Successfully bowhunting the west for trophy elk requires a complete understanding of your bow & arrow rig and its capabilities and a personal commitment to becoming proficient with this equipment. I know full well that everyone shoots different combinations of equipment and all of us have our own preferences, but regardless of bow style or hunting style, I am convinced that for the western bowhunter the following topics play a huge part in whether you’ll be lashing your tag to the antlers of a trophy bull or whether the lunch special at your house will feature, “Tag Soup.”

Arrow and Broadhead Combo

This one is very subjective, but I would suggest simply focusing on the basics. I think arrows on the light side cause more problems than the speed gain can offset. Having a forgiving set up is key and a light arrow at high speeds might fly good if everything is perfect; release, no wrist torque, no canting, etc., but many times in the hunting woods things are not perfect. Going a touch on the conservative side will give you a little more margin for error. This could be the difference.

Also, the selection of these two items simply has to make “sense.” I see guys come into the local shop shooting 200’s (very light carbon arrows) tipped with a 125-grain broadhead. This is like trying to push a bowling ball with a noodle. Today’s bows are capable of great things, but don’t make equipment choices that are going to handcuff performance.

To ensure your broadhead and arrow selection is compatible you must “shoot through paper.” This is a method many bowhunter’s use to tell if your arrow is coming out of the bow true. Most pro-shops can instruct you on how to go about this process. Secondly, and this is huge for accurate broadhead flight, your vanes must have some helical. Controlling that broadhead is paramount and yes, helical does slow your arrow down a touch, but again, the speed gain is not worth the sacrifice. Building your arrows with straight fletch will be fine and dandy if all you do is shoot field points, but for hunting, you will be relying on your fletch to control a broadhead led arrow.

Sharp Broadheads

This is another topic that everyone has heard 100 times probably, but I thought I should throw it out there anyway because I have recently seen guys practicing with hunting arrows right out of their quiver. I wouldn’t shoot a broadhead even once that I was going to hunt with unless I changed the blades first. I am not saying don’t practice with broadheads. You must do this, but do it by buying a couple extra broadheads to exclusively practice with (exact same head you’ll be hunting with). This cost is not much of a sacrifice considering how much time, money and effort we put into bowhunting. You owe it to the animal and yourself.

I take the sharpness equation even a step further as I alternate which arrow I grab out of the quiver when closing in on animals. I can’t help but think that sliding the same broadhead out of the foam in the hood of your quiver and putting it back in time after time won’t dull it some, so I switch it around a little. I know this is nit picky, but bowhunting success is the details many times. In my mind, leaving just that much more of an edge on the blade could lead to one more pin drop of blood on a pine needle, which could give me direction of travel on a tough tracking job? Just something to consider.

Kinetic Energy

Exactly how much is enough kinetic energy (KE) is again a subjective topic because a few factors can make a big difference, like whether or not you’re shooting a cutting tip broadhead, fixed-blade, or expandables. As a general rule of thumb, I would suggest 40-50 foot pounds of KE for medium-sized game like deer, antelope, black bear, etc. and 50-60 for the big boys like elk, moose, grizzlies, etc. Don’t go in under-gunned so to speak.

To figure how many foot-pounds of kinetic energy you’re shooting use this calculation, arrow speed squared, divided by 450,250, times the weight of the arrow = the kinetic energy produced by your bow. I would suggest shooting as much KE as you can comfortably and accurately handle.

Practice

Yeah, I know not real cutting edge, but the bottom line is if you are going to bowhunt the backcountry of the west effectively it takes commitment. During the offseason, I shoot almost everyday. This might sound overwhelming, but really it isn’t when you consider that on many of those days I might shoot only a couple dozen arrows. This takes me about fifteen minutes I would guess and most of the time on these quickie sessions I shoot at 20 yards. Accurate bow and arrow shooting is all about consistency. You have to aim exactly the same to hit the spot at 20 yards or 60 yards.

Shooting everyday gives me confidence in my ability and my equipment and really, fifteen minutes is not that much time to set aside. I do supplement these short sessions with longer outings though too. A couple times a week I will go down to the local pro-shop and shoot against the fellas for soda pops or shoot in one of the indoor leagues. One evening a week I will shoot up at my buddies house where we stretch the distance out a bit and then finally, I will partake in as many 3-D shoots as I can during the summer; probably 10 of them most years.

One thing I would suggest avoiding is try to get all of your weekly practice out of the way in one or two days. If you try and shoot for an hour or two at a time, most of that practice will be reinforcing bad habits or improper shooting form because of muscle fatigue. You’ve heard the old saying, “Perfect practice makes perfect”? Well, this couldn’t be more true so far as shooting a bow and arrow rig goes. Short, high quality sessions, in which you are focusing on pinpoint accuracy, will pay huge dividends in the field.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 10th, 2005 at 5:34 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.