Archery Hunting Season, Are You Ready?

Archery Hunting Season (White-tail Deer)

Are you prepared for the upcoming white-tail deer, archery hunting season? Is all your equipment in tip top shape? Are you in tip top shape? I have put together a small check list and I hope it is helpful for your next archery hunting experience. 1) Practice� 2) Scouting� 3) Maintenance of your equipment� Practice: I hope by now you have been practicing all summer long. In my last newsletter, I told you many different ways to practice all summer long. 3D target shoots or in your backyard practicing on your own target are a couple of different ways to practice your archery hunting skills. What ever you choose to do for practice, make sure you make it fun and relaxing. Shooting with your archery hunting buddies or your own family is especially helpful and fun. Chilling out or discussing your problems amongst each other will help you and your friends out.

Scouting: If you have not been doing some sort of scouting by now, you should start. Driving in the country and looking for deer in your favorite hunting spot is one way. Going for slow walks in your hunting spots or sitting in your tree stand for an hour or so, right at daybreak or sunset is an excellent way to see if the deer are still in that area. You just never know, you may want to move your archery hunting season tree-stand to a different spot or add an additional stand in the same area a hundred yards or so away. Maybe your hunting spot no longer exists and you have to find a new hunting area. Check it out!

Maintenance: � Bow�make sure you check out all points on your bow. Such as; the bowstring, arrow rest, nocking point, peep sight, sights, stabilizer, bow quiver or maybe a complete tune up done by a professional if you do not know how to do a proper tune up yourself. � Arrows�check your feathers or vanes, nocks and broadheads or points. Making sure your broadheads are tuned to your arrow is critical. If you do not know how to do this, I suggest you take your arrows and points to a professional and let them check it out.

� Release�check all moving parts to make sure it is working properly. Maybe a few drops of oil wouldn�t hurt either. � Binoculars and Rangefinders�since maybe you haven�t used these since the last archery hunting season; it would be wise to try them out before you go on your next hunt.

� Deer Calls�a good suggestion here might be to try them out now and not wait until you need to use them. A faulty call could cost you a lifetime chance at your archery trophy buck.

� Hunting Stands�especially tree stands. Checking out all points that hold the stand together is super important. Make sure your safety harness is in good working order and please make sure you are using your safety harness.

� Good Healthy Shape�getting yourself into shape is very important for your upcoming archery hunting season. When you get to my age, dragging a deer out of the woods is not an easy task. Walking, running or jogging before you go out on your archery hunt is very much recommended. A heart attack could be fatal, so now is the time to get into good physical shape, not later.

� Cooling Facility and Butcher�locating a cooling facility that can store your wildlife carcass before you get it butchered is a good idea to do right now. Finding a cooler where ever you archery hunt can sometimes be difficult. Don�t wait until your harvest to look or you may have problems locating a spot that will handle wild meat. Finding a good butcher to handle your venison with care, to your satisfaction may also be hard to come by. Looking in the yellow pages is a good place to start, or maybe your hunting buddies know of one.

� ATV�s�today, many bowhunters are using ATV�s to get to there destinations. By making sure all maintenance has been done recently, could save you from a bad experience later. There is nothing worse than working on a piece of equipment using a flashlight, especially if your flashlight does not work let alone your ATV.

To have a good archery hunting season, start with a good maintenance of all your hunting equipment. So don�t procrastinate. As Larry the Cable Guy says, �Git R Done.