Ep. 532: Foundations - Build a Better Bow, Part 1

but bear with me. While we often focus on bow choice as the most important thing for hitting deer in the ribs, that mentality really glosses over how important some of your accessory choices are. I plan to get into rest and quivers and stabilizers next week, but for now, I want to focus on what we used to aim with our sites and our peep sites, and why you might choose certain styles over others, and what that means to you as an individual and more importantly, as a

white tail hunt. In September two thousand and eight, a good buddy and I were sitting on a hillside in western North Dakota as the mid morning sun started to cause heat mirages in the distance. The mule deer we're all likely to be bedded up in the shade, and it just felt like time to head back to the

camp for a little bit of lunch. And as we walked single file through the bad lands and towards my truck, I ended up spotting a silhouette of a mule deer where there probably shouldn't have been any deer, and through my binos I could see it was a spike buck, which meant it was a shooter. I hit the dirt, and in response, my buddy, who was behind me, did too. There really wasn't much to work with between the little

buck and I, but I started crawling anyway. I used a slight fold in the terrain and some sage brush, and somehow that buck, probably because he was alone and young and dumb and browsing away not paying attention, he just let me get way closer than I expected. And as I was worming my way into that bow range, I realized he wasn't alone. There was a bigger buck, although not like a big big buck, that was feeding behind him on the same ridge, going the same way.

Now that four by four actually took a rope a little closer to me, and after I arranged him at thirty five yards, I drew a shot and I watched him drop on my arrow hit. It was a spine shot, so I put another one in him and I sat down. It was my first mule deer, and I couldn't believe it. I also couldn't believe that I had kicked off my season with such a good start. Well, you could definitely say I had peaked early that year, and you wouldn't

be lying. After that buck, I went on an embarrassing streak. I missed dear. I shoulder hit a toad of a buck in northern Minnesota that never ended up wearing my tag. It was brutal and an absolute melt down of a season. It got so bad that I was almost scared to see a deer walking down the trail because I didn't

want to shoot for fear screwing things up. And as soon as that season wrapped up, I said to myself that I either need to make a real change or consider a career writing about something else, like returning to my fishing roots. I mean, I don't know, you can make a bad cast and it doesn't ruin your season unless I don't know, you hook yourself or a nearby toddler or something Anyway, the first switch that I decided to make because I didn't want to go back to

my fishing writing roots, was with my site. I knew that I was panicking during my shot sequence, and then as soon as I got enough of the deer in my side aperture, I was going to punch that trigger. That's one of the reasons that I hit that old deer high. It's also one of the reasons that if i'd miss I almost always shot over deer, never under the same thing happens to me if I get a little too geeked up when I'm rifle hunting, well, I

don't do it often. I really have to force myself to hold my crossairs where they need to be instead of just dropping them in and shooting as soon as the deer fills up my scope. It took some not so fun reflection on my part to decide how to make a change. I realized that if I had a top pin shot like a twenty yards and under, I

had a chance of making it happen. I've done it dozens and dozens of times over the course of my bow hunting career, but I wasn't happy about how often it didn't work out that way, and if I had to use a different pin or gap with my pins, I was in real trouble. I'd panic and bad stuff would happen. So I dumbed down the whole thing with a single pin site. And I've talked about this a lot, and this might sound like hyperbole, but hear me out.

After getting used to dialing into the specific shot distance, which took I don't know, a couple of months, for sure, I felt like a new man. It honestly reminds me of how it felt to finally sober up and realize that I didn't need to feel like shit every morning or plan most of my social engagements around having enough alcohol to function. It was freeing now. That spring and summer, I shot a lot because I was truly enjoying it, and honestly, I had a lot of time in my

life during those pre kid days. I had never done the really long range thing before that year, but I did it a lot. Then. Being able to shoot a fairly tight group at eight yards isn't real confidence booster, and I got there, but I was still nervous about hunting with a new site, especially one that i'd have to move at certain times. So the first test came for me on familiar ground in North Dakota on opening night of that year, but this time it was a

trio of young antelope betted near a pond. I took the longest shot on my bow hunting career on one of those speed goats, and I hit him perfectly, and it felt like a good omen. And it only got better when I went back to Minnesota for the opener and had my first chance to fill a doteg and she only went fifty yards. Later that season, after drawing my first Iowa tag, had a mid one ten pointers, standing broadside at thirty five yards looking for whoever had

just northwest at him. As I was about to hit the trigger, he turned toward me and walked into seven yards. This was the moment that everyone had warned me about, because I had to let down and dial into point blank range. Now that buck never made it out of sight, and those fears of having to potentially move with the deer close they subsided. And since that season, I've mostly shot single pin movers, but I have gone back to fix multi pin sites a few different times for white tails.

