Mistakes Archers Make and How to Correct Them

Mistakes Archers Make and How to Correct Them

By David Holder

“Mistakes archers make”, it sounds cut and dry, doesn’t it? Well, it would be if we looked at the obvious mistakes. You know the ones I’m talking about: not pulling your bow out to practice until the week before the season opens, or not shooting a broadhead to see if it’s going to fly like your field points. Of course, there are even simpler ones than that, such as pulling too much poundage, or shooting a bow with a draw length that is either too short or too long, and the list goes on and on. In my opinion, these mistakes all pale in comparison to the much larger mistakes made by both novice and veteran archers alike in the field, when it counts. So, let’s look at some of these mistakes.

Mistakes in the Field
The mature doe passed by at twelve yards never detecting you were there. Just like clockwork, a big buck is following. The only problem is, the big buck is now at 30 yards walking away, hot on that doe’s trail. It all seems to happen so fast! You’re just now getting your bow off the hook so you can try and draw and shoot before he’s gone forever. You’re now at full draw, and this is when you realize you haven’t ranged the deer and you can’t recall how far away the gnarly stump is that he is passing. You think it’s about 45 yards, so you put your 40 yard pin just a little high and let one fly. The arrow looks good until it gets into the high grass the buck is walking through, that’s when you lose it. The buck immediately takes off running and you are left standing there in your stand wondering if you hit him or not.

The buck has run out of sight, and you now realize you are shaking bad enough that you should probably sit down before you fall out of the tree. So, you do just that, you sit down and pull out your phone to text your buddy that you just shot at your biggest buck yet. After a full minute, and your buddy still hasn’t answered, you decide you need to get down and go check out the shot. You hurriedly climb down and start to walk over to the place where you last saw him and where you shot. The problem is everything looks different from the ground, so you are having a difficult time finding exactly where he was. You’re looking for your arrow, for blood or any other sign of what might have happened. Unfortunately, no matter how much you look, you continue to find the same thing, nothing.

Frustrated and now a little sick to your stomach, you see the gnarly stump you recall he was walking by when you shot. You’ve been looking in the wrong spot the entire time, so now you have a renewed hope. You get to the stump and start looking, only to find the same thing there, nothing. You look back to the tree you were in to try and line up where you should be looking. It’s hard to find through the brush, but now you see it, looks further away than what you thought, so you pull out your rangefinder and range the tree. To your surprise it comes back at 53 yards, a full eight yards farther than you thought it was. So, you think back to the practice range. You didn’t have a 50-yard pin, so you held your 40 at the top of the bullseye as best you could and squeezed the release. You hit the target, about eight inches low and three inches left but none the less you hit the target. You start doing the math in your head and trying to figure out where your arrow should be after holding your 40 yard pin a little high on what you thought was 45 yards when it was actually 53 yards. Did you make a dire mistake?

It Begins with Mental Preparation
I know this story may sound frustrating, and most of you are saying that wouldn’t happen to me, but the fact is, a scenario very similar to this one will happen hundreds if not thousands of times every fall, unless we change our mindset.
Yes, there were several mistakes made in this scenario, but some were more prominent than others.

First off it sounds like the shot wasn’t clear, the deer was moving, and the shot was further than the effective range, all of which should make for a no shot situation. Much more subtle mistakes were not having your bow in hand once the doe came by so that you could have been more ready for when Mr. big showed up. Other mistakes such as not identifying clearly and exactly where the last place the buck was along with calling a buddy just seconds after the shot are all glaring mistakes, but the largest is still to come. The biggest mistake is what causes all the other mistakes to happen, that mistake is believing that this is your last and only opportunity ever! You see when you believe this, then you can convince yourself that anything goes, when anything goes, no rules apply and therefore poor judgement calls are made.

Shooting too far, shooting too fast, or just taking a shot you shouldn’t are all mistakes. Mistakes can be remedied by changing our mindset. I have been bowhunting now for just shy of 40 years, and I would be a liar if I tried to tell you I haven’t made not some of these mistakes, at one time or another. What I can say is I don’t make them anymore, because I no longer have “the now or never” mentality. In my opinion, the “now or never” mentality is the largest mistake made by any bowhunter and it is the reason behind many mistakes that lead to wounded or lost game. So how do we solve this?
First and foremost, we must have enough respect for the animals we hunt, that we don’t subject them to inhumane treatment because we might be late for work, we spent a lot of money, or we might not get to post a picture on Instagram.

Only Take Ethical Shots
Some might argue we are shooting deer with a sharp tipped arrow. So, what’s the difference? The difference is where the shot is placed. A well-placed arrow tipped with a sharp broadhead will lead to a quick clean kill, something that every animal we hunt deserves. I have seen hundreds of animals that have expired in less than 30 seconds from a well-placed arrow. The opposite are shots that ricochets off a limb, or an arrow that lands several inches off its mark. These arrows not only lead to a slow agonizing death, but they can also lead to a wound that never fully heals. This leaves the animal to deal with your error for the rest of their life.

For an archer that should be just plain unacceptable. All our shots should only be released when we have the highest confidence possible that our shot will be true and precise. That means “ALL” elements need to be weighed. The animal must be within an effective range, and that means not a yard farther! They must be standing still at a high percentage angle and clear of any obstructions before we can even consider taking the shot. We need to start following one simple rule, that is “if it’s not right, it’s not done”. By doing this, yes, we will take less shots, we might not even kill as many animals, but the animals we do take will have been taken as effectively and humanely as possible.
So, the next time you set foot in the woods to take an animal’s life, do it with respect and honor and with the intent to make the most effective and humane shot possible. If you do that, any mistake that is made will be one you can live with, even if the animal can’t.