00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired2Hunt Foundations Podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting. Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle, or blind. First Light, go farther, stay longer. And now, your host, Tony Peterson.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired2Hunt Foundations Podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I’m your host, Tony Peterson, and today’s episode is all about that last-minute bow prep we should all have buttoned up before the season starts. I truly envy people who, you know, just kind of geek out on deer hunting equipment because I actually don’t. There was a time where I might have, but I didn’t have any money then. By the time I got into the hunting industry, a huge part of my job became setting up bows and shooting different arrows and broadheads and testing out a lot of gear. I am far more of a hunter than I am a gear junkie. But that time of my life taught me a lot. And there are some things I learned then about bow setup and, you know, kind of preseason prep that I’m still very diligent about, which is what I’m going to talk about right now. Back on June 12th of this year, the big brains at NASA tested out an experimental aircraft called the X-59 Quest. Now maybe this is because I’m emotionally stuck as an eight-year-old boy, but I still really like fighter jets. And this one is one of the wildest ones to hit the sky so far. But this jet isn’t necessarily designed for military purposes, but instead for potentially bringing supersonic flights to your nearest airport. Now you might think, We already have plenty of supersonic aircraft. Why don’t they fly those over the mainland more frequently? Well, the answer is that when an object travels slower than Mach 1, the pressure builds up in front of it. And when that same object goes faster than Mach 1, it is then going faster than the sound waves and the pressure ahead of it. That’s when a sonic boom happens. Here’s a way to think about it that will be relatable to a lot of you fine listeners. Imagine frog fishing for largemouth, and you huck that kermit into a patch of duckweed. Now, a well-designed frog will allow you to hop it on top of the slop, where hopefully a giant largemouth will see it and bust through to gobble it up in a way that makes walleye fishing seem like child’s play. But if your frog is a little beat up, you know, maybe it fills up with water because a couple northerns bit it and, you know, bit through it a little bit. Or maybe the nose of your frog is sort of smashed in like a prizefighter’s schnoz. It might not bounce lightly on top. It’s going to dig in. The more you reel in, the more that duckweed will build up ahead of it until you’ve got to give it a real good yank, and that kermit will pop through, often at very high speeds and often at your fishing partner. Now imagine that moment, but with a plane in the sky, and that’s when a sonic boom occurs. NASA’s latest plane is designed to turn that boom into a whimper, and it does that through a nose that is 38 feet long, which accounts for a huge part of the total length of the aircraft. It’s kind of like having fabric stretched taut and trying to poke a one-inch thick wooden dowel through it versus a sewing needle. They flew that X-59 Quest at an altitude of 55,000 feet and at a speed of 924 miles per hour, which put it well past Mach 1. It’s not just the anteater nose alone that does the trick, though, for keeping that plane quiet. It’s also built to control aerodynamic shock and shockwave structure to control airflow. And the wings are also built to just reduce drag. They also mounted the engine on top of the fuselage to point more of the aircraft’s noise away from Earth. And another crazy design feature is the fact that they got rid of the windshield entirely. And instead, the pilot views a 4K screen that displays what’s going on outside the plane. It’s like video gaming meets experimental aircraft, which is kind of awesome. Especially when you consider how far planes have come in really not that long of a time. The first propeller-driven planes had blunt noses, as did a lot of the planes that helped shape the Second Great War. But as planes gave way to jets, and jets got faster and faster, the designs had to change. Even a little tweak to the nose of a plane could alter its performance in a negative way. It’s really just physics in a badass form, I guess. Kind of like our arrows. Now, our arrows might not be the equivalent of a multi-billion dollar multi-year project that NASA and Lockheed Martin collaborated on, But there is one principle I want to drive home. If you change the shape of the front of your arrow, you might very well change the way that arrow flies. A lot of hunters look at this as an all or nothing thing when it comes to every arrow they plan to hunt with and the broadheads they choose to tip them with. That’s a bad approach. Even for arrows that are advertised as being spine matched or weight matched or laser cut or whatever, there is always a degree of variation in their tolerances, just like there is with broadheads. Now, if you don’t believe that, Go get yourself a cheap grain scale and put your arrows and your broadheads on there individually. You’ll see differences that might not matter at all in the real world, or they might. For the purpose of this show, let’s just all agree that I’m right about that, because I am. So not only are you going from arrows with field points to arrows with broadheads, you’re going with individual arrows with field points to individual arrows with broadheads, probably right now. And they’re not going to all fly the same, generally. I’ve covered this before, so I’m just gonna give a refresher on my strategy. But whether I’m shooting mechanicals or fixed blade heads, I shoot them, you know, the actual arrows I plan to hunt with, and I match them to specific broadheads, so I know that every combo is gonna fly perfectly. This is more expensive than not doing this, but it’s also really cheap insurance when a big buck walks in at 33 yards in low