Bow Hunt Tips

If you’re ready to bow hunt and you’re new to hunting, take someone with you. As long as you’re comfortable in the woods and can find your way well, there’s no danger in actually going alone. But your first bow hunt will be better if you have an experienced hunter with you. And it is safer if you plan on using a tree stand or a ladder stand where you could potentially fall and be injured.

Before you go on that bow hunt, be sure you’ve practiced enough that you feel confident in hitting a target that you choose. But remember that putting a target on a bale of hay and hitting it in the bull’s-eye every time is nothing like hunting a live animal. The animal will move and will often sense you just before you shoot. This is in part because of your stand and because of the slight sound you make when drawing the bow. If you use a very light weight arrow, you may even alert the animal when the arrow releases from the bow as lighter arrows make more noise than medium or heavy weight arrows. Practice with the arrows and point weight you’ll be using to hunt with until you’re comfortable and confident that you can make the arrow go where you want it to.

Don’t forget to try to camouflage your scent before you bow hunt.  Don’t use heavily scented soap, cologne or aftershave before you hunt. Make sure your clothes are washed in detergent or fabric softener that doesn’t leave a heavy scent. And avoid things like campfires or cooking fires in your hunting clothes because they’ll absorb the smell of the smoke and alert the animals to your presence.

If you’ll be hunting with a stand, you’ll want to camouflage it with branches and greenery from around your area both to keep the deer from seeing it and to help mask the scent with the natural scent of the greenery. If you’re using a tree stand that requires climbing, be sure you understand how to operate the stand and how to set it up properly. Anytime you’re uncertain, you should have someone with you.

Remember to be quiet and move as little as possible when you bow hunt. When you spot your quarry, pull a full draw on your bow with the arrow tip aimed above the animal. Then slowly lower it until you’re at your target and ready to release the string. If the deer or other animal has suddenly frozen as if it senses you, aim slightly lower than you normally would in case the moment your bow releases the animal hears it and starts to bolt. They tend to crouch before they run so that would put the animal slightly lower.

If that happens, the ideal place to hit for a quick kill is actually with the animal moving away from you. About half way down the body behind the shoulder blades is the ideal spot to hit either the heart or lung when you bow hunt.

Photo Credits: Justin_D_Miller

Originally posted 2010-04-04 09:47:17. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Bison Hunting

Alaskan bison hunting is just one of the big game hunting sports in the state. Bison are huge animals that stand about 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh over a ton each. Bison are easily recognizable because of their larger and heavier front quarters and their smaller hindquarters. Most people are only familiar with seeing a dark brown bison. The dark brown coat is their winter coat. It lightens up toward spring. Bison also have huge curving horns that point upward.

Bison have an excellent sense of smell that allows them to survive the winter as long as they are healthy and they do get in a good area with food beneath the frozen snow. They are able to smell food even under inches of snow. Then they use their large head and upper body to shove the snow away from the food to get to it. Since they can smell so clearly through the snow, catching the scent of a hunter isn’t much of a challenge.

When you’re bison hunting you need to be sure that you’re not carrying a strong set. Wash in unscented soap, don’t wear cologne or aftershave or even heavily scented deodorant, and make sure your clothes don’t carry a scent from detergent or fabric softener. Try to avoid getting very sweaty in your clothes and stay away from things like campfires so you don’t absorb the smell of the smoke and cooking food. Bison are very difficult to stalk as you need to do a successful hunt so give yourself a better chance of success by eliminating your scent. Bison are also one of the more difficult animals to actually bring down. They are the hardest one in Alaska, at least. Their sheer size makes it difficult to kill one of these animals.

Hunting is allowed to control the population. Bison aren’t native to Alaska but were brought there instead in 1928 and quickly multiplied. Without hunting, experts believe that they would take over the areas where they live and start to do damage to the ecosystem. Bison hunting keeps that from happening.

Those who have problems with Alaskan bison hunting say that nature can take care of itself. But since bison are an introduced species and they have no natural predators to thin the herds, hunting bison is considered a necessity. Bison may look large and lumbering out on the plain but they’re actually very aggressive when they feel threatened. The only predators that have any hope of taking down the bison are wolves and bears and then they can only generally take down the young. Neither of these predatory animals will attack an adult bison because of the large horns and the size.

Some bison live in protected areas because the fear is that hunting will thin them too much as it has done in the United States. The settlers’ bison hunting actually thinned them down so much that their survival in the United States has been questioned. But Alaskan bison hunting is how the population is kept under control and something hunters are welcome to do in the frozen north.

Photo Credits: Alan Vernon.

Originally posted 2010-03-24 03:12:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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