Beginning Bowhunter – handy tips when starting out

A lobster boat was working in the bay several hundred yards to my east. The boat’s throaty diesel revved every few minutes as it moved to the next pot. I had relocated my climber two times in the past hour because things just weren’t happening for me this trip. A new tree in an area that I had never hunted and barely took any time to scout – considering that I only had a few hours left, this was the bowhunter’s version of a “Hail Mary” play if ever there was one. Three days into a three-day September trip to Islesboro, an island off the Maine coast, and so far the only deer that had come into range had been sporting a full set of spots. Some hunters claim that any deer you take with a bow is a trophy. Considering that it was early in the 2009 season and my freezer was empty, I wasn’t going to be too particular, but I draw the line at spots. I was looking for “a nice deer.”

The sun was still high in the sky, shinning on me and warming me nicely. I munched on a few peanut butter crackers and washed them down with flavored water. Seemed like it was still too early in the afternoon for deer to be moving – that’s when I saw the feet.

Often I see the feet of the deer first. Maybe it’s because early in the season the leaves are still on the trees and they block the deer’s body as it walks toward me. As it clears the canopy the feet come into view first and they’re making the most movement so they are easiest to pick out against the forest floor. As the feet turned and crossed in front of me to my right I stood up and slowly reached for my bow. I hadn’t seen the deer yet but, as I said, I’m not too particular when my freezer is empty. This spot was in the WMD 29 Expanded Archery Zone that includes a big chunk of the coast of Maine and its offshore islands. The special rules allow a hunter to purchase one buck and unlimited antlerless tags. I would shoot an antlerless deer or a big buck, but at this point in the season I would not be shooting a buck with a small rack.

In the late 1990’s a friend told me that he thought I would like bowhunting. I was an avid gun hunter focused primarily on deer. I scoffed at his suggestion, not imagining myself sitting in a treestand for hours at a time. I liked to hunt on the ground, mixing still-hunting during the day with standing during the first and final hours.

About a year later I started thinking about how nice it would be to hunt deer from September to December. September has longer days and warmer temperatures. Fewer hunters are in the woods, almost no gunshots, and no one is beating the bushes to kick out a deer. My home was in the Portland Expanded Archery Zone with its long season and generous bag limits that are designed to help control the deer population. I began to think that maybe sitting in a treestand wouldn’t be all that bad. During that year I mentioned this change of heart to my wife – several times.

A year later I found a new compound bow under the tree for me on Christmas morning.

The deer moved behind some foliage and I lost sight of the feet. I looked down to hook my mechanical release to the bowstring, and then back up to see the deer walk slowly into view. She stopped broadside at 18 yards and as I drew my bow I think she saw the movement and looked up at me. I was at least 25 feet up the tree, probably closer to 30. That’s higher than I usually like to climb, but I had to go that high to get a clear view of the game trails on both sides of me. I use a 20 foot cord to pull up my bow so I typically like to get the bow just off the ground when I set my stand for the hunt.

This wasn’t the first time a deer stopped with its eyes on me as I prepared for the shot. A few years before, during the last minutes of the last day of season, the second deer I ever shot with a bow stopped in the snow to stare at me while I hooked-up, drew, settled my pin behind his shoulder, and slowly pulled the release. If you’re fully camouflaged and way up in a tree, and if the deer isn’t spooked, the deer may not put two-and-two together – especially if they are young or you’re hunting in an area with low pressure like some of the private land in Islesboro. They see something moving up in the tree but aren’t sure what it is. Try that on the ground, with a mature buck, an old doe, or try it when a deer’s on high alert, and they’re off for the next county.

She was a nice deer, fat and healthy, stopping in the only little clearing on that side of my stand. I had to lean out to my right to aim around a branch – kind of a funky little move, but I was careful to move slowly and not lose my balance. I put the kisser button on my upper lip and rested the pin on her boiler room. Calmly standing there at 18 yards she didn’t have time to “jump the string” as the arrow sped toward her. The illuminated nock on my arrow seemed to snake back and forth as it passed through her vitals. She bolted straight away from me, crashing through the woods, and then everything went quiet.

In those days I was using a kisser button because I couldn’t get the string to consistently touch my nose, and the button had improved my accuracy and confidence. The small disk crimps to your bowstring and gives you a way to tell that your anchor point is the same shot after shot – you feel it when the button touches your lip. The downside is that anything attached to the string slows the speed of the arrow. After a few years using a kisser button, I changed my release to allow the string to hit my nose to maintain a consistent anchor point - removing the kisser button increased the speed of my bow.

It is critical to wait for a while after you shoot a deer in order to allow the deer to settle down and bleed out. Unlike a gunshot, the ideal arrow passes right through both lungs without a lot of trauma and noise. The deer often doesn’t know what happens, runs a little, and then “goes to sleep.” If you don’t wait, or if something spooks them, the adrenalin in a deer’s system can enable them to run a long way, turning your easy recovery into an epic tracking ordeal. This happened to me once when I made a solid 33 yard shot on a six-point buck in a clearcut, and he ran over to the treeline and stopped to figure out what had just happened. Things probably would have turned out just fine if nothing more had happened to spook the buck. But right then my friend, hunting from a nearby tree, shot the little button-buck that came over to see what all the commotion was, and that ruckus caused my buck to bolt. It took us more than an hour of tedious tracking to find him after he’d run several hundred yards.