light. Some broadheads come with practice head, others don’t. The ones that do make this process easier And although I know that a practice head is often not exactly the same thing as a real broadhead, on whitetail distances, it has always proven to be a reliable proxy that will show me proper arrow flight. Some heads don’t offer that though, but do allow you to lock the blades in place for this process. That’s a huge benefit. And one that shows me that these companies understand what bow hunters should do to ensure their products are put to use the best way possible. Fixed blade heads, you know, they’re often much easier to match. If you can resharpen them, you can do this really pretty easily. Just make sure you know how to put a good edge on them before you put them back in your quiver. Now, if you shoot heads that offer replaceable blades, then the job’s kind of easier too. When I go about this process, I shoot a warm-up round, maybe two, and then I’ll match up an arrow with a broadhead and usually shoot it at like 30 or 35 yards. I want to stretch out the distance a bit Just to make sure, and then I want to be able to not only watch my arrow flight, but make sure that combo will go where I point it every time. I want a perfect shot. If a shot doesn’t go well, I’ll take it again with the same combo in case it was just operator error, which happens quite a bit. But if it wasn’t, that arrow will get a different broadhead and a different chance. If that doesn’t work, it’s out. I know that sucks, but it’s reality, and I can tell you that I used to get dozens and dozens of free arrows when I worked at Bowhunter Magazine, and I almost always had to call out a couple arrows in each batch. I honestly believe that a fair amount of the shots that don’t go well on deer throughout the year happen because someone thought they had a good broadhead arrow combination, and they just didn’t. That can throw off your point of impact by a lot depending on shot distance, and if you think you held dead on and did… It doesn’t necessarily mean that your arrow is going to go there if your broadhead and your arrow aren’t matched up correctly. There are a lot of ways to waste money on hunting gear, but this is one of those categories where I feel like money is just well spent. I’d rather not buy extra bottles of dopey or whatever than have my arrows be a question mark when the moment of truth hits. Now, I have to say this because it’s true. This isn’t just a compound bowhunter’s deal either. If you shoot a crossbow or you have your kids shooting a crossbow, the same rules generally apply. I will say that crossbows seem to throw about any broadhead you want to shoot with pretty crazy accuracy, but I’ve had a few times with the girls where I was matching heads to bolts where one just wouldn’t fly like the rest. Not 20 yards, that might not even matter, but at 40 it’s going to. There are other preseason things that you should probably consider as well. One of the things that can happen with bows, especially bows that sat idle for nine months and then suddenly got put into action for a few weeks before the season, is that things can move just a little bit. Peep sights can move. And that might be from just a little bit of string stretch or just because they weren’t tied in properly. If your peep sight moves, your point of impact is going up or down, usually up. You might not notice it because we tend to draw and adjust our anchor point so that the peep sight lines up with our sight aperture. But if you draw your bow with your eyes closed and then settle in before you open them, you can check this. Look, I glue my peep sights in for this reason. Because even though it’s not likely, I also know that my bows spend a lot of time in the heat and in the cold and the rain and the snow and whatever else. And the opportunity for something to move is real. And the opportunity for strings to stretch a little bit is real. I also like to make sure everything is nice and locked down, both on my bows and on the girls’ crossbows. Shot noise… which puts a buck in motion before the arrow or bolt gets there nearly 100% of the time, can be made worse by not having everything buttoned up. Noise is just vibration, and anything that isn’t tight on your bow has the chance to produce some extra noise at the shot. These are little things, but are so easy to address before the season that it only makes sense to just do it. Check every bolt and everything that is meant to move on your sights, rests, whatever. A common source of extra shot noise comes from the small Allen bolts on the cams, which also experience a heck of a lot of jolting movement with each shot. So it kind of makes sense. You can hold your bow in one hand by the grip and use a closed fist to bump the top and bottom of the riser to listen for extra noise. You’ll hear that vibration. I check over the girls’ crossbows too, even though those things are crazy loud to begin with. It’s more of a safety thing for me on that front because I don’t want it to blow up on them when a big wood spike walks in and looks like we’re about to have some fresh backstraps. Check over all your accessories too. One of the products in this category where we’ve seen a lot of designs over the years, which means there were some great ones and some duds, is quivers. Most bow hunters I know don’t shoot with their quivers on, or at least a full quiver on. Yet we hunt with them on. And while I always take mine off and stand, there are times when that’s not an option. Sometimes when you’re spotting and stalking out west, or sometimes for some reason you get a shot at a white till you didn’t expect it, and that quiver stays on. Quivers are a two-part source of frustration, or they can be. The first is that they will generally only increase the amount of noise your bow makes when you shoot with them on, especially if they’re fully loaded, and especially if you prefer mechanical heads. You get a little rattle in there. But they also often don’t have the greatest design for attaching and detaching them. These are small things, but you can button up any issues