Double-beamed buck taken in Montgomery, County Maryland!

[Twanger]

Double-beamed buck taken in Montgomery, County Maryland!
A good friend of mine brought his dog out to track and recover this buck.
It's got a single beam on one side and a double on the other.
You can read about it on Marylandwhitetail.com ... see http://marylandwhitetail.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=3802706

http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g171/jasonsweeney10/deer11_10_2009_2.jpg

[GF.]

Odd thing there....

The guy said it was a 40-yard shot that nicked one lung... the deer survived quite a long while, even after being jumped, and the hunter said he wouldn't have ever found the deer without the dog...

And then he said it was his "best shot yet".....

WTF:confused:


:mad::mad::mad:

Sounds like your bud did this guy a huge favor, but I think the 'teachable moment' in re: 40-yard shooting may have been lost on him....:rolleyes:

[Twanger]

... I think the 'teachable moment' in re: 40-yard shooting may have been lost on him....:rolleyes:

Yes. I have found this kind of reaction to be typical of nearly 100% of the public at large. If they get lucky it was "skill," but if they make a crappy shot then it was "bad luck." Or worse, as in this case, it was the best shot of his life!

I used to shoot competitive archery locally, and you would not believe the number of guys that have terrible target panic, or are just plain crappy shots, and miss very wide on occasion but then tell me "That never happens to me when I'm shooting at a deer!" :rolleyes: Uh-huh.

Yeah, well I call BS... or to be more politically correct, my experience is inconsistent with that statement. :D I could go into detail, but it's dirty laundry, so I'll leave it at that.

When I've gotten away with pushing the envelope I very much know that I did so, and will freely admit it, and have learned from the experience.

Most people seem to be wired far differently than you and me GF.

[GF.]

Most people seem to be wired far differently than you and me GF.

Speaking of 'wiring'...my favorite wiring-related quip...

"There are those who learn through reading,
There are those who learn from the experience of others,
And then there are those who have to pee on the electric fence for themselves..."

And just to ramble here a bit... I picked up a copy of Traditional Bowhunting (TBM), and they had something from 'the archives'.. I guess it's a regular feature now, in which they take a look back at the olden days.

This month's piece was titled something like "2,000 Bowhunters and 19 deer"; I guess there was a year where - nationally? statewide? - 2,000 bowhunters had a less than 1% success rate, and it got some attention then as it surely would now... And there was a pic of a guy with a doe... with an arrow protruding conspicuously from her haunch.

And seeing that was kind of timely, because in reading some very anti-hunting rants recently, I've noticed that the Antis make a big deal out of the traditional 45-minute waiting period. Some even twist it so far as to say that we are 'required' to wait. And of course, they always have a 'good reason' for why we do that....

So I was thinking the other day about how long that rule of thumb has been in place, and wondering how much our style of hunting has changed over the years.

For example, of those 2,000 archers, they took an incredible number of shots during the season - they just never killed much. But that's not too surprising, considering that the hunters polled said that they had been taking 'reasonable' shots of 60-150 or more yards.



:eek:


One guy connected on his 8th shot or something.

So yeah, at that rate, you can see why you might want to wait a spell before following up... Like until the animal has a chance to die of old age or something:rolleyes:

But that was considered 'ethical' back then; I think Pope & Young tagged their first deer at ranges in the 70-90 yard bracket. These guys were Archers, not Hunters, and getting a deer with a bow was such Fine Sport that missing wildly was just part of the game (like Teddy Roosevelt raining lead on the African plains from 500-700 yards out, or shooting at a full gallop from horseback while he chased down his prey). Suffice to say that the one-shot-kill ethic was clearly nowhere in evidence, let alone in fashion.

Anyway, I was just kind of stunned to realize, as it settled in, that bowhunters of the first half of the 20th century were doing what archers had pretty much always done - taking whatever shot was offered and assuming that any hit they got was likely going to be marginal at best. And now, despite our high-tech wizardry in the field, we're still reaping a harvest from their behavior long ago. And personally, I'd rather pass.

I think bowhunting is being harmed, if not crippled by the old 'gospel' about waiting 45 min - 1 hr. Once you have evidence of an iffy hit, yes, of course - but those have got to be viewed as the rare exception, and no longer the rule. Seems to me that bowhunter ed programs need to really hammer away at that because - JMO - if I ever need to wait 45 minutes for an animal to go down for the count, it's a 100% indicator that something has gone horribly wrong - and it's probably due to operator error. On the other hand, teaching that 45 minute rule as a 'normal' standard sends a message that hits which don't kill within a matter of a few minutes - or under half a minute, really - are somehow par for the course in bowhunting.

