Eagerness flowed through my veins as I stared through the steam of my coffee. It was January in Arizona. A beautiful time of year to be a bowhunter. Bucks were rutting does like mad and I couldn’t wait until the sun climbed its way up the horizon. At this point in my bowhunting journey, I hadn’t yet touched an animal with my arrow. I had a lot to learn back then some 10 years ago from now. One lesson that sticks out the most to me, which was a turning point in my success, was falling victim to paralysis by analysis. From my experience, the biggest mistake of new bowhunters.
The sun finally decided to rise and I made it to my glassing knob. In no time at all I started spotting deer. They were like ants spread out among the rolling hills in front of me. I spotted several bucks too and some nice ones at that. Staying back a ways I tried to analyze each situation to try and come up with a game plan. In truth, I had no idea what I was doing, or what game plan I thought I was going to come up with. What I did know is that I desperately wanted this to work out. So, I was trying to avoid failure at all costs. In the end, I never came up with a game plan.
This overthinking resulted in me just sitting there, which is rewarding in its own right to watch deer. However, I had a tag in my pocket that I wanted to fill. After years this overanalytical approach wasn’t cutting it. Something needed to change, but I didn’t know what that was yet.
What I’m describing is a mistake of new bowhunters I’ve witnessed time and time again. They get good at finding animals, but when it comes time to make a move and do the damn thing, many never even take a step forward. I’ll hear them say things like “Well, I don’t know if he’s gonna be there by the time I get there.” Or “I don’t know what the wind is doing over there and I don’t want to blow him out of the country.” My favorite is “I don’t think I have time to get over there.” To be fair, I’ve personally said these things to a fault when I started too. It’s new bowhunter syndrome.
A long while back I had a chat with a fella who had over 20 archery mule deer bucks to his name here in the desert. So, I plainly asked him “How?” His response was both enlightening and disappointing all at the same time. He said, “I just go right at them.” That’s it and it’s something I’ve held onto since.
After I heard those words my approach completely changed when spot and stalk bowhunting. The fact of the matter was I had a buck tag in my pocket and there was a buck standing out there. So, I started making plays not concerned about the possibility, and high likelihood, of me spooking the deer.
Successful bowhunting isn’t an easy transaction to make. It takes time to build up the knowledge in order to be consistently successful in the field. And the only way you’re going to acquire said knowledge is by “doing” and that’s the biggest mistake of new bowhunters. They lack the doing, because they’re afraid of the potential failure. Embrace the times you mess up, because you absolutely will. Instead of analyzing too much before the stalk, spend time after the stalk analyzing what went wrong and what went right. The knowledge is there for the taking. You just need to take the steps forward in order to get there.
The following season I found myself sitting on a cold ridge in January eyeing a forky mule deer buck all by himself. “I just go right at them” was running through my head like a hamster on a wheel. So, I listened. An hour or so later, I was peaking over a bush drawing my bow back, which resulted in my first archery deer. The lightbulb had gone off and it’s lit the way toward success every year since.
As a new bowhunter, it is really easy to overcomplicate things from the gear we use to the tactics. At the roots of it all, we are trying to get close to big game and put an arrow through them. It’s something humans have been doing for quite some time now and they were doing it with self-made bows and no Sitka Gear. If you want to learn, you will. Be a “do’r” not a “don’t’r.”
Becoming a Bowhunter – A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Archery Hunting
Becoming a Backpack Hunter – A Beginner’s Guide to Hunting the Backcountry
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