By Joe Chiarappa
We continually talk about broad head and arrow combinations. We take Ranch Fairy as the gospel and we load up our arrow with 25% FOC and argue about fixed blade vs mechanical and arrow velocity vs kinetic energy. When really, it's all meaningless because the simple answer is, you just kind of suck.
I want to start out and say that I am not Levi Morgan. I haven't won world titles, I haven't won any triple crowns, but I've shot decent at some national level events in both the ASA and the IBO. Feel free to look it up, its public knowledge. What I can say, is shooting tournaments, poor shot execution gets you a seat at the bottom of the pack. Sure, Tim Gillingham punches a trigger and does really well, but there's not many in the world who can shoot a command style release as well as he can.
All that said, I can't for the life of me figure out why as a bow hunting community, we continually, talk about the arrow, and what's on the end of it but TOTALLY neglect how that arrow has to actually get there. Again, I'm not Levi, I miss deer at times with he best of them and I am not perfect and hunting scenarios aren't perfect, but I spent a long time teaching my self how a shot should be executed and how to develop a surprise shot. I did that because I never wanted to feel anticipation in a shot and slap a trigger because if you do that on targets, you WILL do that on live animals, and most likely you'll do it even worse than you do on targets. I know that because I used to do that all the time.
The reality is, you should be spending your energy and your thoughts on how to execute a shot. The focus needs to be on that first, then we can argue about shooting a 700 grain arrow with a two blade fixed broad head (which is totally ridiculous). If your arrow can't get there, why does it matter what arrow and Broadhead combo you're shooting?
As a hunting community, we need to be better. I've seen poor shot execution
nationally televised from rather large hunting tv shows and YouTube series and I wonder how they could allow that to happen because of how much time they're spending in the field. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of TV personalties that do execute good shots like the Lakoskys, but there's a lot that don't.
The Simple answer is, teaching yourself to execute properly is hard. Its hard because it takes a lot of work and time. This doesn't come easy like it is to just go out and buy different arrows and broad heads then argue with idiots on Facebook about it.
If your pin gets on the animal you're trying to kill, and you immediately hammer your trigger, I'm talking to you. Also, I said kill because that's what we are doing. We can call it harvesting and that's fine but the reality is we are taking the life of a living and breathing animal.
Be better. You owe it to yourself and the majestic creatures we have the privilege to hunt. Bad shots will happen but don't let that outcome be because you weren't honest with yourself about how you execute a shot and you weren't willing to do the work to correct that.
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