They don't make sense for me personally, So here's my pitch on this. Think about your your mistakes, think about the shots that went wrong, and ask yourself, why do you actually know why you missed? Like did you actually misjudge the range and use the wrong pin or did you actually hit an unseen twig? Or did you just flame out in spectacular fashion and then just fill in the blanks later to save some face. We do that

a lot, and we never admit it. In fact, those common excuses are so generally accepted amongst us bow hunters that they are a sure way out. We all just allow them because we know we've used them or we might use them in the future. It's like an unspoken pact. But instead of taking that route, ask yourself, I don't know if you usually miss high or low? Why why

always high or why always low? If you tend to hit shoulders and guts more often than hearts and lungs, why what's going on that is causing you to blow an opportunity that you should be able to make with a speed year, let alone a modern compound outfitted with all the bells and whistles. The thing here is that a lot of us have to figure out a way to work with our buck fever. This was my case

and I needed to dumb down my aiming process. I put the dialing in part outside of the aiming part, or before the aiming part, I guess I should say, which means that when I am drawn and aiming, all I have to do is float one green pin where

it needs to be better. Yet, I've got a whole bunch of open space and a big site aperture that lets me see the front and the back end of the deer, so I'm not trying to peek around a rack of pins, and I know through trial and error that this is right for me, especially if that site has a two inch aperture and is fitted with a single vertical pin that measures nineteen ths of an inch

and just so happens to be green. Now, that might not be right for you, but you should be thinking about it unless every day you shoot at ends up running less than a hundred yards and piling up with foamy pink blood on its lips. You should be thinking about it every season when your shots, or should I say, if your shots don't go the way you expect them to. Now I just mentioned this, but I'm going to go

over it again, because it's real important. Being a good shot on deer is something we should all strive for. We should obsess about it as much as we obsess about trying to get into range of bucks all season long. It's something we can control, or at least learn to control, and it's often the difference maker between loving deer hunting as much as possible and not. But it's not easy though.

Admitting that you just can't keep your ship together on a big buck is tough, especially when you can flip on the sports miss channel and watch privileged twelve year old shoot hunter and seventy deer every day. Now, those kids don't know any better, and if they missed her screw up, they believe, because it's true, that there'll be other booners coming down the trail now, You though, for the average hunter hunting, average ground shot opportunities on good

bucks are rare. For many of us, they're so rare that they might not happen. But once every couple of seasons are longer, now that's the breeding ground for buck fever. And the more time it takes for those rare encounters to come around, the more that buck fever can fester and grow and take over your brain when that buck finally does start walking down the trail. Now, a change in sights won't fix that meltdown issue, but it can

smooth some of the sharp edges. It can give you off season confidence in your abilities, which is more important to carry into the woods than any bottle of dopes ever will be. If you figure out that a three pin site with all green pins and a one in three quarter inch aperture is ideal for you to be able to shoot tight groups at the range all summer long, then some of that will tag along into the woods

with you, and that's a good thing. All I'm saying is pay attention to the shots that go right and the ones that go wrong for the latter. If you find yourself looking for an excuse but really have to dig deep into your imagination to conjure up one, it might be time to think through your setup, which should start with how you aim. Now. Of course, your site is part of the deal, but so is a peep site.

In fact, I don't know, so is a kisser button, or even a little bit of serving tight on your string to touch the tip of your nose at full draw. Anything that you're comfortable with. It also allows you to reinforce consistent anchoring during your draw cycle. That's a good thing. Now, I don't use a kiss or a little bit of serving, but that's just me. I am sort of weirdly obsessed with peep sites. This comes mostly from having a few

revelatory moments in the field with them. The first, which I guess I don't know it wasn't really so much revelatory as it was just an introduction, started when I was twelve years old and our peep site options were very limited. They were built with an oversized plastic piece that was served into the string and aligned via section of rubber band tubing. That tubing was loud, and occasionally we'll get brittled in cold weather and snap and hitch

in the eye. The peep site itself was a great idea, but they were bad products because the whole was barely big enough to fit a sewing needle through. In broad daylight, you could line it up and find your non fiber optic pin, but in the woods, when the deer were most prone to be walking around, it was a rough deal. And again not being able to find your target easily when you know that the target has the real chance of walking out of your life at any moment, can

