The Archery Letdown, By Pete Joers

The Archery Letdown

By Pete Joers

Being a self-proclaimed and very dedicated archery bum, I feel I must share a very peculiar chain over events that happened recently, which may help other archers:

The 2010 target season had just ended and what a blast! I never had so much fun flinging arrows with my family and friends, traveling around shooting many of the big tournaments, all topped off with my home club hosting a state championship. It was very busy, but what a blast!

Several times during that busy spring I had received phone calls from other archery bums inviting me turkey hunting. “Nope I’ve got plans…” I’d say, “Tournament here, tournament there, the archery club needs this done,” and so on and so forth.

Tournament season began winding down and it was time to get ready for August bear hunting as well as deer and elk hunting in September plus, as a bonus, I had drawn a quality deer tag for the Quilomene unit in eastern Washington. Time to switch gears!

My preparation ramped up, hiking, biking, shooting, lifting, culminating with chasing big mulies and two weeks in the alpine after the elusive elk. Now this is why I LOVE archery!

November rolled around and I was skunked so far, of course that just meant more opportunity for deer and elk hunting! Thanksgiving arrived and I was out the door headed for new hunting grounds with a bonus tag in one hand and my bow in the other.

Here’s where it gets interesting. I’ve been training and practicing all year, shooting thousands of arrows and I am now in a new area way up in the mountains, with great friends, hunting very hard, and I manage to harvest a great buck; the highlight of my hunting career…a genuine adventure. Once home, I took the buck to the taxidermist, cleaned the blood off of everything, put gear away, and made a movie (we got the whole hunt on video). The fun never stopped, that is, until indoor Multicolor started.

My target bow, which felt so good in my hands a few months ago, suddenly feels foreign, and after shooting it I can’t stand to look at it! I felt like I was just going through the motions: come home from work, go to the club, shoot a round of multicolor, get angry at myself and the bow.

One night when I got home after one of these self-inflicted indoor torture sessions and I see a big set of very familiar antlers sitting on the kitchen counter. “Taxidermist called and said to come pick up your horns, so I did it for you, thought you might like to see them again,” my wife Elizabeth said. With tears in my eyes I pick up the “horns” and instruct my wonderful wife that, “you can not play these, thus they are not horns, they are antlers!” Hugging them to my chest, and not waiting for my wife’s retort, I run off to my man cave. Sitting, thoughtfully looking at this mass of bone, studying every beam and point, I look up and there, hanging in its rightful place at the top of the bow rack, is my hunting bow.

Remembering back to the times I was too busy with “archery” to go archery hunting, things suddenly became clearer. Maybe this is where I lost my passion for archery, and maybe where I will find it again. I started thinking back to ten years ago when I was happy just to hit a paper plate at 40 yards and then discovering 3D and a whole new group of friends. Now we shoot “dots” at 80, 90, and 100 yards. Had I let my passion for tournament archery consume me to the point where I hated it, or had I just let my priorities get mixed up? I had forgotten that the reason I shoot a dime sized dot at 20 yards over and over, and travel the state listening for that beautiful sound of arrow hitting foam, is for that one chance, if it may happen, that the lord graces me with an encounter with one of his beautiful creations; for that one chance to see the wonderful flight of the arrow in the most chaotic of situations.

Setting the antlers next to my hunting bow, I gathered up my target stuff. Turning back for one last look I think to myself, “This is just the beginning of another hunting season. What a fantastic sport we have!”

Choosing the right tool for the archery job

For many archers the end of archery season signals a time to reflect on the past seasons hunts, evaluate their preparations, as well as begin to look at changes that can be made in gear.

With so many selections of archery-related gear on the market it is easy for shooters to look past the most vital element to success in the field: the bow they shoot.

The commonly used phrase, “there’s a tool for every job,” fits perfectly in the sport of archery. But how do you determine the right tool?

(Riverside Archery owner Gary Ludwig--right--with a 2012 Mathews Z7 bow).

The first step is to identify your price range and what your intended focus will be, with an emphasis on hunting style and venue. Do you spend most of your time chasing mule deer in open country? What about close-quarter backcountry elk hunting or Blacktail deer hunting in dense alder bottoms?

“As an elk hunter I like a compact bow, whereas guys from eastern Washington that are desert mule deer type hunters like the longer bows,” said Gary Ludwig, owner of Riverside Archery in Mount Vernon.

A compact bow, typically in the 28 to 31 inch range, is easier to maneuver in dense country, while a longer 33 to 35 inch axle-to-axle bow offers a more stable platform where long shots may be necessary, such as in open sage country.

Bow geometry—the limb and riser design—has a significant impact on the how the bow reacts, even more so than a bows brace height, says Matt Schmitz, owner of Bull of the Woods archery in Sequim. Limb geometry, whether the bow has parallel limbs or not, drastically changes the string angle when the archer is at full-draw and varies from bow to bow.

Issues arise when archer switch from longer axle bows to short ones or visa versa. Shorter axle bows change peep height considerably, and require a precise setup process.

Newer past-parallel limb bows continually decrease brace height—the distance from the “throat” of a bows grip to the string—in pursuit of more speed. This, however, is not a major concern, Schmitz said. “Depending on the manufacture, you can go down to 5.5 inches of brace height and not sacrifice any accuracy.”

“The biggest thing I have with brace height is if it gets down too low, they can catch on your clothing in certain situations. That can be an issue in the field,” Ludwig said.

Newer bows have pushed the envelope of arrow speed, typically advertising an IBO speed determined by a 350-grain arrow shot from a 70-pound bow. This speed thrill creates issues as archers, both new and veteran, quickly become “over bowed,” says Ludwig.

Just because an archer can shoot an 80-pound bow once does not mean that it is the right choice, Ludwig said. The key should be comfort; where you can draw the bow in one fluid, smooth motion.

“You got to shoot what’s very comfortable, because bows today have enough energy, even at 50-pounds, to drive them home on an elk even, and get the job done,” Ludwig said.

“There’s a bow to fit any body,” Schmitz said. The key to finding the right bow is to identify your price range, the game you intend to chase and get a bow fitted properly by a knowledgeable dealer.