We can't afford that, fellas - neither in perception nor in practice. There's just way too much on the line...

[Twanger]

Yes, I get the feeling that traditional archers are operating with a significantly different mindset than I am.

There was a traditional archery league and a compound league when I was shooting competitively, and I would sometimes watch the trad archers just for fun. Probably only 10% of them could keep 5 arrows in the 1-spot target at 20 yards. That target has got to be a foot across. These guys hunted deer with that kinda precision. I'm no better with a trad bow, and the thought of that is what keeps me from walking into the woods with one.

[GF.]

Now, don't go faulting the equipment, bro....

Truth is - and the trouble is - that 20 yards is getting into a fairly long shot for trad gear. IMHO. It's not that a tradshooter can't kill cleanly or shoot well at longer ranges, but the limiting factor is how well you can pick a spot. I was never any great shakes on those 1-spots myself, shooting the same distance repeatedly. Yeah, they were generally 'in there', but not impressive shooting to anybody with pins.

On the other hand, I used to go out a-roving with a compound-shooting buddy of mine, and on small items, I'd beat him to the target quite consistently. Of course, he usually dead-centered the target on his second shot, but as a rule, he'd shoot 'groups' 4" wide and a foot tall, and I'd shoot 'em maybe 8" wide by 6" high. And my first deer was killed very cleanly at 28 paces.

So let's not tar tradshoooters with the slob hunter's brush, OK?

Truth is, any hit passing through the 8-ring is going to be fatal in a timely fashion, but that's a small (10-ring) target with some built-in margin for error. But I think there's a number of bowhunters do think of the whole of the 8-ring as 'the target' and - much worse yet - they don't necessarily expect to hit in the middle of it, just 'close enough'.


But remember the range captain at my club a few years back. The guy shot all the time. And he was scary-accurate around the course with that compound of his, but the last time I spoke with him was the day that I asked how his season was going, and he told me he'd tagged 4 deer on 8 hits.

Wild Turkey Foundation :confused:


Totally Funacceptable. I just can't believe that a guy with his shooting ability could possibly come up with a PETA-Propaganda-class wounding average if he were to take his shooting on deer as seriously as he did on targets.

So IMO, it speaks to the mind set; you either know in your bones that the deer is going to be dead within sprinting distance, or the arrow stays with you in the tree. You take the attitude that you're going to hit an animal well enough that it won't likely survive a full hour, and yeah, you're going to have a lot of long tracking jobs on your hands. That kind of hunter might well deserve that, but these critters deserve far better.

Think of the importance that so many riflemen place on DRT results. You get a guy like Herne who has shot a go-lillion deer, and he's confident enough to not usually care if they run or not, because he knows they're headed for the dirt just as soon as they figure that out for themselves. So what's wrong with bowhunters if we don't expect to kill deer as quickly, cleanly and consistently as Herne did with his trusty .270 Win?

It's not that we can't do it, we just can't do it from so bloody far away.

[Twanger]

Now, don't go faulting the equipment, bro....


I'm not one to blame the hammer that miss-strikes the nail. :D

It's the trad shooters that generally can't punch the paper in the right place, not the bows. I know these bows are very accurate in the right hands. We have one trad shooter in our deer management group and he's danged good... as good with a sightless trad bow as some of the shooters are with their sighted compounds, and I've got the paper qualification targets to prove it. It is my observation that he is by-far the exception rather than the rule.

[ncboman]

I once was honored to share a cabin with Judge Ernest Gilbert on an Illinois bowhunt. The man can shoot a trad bow. ;)

Overall, the trad hunters I've seen in the field were fairly dedicated individuals and decent shots. On the other hand, I've seen a lot of trad shooters at bowshoots that had no business hunting with the thing.

I'd like to hope they chose another weapon to hunt with. :D

[GF.]

So, Twang....

What's your qualification process down there?

Just curious, because there's an area up here where you have to be 'qualified' for participation, and their test is something like 3 arrows into a 9" bull at 20 yards.



:confused:

Why Bother?