create panic, buck fever. Panic and panic is bad, bad, bad, and it happens to all of us anyway. Those pinhole peeps with the slingshot attachment eventually gave way to the precursors to the peep options we have today. Many of them were built with slightly bigger apertures, but still use the alignment tube. Over the years, we figured out that we could train a peep and our stringths to work together to come back square to our eyes. We also figured out that we could go pretty large with them

to really allow light to hit her eyes. I think this is one of them underappreciated advancements in archery technology. I really do now. I know it's not as sexy as the first single cam designs or I don't know, carbon risers or you name it, but the ability to center a site ring during every shot while light actually reaches your eye and allows you to see the whole

site window is an absolute gift. Not only does that help most folks shoot better at the range and in the woods, but it also allows you to customize your shot sequence to some extent. You can choose a peep to center on a single pin if you want, and that is an option you see some really talented shooters use, especially some of the Western hunters. Or you can upsize it and center the inside your aperture to your sight

ring or something else. I guess personally, a one quarter inch peep site or a three a cinch peep site is ideal because I really like to center my sight ring when I aim. That is a good way for me to see that things haven't moved and that from shot to shot I'm doing the exact same thing. This is something that seems pretty simple and intuitive, but it's not necessarily so it's also something that can lead to misses that we just don't understand. So once again we

gotta make up some excuses. Now, am I being evasive enough for you? There? Let me explain. When your peep site, no matter the size you choose, because whatever you like, is tied into your string, it should be tied so that it comes back to your eye in the exact same spot every time you draw. Now, you might have to train your string by twisting it to get it to come back truly square, but the height of the

peep in your string shouldn't change. Sometimes it does, however, and we usually don't know that it does, so we shoot higher or low and we don't know why. And here's the thing about this. If your peep site creeps ever so slightly up or down, then your point of impact is going to change. You're not going to notice that the peep site moved a sixteenth of an inch, and you'll just ref lexibly and unconsciously adjust your anchor or your head position to see the sight window you

know you're supposed to be seeing at the moment. And when you do that, you're going to change the point of impact. And when you change the point of impact, well, your arrows don't go where they're supposed to. A little bit of movement like this can come from a few different sources. If your peep site isn't tied incorrectly, it could slide up or down. String materials, as awesome as they are these days, can still potentially stretch, and when this happens, your peep site will move. Among a few

other things. Oh, this isn't as common as it used to be, but it's not so rare that it never happens. Plus the odds of it increase the more the bow is exposed to heat and cold and the elements and the hot interior of your vehicle after summer shooting sessions, and just plain old time in the wear and tear that comes with it. Bows, by the nature of their design, are under a lot of stress all the time. The bow you buy today brand new, isn't it's the same

bow you'll own after three years of hard hunting. It's kind of like driving a new truck off the lot. Isn't really like you have the same truck after three years of driving. I mean, it is the same truck, but stuff wears out there slowly degrades, and that's just something worth being aware of. And with peep sites, no matter what style you choose, it's a good idea to do a simple exercise where you close your eyes and draw. When you settle into your anchor, open your eye and

take note where your peep site is. If it's under over rotated, that's a pretty easy fix, you know, just twist the string a little bit. But if it's a hair high or low, you know that it is moved, and that can be an easy fix as well. But it's also something you absolutely want to be aware of. I checked this on my bows often, because if my peep moves even a little bit, I could go from a lung shot to a spine shot or a miss all over something I can diagnose and remedy in a

matter of a few seconds. Think about your sites, think about your peep sites. And now I know this isn't as exciting as the latest and greatest hunting tactics that are guaranteed to help you kill monster public landbox every season. But the truth is, it's the little things we can control that separate the dear killers from the deer hunters.

Thinking about site choice and why you choose this single pin mover or maybe a three pin multi pin or a five pin multipin, as well as your peep site choice, are just two of those differentiators, and they matter, even if they aren't all that much fun to talk about or listen to some idiot talk about. I guess and other accessories matter too, and that's what I'm going to get into next week. As I always, thank you so much for listening to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast,

which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson. If you want to read some of my articles or articles from quite a few really talented white tail hunters, head on over to the meat eater dot com, slash wired, and if that's not an enough, check out our wire to Hunt YouTube channel as well, where Mark and I dropped knew how to videos every single week. M