before the season by shooting with them on and paying attention to whether you have to wrestle with them at all to take them off, or hell, make big movements with them. I know most people don’t think of this because it might not come up in a thousand lifetimes of bow hunting, but when it does, it matters. I have some quivers that allow me to adjust how tight they are when they’re mounted, which means how tight they are to get on and off my bow, essentially. It’s like a weird dance I play every season to get them to the point where the quiver is on solidly, but also comes off with minimal effort. Okay, so enough of that boring, tedious stuff that most people won’t do. There’s also the reality of understanding your actual effective range right now. If you listen to Mark talk about this, or me, you’ll hear two guys who have reined in their effective range over the years. I like shooting my deer at 20 yards now, and I really no longer want to even shoot past 30. This is because whitetails are just tough, and they shake off arrow hits better than they should be able to. If you go on enough late-night blood trails, you’ll think about this differently, I promise. You don’t want to know how far you can shoot, but how far you should shoot. This is a big difference and we conflate the two often. This also goes for crossbow hunters and, well, I don’t know, rifle hunters too. Personally, I start to lose my willingness to want to shoot a deer when it gets around 40 yards or farther. I want them closer, even though I want to know that my arrows and broadheads will shoot just fine at distances that are farther than that. I generally end up practicing out to 50 or 60 yards these days, but that’s entirely to make sure that my 20-yard shots seem super doable. If I shoot it at a deer out to 40, it’s got to be a real good scenario where I’m positive I can hit it in both lungs. Most of the time, though, I’m going to pass on that shot and try to get it either close or just wait for another opportunity. So my effective range is 40. My preferred range is definitely 30 and under. But what is yours? Not how far can you put a decent group together, but how far can you shoot and still believe fully, 100%, that you will hit a buck right where you need to. To me, this becomes clear on the range. What distance can you confidently shoot round after round after round without having a single flyer? What distance could you walk out to cold and shoot a perfect arrow at any time of the day? And what distance does that stop being a sure thing? It’s a good place to start there. The thing about being a successful deer hunter that we often don’t talk about is that confidence is such a huge factor in everything we do. Every part, from scouting to shooting to blood trailing, is aided by learned and earned self-confidence. If you can stand at 50 yards and consistently shoot 5 out of 6 arrows in the bullseye, you might very easily think that you can shoot a big buck out in the beans standing away at 50 yards. But what about that one arrow in every group that just isn’t quite as locked in? Guess how that’s going to go on a real deer that has a heartbeat. Maybe that means 40 is the back end of your effective range. And the same goes for crossbows, too. But you also have the added reality that deer hear crossbows going off and duck pretty much every time. Where that buck will be in the moment when your bull gets there, that’s a real concern. Again, you might be able to sit on a bench and lob bolts 80 yards away into tiny bullseyes, but foam targets don’t move and we don’t always hunt them in low light when the wind is blowing and the prospect of killing a mature buck is just standing there looking at us getting ready to run away. You’ve got to factor in your own human nature. Factor in a margin for error. and try to really figure out the guardrails you should build into your actual shots on actual deer. This is really hard to do, because greed can kick in pretty much any time a buck gets within range of what we can shoot. We’ve all been there, and if you haven’t, you either will or you’re lying about it. But the truth is that shots on actual deer, let alone big bucks, are harder to make than shots on the backyard range. They just are, for obvious reasons. But if you spend some time making sure your gear is dialed, and you know exactly what distance you can shoot and expect a very positive outcome, you’ll not only film more tags, but you’ll hunt better because of it. You’ll set up to get those shots. And when you do get those shots, you’re so much more likely to make good on them. That’s a huge win for any deer hunter, and it’s totally doable for every deer hunter. So think about that as we get into this most wonderful month of the year. Come back next week because I’m going to talk about early season buck sign and how to play the game around what you can find in the form of scrapes, rubs, and tracks this time of year. that’s it for this week. I’m Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast. Thank you so much for all your support. I got to tell you, you know, a couple of weeks ago, last month, whatever, I worked the new store opening in Minnesota here where the meat eater opened a new store in Edina. And I was blown away by how many people showed up, how many people told me their stories, how many people I met who hunt just like me and feel the same way about it. It was amazing. It made me kind of see hunting in a new light or kind of just refilled my cup a little bit. It was great. I want to thank everyone who came up for that. Everyone who listens to this podcast, truly appreciate it. So thank you so much for that. If you need more hunting content, because I know this time of year you do, TheMeatEater.com has you covered. New films, if you haven’t watched Brent’s moose film, go watch it. crazy. That guy can tell a story. Such a good dude. Go check it out. New podcasts all the time, new articles, news on conservation. It’s all there at themeateater.com. Go check it out. And thank you once again for everything.
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