Obviously, if you want to say that you've screened your participants for proficiency, then you have to have a reasonable, objective standard, but here's where I might just need you to help me decide if I'm being 'reasonable' or not :D

Personallyr, I'd say 3 in 9" @ 20 is a very reasonable measure of whether a guy has any business hunting with a trad bow or not. For all the years that I've shot instinctively, I don't know for certain that I could pass that test if I were to walk into it today - not just because I haven't been practicing regularly, but because that's a pretty long poke (for me, for deer hunting at least)) even when I have been. And that's not a problem in terms of hunting, because I can (and do) limit myself to shots within my slam-dunk range.

But at a 'known' 20 yards and with a compound, a guy who can't pretty consistently group twice as many arrows inside of half of that 9" diameter pretty much scares me to death.

Yes, that's a double-standard, but based on actual experience with both styles of equipment. FWIW - by the time a guy is good enough with instinctive shooting to meet that 3-shot, 'minute of pie-plate' standard of accuracy, he's going to have a very good sense of what he can do or not - unless he has done all of his shooting from a 20-yard line. With sights, let-off and a release, on the other hand, you'd have to be completely freaking clueless about what you're doing!

Thing is, though, I just don't think that enough bowhunters - regardless of equipment - really expect to have that deer down in 30 seconds. Personally - having gone all of 2 for 2 by that standard - I think 30 seconds is a totally reasonable time frame for any solid, 8-ring hit.

So am I crazy? I'm guessing that a lot of guys would say, "Oh, yeah, sure - when everything goes right...:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:"

But my question to them would be this: if you don't fully expect that everything will "go right", then WTF are you doing taking the shot?

And getting back to the question of my sanity... If my 30-second rool o' thumb is too short a window, how long would you say is the right number of seconds for the animal to go down on a respectable hit?

[Twanger]

Our basic qualification is 4 out of 4 arrows into a 4" square at 15 yards... or 8 outta 10. I.E. if you can do 4 in a row you get to quit right there.
I think only 2 out of our 10 guys needed more arrows than 4. Our one trad shooter went 4-for-4 with his trad bow. Impressive. A couple of us shot 2-inch groups at 15 yards... which is not really hard to do until you have two witnesses there watching you. Performance anxiety is a be-otch. :D (I hope Pam doesn't see that. It might be considered a slur :rolleyes:)

We have to qualify every year with the broadheads and with the weapon we're going to hunt with. If you hunt with a trad bow, compound, and crossbow you've gotta do it 3 times. We allow shooters to use field points if they shoot mechanicals, but if they then switch to fixed heads they have to re-qualify.

Our rule is that you don't take an initial shot at a deer beyond 20 yards. Once you get an arrow into a deer you can shoot as far as you want and as often as you want. :D I've been known to empty my quiver to make danged sure a deer stays put. It's very effective. There's really no down-side other than money.

Why 15 yards? We set up most of our shots to be 15 yards. I find that closer than that the shot is getting too steep, and farther than that you're getting, well, farther. :rolleyes:

I've thought about letting the shooter decide how far they want to shoot the qualifying target, and if they pass then we'd let them take an initial shot at deer out to that distance. The big wild-card in that is that deer can duck an arrow out beyond 20 yards no matter how good a shot you are, and we can't afford to have poor hits. Our worst-case scenario would be to have a deer running around the neighborhood for weeks with an arrow sticking out of it's shoulder. So... for now we'll stay with a 20 yard maximum.

So how fast does a well hit deer go down? Thirty/shmirty! I'd say four seconds tops. I distinctly remember the last two I shot. It went like this.... "Whup-crack! (sound of arrow going through deer and into the leaves behind it) Running...., slowing down..., walking...., wobbling..., crash!" If you read that sentence slow, that's about all the time it takes. It's as fast as a gun kill.

There's no way I could have climbed down outta the tree and walked over to them fast enough to get to those deer alive.

Arrows are amazingly effective when put in the right spot.


So, Twang....

What's your qualification process down there?

Just curious, because there's an area up here where you have to be 'qualified' for participation, and their test is something like 3 arrows into a 9" bull at 20 yards.



:confused:

Why Bother?

Obviously, if you want to say that you've screened your participants for proficiency, then you have to have a reasonable, objective standard, but here's where I might just need you to help me decide if I'm being 'reasonable' or not :D

Personallyr, I'd say 3 in 9" @ 20 is a very reasonable measure of whether a guy has any business hunting with a trad bow or not. For all the years that I've shot instinctively, I don't know for certain that I could pass that test if I were to walk into it today - not just because I haven't been practicing regularly, but because that's a pretty long poke (for me, for deer hunting at least)) even when I have been. And that's not a problem in terms of hunting, because I can (and do) limit myself to shots within my slam-dunk range.

