Archery knowledge adds up over years
For the Observer-Reporter
Over the years, one tends to learn things the hard way. At least that's the way it went for me. I learned a lot from watching the white flag of a deer's back side raised when busted by a whitetail. Lessons best learned always seemed to come from screwing up. I came into the archery game late, as with most things that I care deeply about in my life. I never hunted archery as a teenager. Never had the money nor the time. No one that I knew was really keen for archery so I couldn't piggyback like I have so often done when I wanted to learn a new trick or trade.
Kelly and I were married in the fall of 1991. In the fall of 1992, she was working the afternoon shift at a boys rehabilitation facility in Grove City, called George Junior Republic. I was substitute teaching and had my evenings free with her at work, so I began to hunt everything that I could. Several of the guys on my fast-pitch softball team were archers and they invited me to shoot their bows and accompany them to assist in the tracking of a few downed deer. It only took a couple of trips and I was bitten by the archery bug. Having bought a used bow from a friend, I began to shoot nightly throughout the summer. As the season opener drew closer, I realized how much more archery was than just launching arrows into a hay bale. What I would have to learn over the next few seasons was a lot. Actually, it was everything. I fired one arrow my first season. And missed.
I had been gifted (maybe cursed is a better word) with an old Baker climbing stand. A smile crossed some of your lips at the mere mention. Dangerous is probably the best word I can use to sum up a Baker. A green plywood deck and a band of rubber coated steel was pretty much all there was to the old Baker stand. I stood for the first few weeks because I didn't have a seat/climber. An old piece of rope was my only climbing aid. On nights when the rain came it was not uncommon to come down the tree rather in a hurry, as the rubber got slippery and let go of its grip all at once. But I learned. Shortly thereafter, I bought an aluminum API climber stand and got pretty good at getting up a tree and staying put. With each pay, I'd buy a chain-on stand and a handful of screw in steps. Pretty soon I had three or four hangers and some good hunting ground accessed. Friends and neighbors and guys from the ball team took pity on me and nudged me in the right direction. They helped me discover feeder trails and sanctuaries. They taught me to manage my scent. They taught me to kill a few does before I set my sights, literally, on a buck. And each night when we'd come out of our stands, we'd meet up around someone's tailgate and talk about what we'd seen and why we were successful or why we had failed. When somebody downed a deer, the whole group went after it, en masse. I learned more in those sessions than at any other time and had the most fun learning. It wasn't long before I took my first deer with a bow. She was a big, fat, mature doe. A season later, I took the ugliest little scrapper buck one can imagine and was more proud of my "trophy" than many bigger bucks I've taken since. It was all part of the learning curve, and boys did I have a lot to learn.
As the seasons came and went, I learned a little more patience. I learned to wait for the best shot, the best angle, the best times of dusk and dawn; the magic hours, how to use a grunt tube and a set of rattling antlers to my advantage. I learned to practice and then practice some more. I learned consistency. I learned to manage the littlest of details and to take away the guesswork, leaving nothing for chance. I learned Murphy's Law throughin and throughout. I learned that a big buck's nose is a lot better than your skill set. And I learned that the rut covers up a lot of mistakes. Mostly, I learned that if you're not in your stand it's a lot harder to kill deer. And I learned I'd rather be lucky than good.
Over the years, the racks started piling up and I noticed that they were getting consistently larger with each passing season. It wasn't exactly magic but rather an accumulation of knowledge. One has to darn near become a deer biologist if he is to be successful, year in and year out. Eventually, my disease led to a longbow.
I've stepped back from archery since my little girl was born. I needed to be at home more than I needed to be hanging out of a tree. She's off to college shortly and I'll be retired...
Maybe I can find Kelly an afternoon shift job at a local factory.
Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at