I thought that it made sense to wait for a while, and then climb down quietly to take a peek at the arrow. The shot felt very good considering I had to lean out and think about keeping everything straight before touching the release trigger. I was using a whisker biscuit rest to hold the arrow from moving, along with a pendulum sight. The pendulum type of sight is designed for hunting from a treestand. It has just one pin that adjusts to the distance by swinging with the shot angle – this way you don’t have to constantly think about how far away the deer is and which pin to use. I had switched to a whisker biscuit after missing an opportunity as my arrow bobbled around on my rest. The biscuit completely surrounds the arrow so there’s no chance it will be somewhere else when you’re ready to draw. Accuracy is not perfect with either the pendulum sight or whisker biscuit rest, but I think they are a good way to build experience and confidence in real-world hunting situations. I now use a five-pin sight and drop-away rest. The sight allows me to shoot farther, as well as from the ground, and the drop-away is more accurate because the arrow has less contact with the rest. My whisker biscuit actually caused my plastic fletching to deform because the friction from the whiskers in the rest heated the fletching as the arrow was launched.

My reason for checking the arrow was to make sure that I had a good hit – if I missed I’d want to take advantage of the few more hunting hours left in the day. I found the carbon arrow sticking in the ground with the nock blinking and the mechanical broadhead in the deployed position. It was completely coated with clean blood and there was no smell that might indicate a gut shot. Mechanical broadheads work well for me when hunting from a stand or blind, flying better than fixed blades and expanding to a larger cutting radius. I do use a fixed broadhead when spot-and-stalk hunting for elk because they have better penetration and the blades won’t accidentally deploy when you’re moving through thick grass or brush. Many elk guides won’t let you use a mechanical because of the bad shots they’ve witnessed from partially deployed blades.

This is always the toughest time during a successful hunt – waiting for the better part of an hour before taking up the blood trail. I decided to walk down to the shore to kill time. This also gave me a chance to scout the area again – I hadn’t been down here for a few years. It was a clear September afternoon with the temperature in the 50’s, little wind, and the sun low in the sky. Off to the southwest was a sharp gully that cut down to the ocean. I noted that it formed a funnel for deer walking along the shore, pushing them up toward the tree I was using. I also spotted a few other trees that might give me a better shot of the most worn game trail, and also some flexibility for varying wind directions. It looked to me like the doe had walked around the gully and cut up past my tree. I spotted another tree that would give me a longer view and more time to get ready for an approaching deer.

I quietly worked my way back to the spot where I’d shot the doe. About 45 minutes had elapsed and that seemed sufficient time considering how good the shot had been. I have waited as long as overnight, though after finding one deer half eaten by coyotes I would think long and hard before doing that again.

Back at my arrow I looked around for the blood trail but was surprised at the lack of sign. I knew where she’d run so I slowly searched in that direction and it wasn’t long before I found blood. Within about 20 yards the blood was strong and it wasn’t long before I found her. She had run about 80 yards total. I set-up to field dress her.

Over the years I have figured this task out pretty well. I took off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and got the gear out of my fanny pack. I set out field dressing gloves, a gut hook knife, a Butt Out! tool, game tag, duct tape, deer drag, a gallon-size Ziploc bag, and paper towels. The first thing I did was to take a slip of paper with my tag info printed on it (I make up a batch of these on my computer) and put it in her ear, wrapping the tape around the ear to hold it tight. It’s a lot easier to print transportation tag information using a word processor, and duct tape prevents the tag from getting lost when you’re dragging your deer out of the woods. If you shoot a buck you can tape your tag (in a small Ziploc) to the antlers.

Using a gut hook and Butt Out! tool are techniques I took home from a bowhunting trip a friend and I went on to New Jersey – those were about the only good things that came from that trip. When I first saw the Butt Out! advertised I thought there was no way that I would ever buy something like that – now I wouldn’t be caught in the woods without it. A simple twist and pull cleanly removes the colon – a task that often daunts even experienced hunters. And a gut hook opens the body cavity like a zipper – so much easier than running a knife blade under the skin using your fingers as a depth gauge. The other side of the gut hook is a normal hunting blade that you use to cut the windpipe and free the paunch from the cavity – mine folds to easily stow. The field dressing gloves come in a set with long plastic gloves that protect up your entire arm, and rubber surgical gloves that hold the long gloves in place. As with the Butt Out! Tool, I first thought field dressing gloves were not needed, but after trying them I’m sold. They make cleanup so easy, especially if you’re not near water.

After cleaning the deer I turned the gloves inside out, wiped off my tools with the paper towels, put everything away in the large Ziploc bag and stowed it in my pack. I slipped the drag rope over the deer’s head and put on the harness. I dragged the deer up to the road in the first trip, and then came back to get my bow and treestand. My friends and I took three does on that early season trip, but when we dropped them off at the butcher it was my doe that he gently pointed to with the toe of his boot and said, “that’s a nice deer.”

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