Archery Tip, my first lesson

So I was not born and bred into hunting. I was adopted into it by my in-laws when I married into an insane family (a story for a different site ;). Despite having never been on a hunting trip in my life; at the age of 24 I quickly became “addicted”.

First things first if I was going to hunt I needed a bow. I lucked out on this one, my mom had just switched jobs and was working for Browning, and this was a few years back when they had an archery division. A co-worker there gave me a nice split arm bow they were working on. He had it set up with a site, arrow rest, ect. I didn’t have to do anything; all he wanted was feed back as to how the bow shot. Well it was great in the back yard, I was shooting pretty good and feeling very confident going into my first deer hunt. Opening morning I geared up and headed to the ridge that we hunt. It was cool and still pretty dark in the trees. I got set up and sat just above a game trail. After about an hour I had a small two point Mulley come across my trail, fifteen yards at the most and broadside. I just knew I had tagged my first buck! I slowly drew back on this buck only to hear a loud screeching as my aluminum (yes this was a few years back) arrow pulled across my metal arrow rest. The buck was gone before I knew what caused the noise! What I learned is there are two totally different set ups for a hunting bow and a target bow. People that shoot archery just to shoot and target practice have very distinct and different needs than a hunter. Accessories are made for both types of archers. If you happen to have a metal arrow rest Home Depot sells plastic shrink wrap that you can slide over and heat up to prevent any noise an arrow might cause! This is a simple, cheap, and easy fix to a huge problem should you get into the woods and have that perfect opportunity arise. It’s interesting how despite shooting hundreds of arrows in a target practice setting I didn’t notice a sound but one attempt to draw back in the silence of the woods and I knew I had messed up big!

Good luck on your hunting trips and I hope you can learn from my lesson and check your bow for any pre-shot sounds that might alert game to your location and presence. A quiet post shot bow is another issue to talk about on it’s own.