage your shooting muscles pretty easy at this stage.

Time to pick up the pace…

After a month of shooting the way I described, your form should be working pretty well right now. its time to start practicing a bit harder. I do a few things different this month. first I’m going to start increasing the amount I shoot, 4 or 5 times a week, and maybe 4 or 5 arrows per group. I also start increasing my distances, shoot at 20 yards, 30 yards, and 40 if your comfortable. I like to increase distance as it starts to pick apart any flaws in your form, anything you do wrong the extra distance will find it. more then likely your groups will open up a bit as you get further. It’s okay, if they don’t seem to get better after a bit of practice, go back up and try the eyes closed method for a few shots. about half way through this month I begin to make a couple more changes in my practice. first I like to add an arrow with a broad head I’m going to be hunting with to my groups. dull the broad head so you don’t tare up your fetching so much. Adding a broad-head arrow to your group is not as crucial if you shoot mechanical heads, but I still like to just to make sure they fly the same. even with a fixed blade head, as long as your bow and broad-head arrows are tuned good by your local tech, they should be flying the same as your field tips. I feel shooting with the broad heads also help find flaws in both your form and your bow as you’ve now added wings to the front of your arrow and it takes a bit more to control them. One last thing I like to change about half way through this month is ditch the spots you’ve been shooting at. Get your self a deer target.  You can pick up a foam deer, or what I do is simply cut a deer out of cardboard and pin it to my foam target. There’s no spots on the deer your going to be shooting at in the woods, so don’t practice on them, its time to start getting in hunting mode, seasons getting close!

It’s almost here, are you ready?

One month to go before the season. now is when my practicing gets crazy. I do a lot of this different this month. at this point its time to start practicing everyday you possibly can. Shoot, shoot, and shoot some more, this way when that big boy is standing in front of you come season time, you cant blame it on your shooting ability if you miss!  And don’t worry, we all still miss sometimes. at this point I’m shooting everyday, I also start increasing my distances even more. this might not be for everyone, depending on how comfortable you are but now I start stepping it back, 20..30..40..50..60..sometimes further. Although those distances may not be practical in the woods. They sure make those closer shots seem like such chip shots. You’ll be surprised how after shooting a group at 60 yards how much easier a shot at 40 is. Like I said before, the distance really starts to pick apart your form, and if you can shoot a group at those distances, you know everything your doing is good. One thing id like to note, practicing at those distances is different then shooting at an animal in the woods. If you are going to be shooting at animals at far distances, be sure of everything, wind..cleared lanes..animals mood..its amazing how much an animal can move in the time it takes an arrow to go 50 yards. As I mentioned in the last months section you should be shooting a broad head by now. Like I said, if everything is in good working order, they should be shooting the same as your field points. In the event where they don’t impact the same, (and you are sure that everything is tuned correctly), you should designate a few broad head arrows for practice and start shooting only broad heads, remember  its hunting mode now. One thing I like to do also is even though I practice with the same exact arrow set up I’m going to hunt with, pull out the arrows yours actually going to take into the woods and shoot them, make sure they impact the same, just a couple shots each and if there good to go, touch up the blades making sure there sharp and put them back away. The season is basically here now. I like to just do a couple different things in my practice sessions just to give myself more confidence. Most of us hunt from tree-stands. get a tree-stand up and take a few shots, do it from a tree stand, shooting off a deck or something is totally difference then a 2 foot wide platform. Just remember bend at the waist when shooting from an elevated position so you don’t change your anchor point.  Your impact points should be the same. I know I climb to 20-25 feet up and I never really have much of an impact issue.  Try sitting down and shooting from both the tree-stand and the ground,try shooting from awkward positions, you never know when a shot is going to happen. Lastly, one thing you may want to try is , shooting with your hunting clothes on, its a bit different then shooting in a t-shirt, make sure your gear clears your bow string when it goes off, I like to wear a tight sleeve over my bow arm to keep my jacket from making contact with the string.

The seasons now here

Its time for business, if you’ve followed these steps, you’ve practiced hard, your equipment and your form is in top shape. The very last thing you want to have to say if you ever miss a shot at a deer is you or your equipment wasn’t up to par. If you do miss, don’t get discouraged, there will always be misses, that’s part of the game, but at least you have done everything you can to prevent one. In my next article I’ll discuss how to not get buck fever…haha yeah right..  When you lose that its time to quit hunting. Good Luck in the upcoming season.

Mike C of Adrenaline Archery