But at a 'known' 20 yards and with a compound, a guy who can't pretty consistently group twice as many arrows inside of half of that 9" diameter pretty much scares me to death.

Yes, that's a double-standard, but based on actual experience with both styles of equipment. FWIW - by the time a guy is good enough with instinctive shooting to meet that 3-shot, 'minute of pie-plate' standard of accuracy, he's going to have a very good sense of what he can do or not - unless he has done all of his shooting from a 20-yard line. With sights, let-off and a release, on the other hand, you'd have to be completely freaking clueless about what you're doing!

Thing is, though, I just don't think that enough bowhunters - regardless of equipment - really expect to have that deer down in 30 seconds. Personally - having gone all of 2 for 2 by that standard - I think 30 seconds is a totally reasonable time frame for any solid, 8-ring hit.

So am I crazy? I'm guessing that a lot of guys would say, "Oh, yeah, sure - when everything goes right...:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:"

But my question to them would be this: if you don't fully expect that everything will "go right", then WTF are you doing taking the shot?

And getting back to the question of my sanity... If my 30-second rool o' thumb is too short a window, how long would you say is the right number of seconds for the animal to go down on a respectable hit?

[dave-t.]

I'd say no more than 10 seconds until death is reasonable for a heart/lung shot. 90% of the time it's less than that. If they are on their feet after 10 seconds, you may as well wait 4-6 hours, imo.

I don't believe the average joe archer thinks about what could go wrong, or what will happen to the animal if something does go wrong. I would bet their 4 step process of shooting (1. make a good hit 2. watch the deer 3. track 4. recover the deer) goes something like this: 1. shoot 2. ____ 3. ____ 4. ____

In other words, they don't think past getting an arrow in a deer. I've seen several hunters gun and bow, that have no idea what to do after the shot. Add in that for a lot of those guys, getting in range of a deer is a big time event for them, and they aren't going to pass up many shots, good shots or bad shots. What happens to the animal after that isn't as big a deal to them as finding the animal for their own success. I just don't believe a lot of guys think about the details regarding the ethics of shooting deer. Shooting the deer comes first, making it successful, as in recovery, then becomes a good luck/bad luck situation for them.

It's not always inexperienced hunters who think that way either. Some of the guys I've met who are the worst about "get a shot into that deer", were long time hunters with poor recovery rates, and I couldn't tell you what they were thinking, or why they bragged on some of their stories that I'd never speak of if I was in that situation.


I also hear you about the performance anxiety Twanger. Some of the worst shooting and flat out bad luck I've done was in front of a group. It was going so bad for me that my peep fell out of the string.:eek: Only time that has ever happened to me, and it was in front of other shooters.:o Ugh.

You have to concentrate harder on the shooting than on the witnesses.

[GF.]

I like the way you guys think :D

Excellent system there, Walt - especially for a tradbow, 15 yards is a more reasonable distance, and... well... honestly, that's a danged small target :eek:

Entirely doable for a tradshooter who really knows his feet don't stink, but demanding. And where you are, that's important. That's why I thought the 3 in 9 standard was all but pointless....

And well done to require people to qualify with what they're gonna use. I'd be a lot more comfortable going to a qualifying shoot for our local Audubon center property if I were packing the Contraption, but if I knew I was in shape to hunt with the tradbow, I might not be above swapping weapons for the actual hunting, because I know that I don't take stupid shots (which is a big piece of why I've taken so few :rolleyes:). And your system would call me on that, which is entirely fair, given your needs.

So here's the next question - on your 10-second time frame, are we talking about heart shots, double-lungs, or...??? On BowSite's home page, there's a video clip being used for a Muzzy ad. There, a heart-shot buck topples over inside of 15 seconds. Maybe I should say there was a Muzzy ad... I think somebody figured out that I'm interested in Bow-Tech's stuff, so now I get their ad instead. (Yes, they can do that :D )

Anyway, 15 seconds apparently is expected to sound impressive to the average bowhunter... Maybe not so much?

[dave-t.]

It's one of those variable things that is independent on each shot, and each deer.

I have had three off the top of my head with solid shots that were on their feet longer than I thought they possibly could be, but I'm sure part of that was my excitement at the time, and when a deer runs less, the oxygen in the blood stays usable/viable longer. The faster they run, quicker they black out, in theory anyway.

The longest successful blood trail I've had on one of my deer, was a mature doe shot in the heart at 7yrds or so with a 300 wm. I was never nervous while trailing. I was amazed.

[GF.]

That was what was so weird about my brother's experience with that cow Elk. Double-lunged and good blood on the arrow, but the 2-blade left wounds that didn't let any air in, and she stayed on her feet for way too long.

So maybe that's a factor in some of the tradshooters' comfort with a longer wait, but to my mind that's just a highly compelling reason to use a 3 or 4-blade head (and a rig that puts plenty of steam behind it), and confirmation that when they don't go right down, then something has gone very substantially wrong on that shot.

:confused:

[Twanger]

It's amazing how variable the length of time the death run is.
I attribute this to the complexity of the vitals and random chance. Even if you stick the center of the vitals the number and diameter of blood vessels you hit with any given broadhead blade depends on too many things to be perfectly repeatable. So for any 10 shots through to 5 inch 10 ring on a live deer you will get widly varying times (perhaps between 4 and 10 seconds) between the hit and when the deer loses conciousness...though all will be dead rather quickly. If a deer can average a speed of 15 yards per second over that run you can get blood trails between 60 and 150 yards long.

The real wild cards are the marginal hits. What if you get the near lung and only one blade nicks the bottom of the heart? How about if two blades do? Maybe your arrow hits high and back and is far from the traditional kill zone but you cut one of those big arteries there and he's down in 20 seconds. Miss an artery up there and he's down in 10 hours. It's got to be crazy variable when your hits are close to the margin. I hear the story alot. "the shot looked pretty good... maybe a little back". 24 hours and 800 yards later you have your deer if you have access to a good tracking dog. But you might as easily have that deer down in 200 yds with a good blood trail.

[GF.]

And I guess that's where I came in on the question... Marginal hits.

Just seems to me that the old 'wait 45 mins' rule just assumes a marginal hit to begin with. Makes me wonder, though... If you have a weak blood trail, would you be better off following up while the animal is still able to get to its feet, so that it will make itself much more visible than if it were to remain motionless in a bed? I've only done this once, but the buck I shot last year did manage to make his first bed in an area with lots of downed trees, which makes it a lot harder to find them. Mule deer pick out bedding areas like that all the time....

I guess that would depend to a degree on the likelihood of the animal holding tight to cover vs. sneaking out well ahead of you...

Hmmmm.....

But maybe it shows to go ya.... "the shot looked pretty good" is probably a way of saying "I don't know exactly where I hit, but I have a bad feeling about it and really don't want to say so....", which is probably a way of saying "well, the shot was longer than I should have taken, but I did it anyway...".

Because seriously - who can't see where the hit went inside of honest bow range? But string jump is still a wild card....

[Bushman]

Then too how sharp was the broadhead? I used to sharpen my own, but I could never get them razor sharp like the store bought kind. A guy I worked with shot his broadheads into targets then took them hunting without a touch up. Probably about as sharp as a butter knife guaranteed to push an artery out of the way instead of cutting it.

[GF.]

You know, despite all the time I spent in anatomy classes & labs - both as a student and as an instructor - I never fully appreciated just how tough and rubbery those puppies are until I cut the cord on #1 son.

:eek:

Honestly, one of the reasons I switched from the 'sharpen yourself' Magnus 2-blade tradheads to the 4-blade version (with the factory-sharpened inserts) was that I didn't completely trust the edges I was getting on them. The Stingers are good-to-go right out of the box, but as a bonus, I've found them to be an awful lot easier to maintain, because of the steel that they use. It just sharpens a lot more easily for me...

I'm still shooting 4-blades, though, because 1) I'm not worried about getting 'adequate' penetration on a deer with either one of my bows, trad or Contraption and 2) I just have too many reservations about 2-blade heads creating a 'slit' of a wound that can too easily be sealed off by the layers of fat, muscle and hide....

Interesting thought just popped up, though... Higher hits may be harder to trail not only because it takes longer to fill up the chest cavity to where they start leaking, but because that layer of winter fat tends to get thicker as you get higher on the deer... Hmmmm... Whaddya think about that?