The Boneheaded Bowhunter

Bowhunting and I have had a stormy relationship over the last decade. There’s been name-calling and threats and throwing things. Abandonment on both sides. Even today, it knows I’d leave it in a second for Full Season Rifle Hunting, and there has been casual to serious flirting with purchasing a crossbow as that season expands. We don’t have the most stable foundation.

Still, bow season is a great time to be in the woods, and I need that companionship. Things have settled down to a degree where we’ve learned to work together, but, man, I just couldn’t help but rehash the old days as we sat in the stand a couple weeks ago and whittled the hours thinking through the What-Could-Have-Beens.

I thought of the Top Five moments in my bowhunting career that have been soul-crushing and painful…

1. In 1999, I perched in a lock-on in Manatee County on a rather coolish October morning. I was fresh to this archery game, but the rubs and nice weather had me jacked up. About an hour into the sit, I pulled out my grunt call and gave it a few notes. From the swamp bottom, a six-point came rushing up to the stand and stood broadside 25 yards away.

Now, this was a young deer, but I was a young hunter. His close proximity and 30 inches of antler disturbed the Shakes within. Still, I rose carefully and clipped the release onto the string, ready to send my first broadhead into a buck.

This release was one of those palm deals that would be totally suitable for a bow that shoots arrows with plastic suction cups but not ideal for the real thing. Despite the fact it had performed flawlessly through hours of practice, as I came to half-draw the 65 pound pull caused the mechanism in the release to fail. The string snapped forward limply flying the arrow about as far as a three year old can toss a baseball, and my hand flew back into my lips, instantly fattening them.

If only deer could laugh. But as I said, this was a young deer, and I was a young hunter. The buck paced in a circle and again stood broadside. I re-nocked another arrow thinking, "There’s no way this would happen twice."

Angelina Jolie does not have as pouty lips as I did after that morning.

2. A couple years later I sat in an old wooden ladder stand guarding a corn feeder and watched a hive of yellow jackets fly in and out of a palmetto clump, no doubt plotting a vicious attack on some poor creature. A doe slipped out of the gallberries behind me and fed in front of my stand. I had no bowhunting mentor and had to learn by trial and error and error. I shifted in the seat ever so slowly and drew back on the doe.

When I hit the release, the arrow tumbled through the air not unlike Darth Vader’s ship at the end of the original Star Wars. The doe hauled tail as I wondered what the hell had happened. Then I noticed my string had come completely off the wheel and cam. When I shot, the bottom limb had been resting against the wooden rail. The force of the shot unspooled and snapped the bowstring.

I know not to let that happen again. To make matters worse, as I sat there with no functioning weapon, a herd of meat hogs arrived at the feeder.

3. Speaking of hogs. I had fashioned a ground blind out of palmettos and old logs in a scrub hammock. I grunted in a nice 8pt my first sit. As they tend to do, this buck showed up on the one weak side in my concealment and busted me immediately. Hoping for redemption, I patched the problem and returned that night, but as we all know, Second Chances are few and far between.

As dark came to the hammock, I elected to slip out to a feeder on the edge of a large palmetto flat hoping to stick a hog. When I arrived at the feeder, no hogs were to be seen, and I desperately needed to answer the Call of Number 1.

So I sat the bow down and unzipped because, you know, peeing where you are trying to attract game is always a professional idea. I had gotten down to the last drop when I heard an oink behind me. All of a sudden I had a herd of 30-60 pound porkers literally feeding within a few feet.

There I stood exposed, bow on the ground, The Great White Hunter. When I stooped to reach my bow, they alerted and slowly trotted back to the palmetto flat. I zipped up and hurried to catch them. When I hit a fire trail that circled the hammock, a large boar was wandering his way to the feeder.

He turned broadside, just inviting that perfect shot. I sailed the arrow a foot over his back and cursed my way back to the truck debating whether I should tell others about this story.

4. I had this buck dead to rights. He had just enormous rubs near my stand. I was cautious about entering this area on anything less than the right moment. But, I did hang a film canister filled with cotton on a small pine tree that I’d occasionally touch up with store-bought doe urine.

I’ve never been struck with a ton of patience, but finally the evening had arrived. The wind was agreeable and the air was cool. The rut was just about to spill out all over the place. I should have stood when the doe came trotting by. I should have stood when I heard him grunt.

You know it’s a nice buck when the first thing you notice is the horns. Dark chocolate, like so many swamp bucks in the area. Nine points outside the ears. He had followed the doe's trail right in front of my stand, and when he walked behind a palmetto patch, I drew.

The buck stopped to sniff my film canister. A lot of things went wrong. One, my bow at that time – which came across on the Mayflower – had no let-off and my arms were fatiguing. Two, I never stood to get a solid anchor point and my body was torqued. Three, I didn’t follow through on the shot, lifting my head to see the arrow fly high and right into the meaty part of his neck. I should have just lowered the bow.

The buck bounded away, and I waited an hour before getting down. I found the broken aluminum shaft a few yards into the woods where he ran, no more than 3 inches severed from the broadhead. I located the blood trail and realized if I didn’t find him fast, I wouldn’t. A shot like that either hits blood or air. Anything else is about a lost cause.

My tracking job ended well past dark, caught in a tangle of thick swamp vegetation with no more blood to find, and what sounded like a pretty riled up pack of hogs that would be at eye-level as I crawled through that mess.

I was so sick and disappointed in myself. I came close to killing my bowhunting relationship for good that evening. The experience still haunts me every time I pick up archery tackle.

5. There stood the biggest buck I had laid eyes on in the woods, up to that point. He slithered out of the pines behind me. This was a truly large Florida buck, golden antlers from rubbing pines, ten points, at least 17 inches wide, massive - every bit a wallhanger. You’d have to be a much more dedicated hunter than I to let this guy walk.

He appeared ragged and tired from a night of chasing does and was in no big rush. A friend had invited me to his family’s ranch and strict rules were in place about the size of bucks one could take. This guy met the standards, for sure.

The buck turned away from me to cross a small creek and walk out towards an open wet-weather pond. I took the opportunity to stand and get ready. But, he only offered me the rump shot until he meandered to a myrtle bush and stood broadside, surveying his land.

The shot might have been 50 yards; it may have been 35, but I never drew the bow. Two weeks prior I had sent that arrow into the neck of the aforementioned buck, and I just could not harness the confidence. I know they say you have to Cowboy Up and get back on the horse when the iron is hot and the tough get going, but I watched that trophy buck stand there for an interminable length of time until he moseyed into the swamp and out of my life forever.

I can’t say if I did the right thing or not. Hopefully a deserving hunter did finally tag him. I never heard.

Like all relationships, one must learn from their mistakes, how to compromise, and how to move past it all to become better.

As rocky as my relationship with bowhunting has been, it has made me a more complete hunter.

August Deer Rush

Remember those old SAT questions where they’d give you four words like dog, cat, mouse, and toilet and you’d have to choose the one that didn’t fit? I pondered a comparison last weekend. Heat, thunderstorms, summer, deer hunting. After Morning One, you could have replaced “thunderstorms” with “sleeping in” and it would still fit better than “deer hunting.”

It was my bachelor party arranged and assembled by Brother T. Yes, a bachelor party held after my wedding. The plan was to bowhunt a friend’s ranch in Sarasota County for three days. Good man, Brother T. In the mornings and afternoons, stand hunting. During the day we’d drive the ranch scouting and seeking the random hog. The whole premise was exotic. Deer hunting in August! I love exotic challenges.

Now before we start dissecting the negative, let’s address the positives. For starters, it is a gorgeous 8,000-acre ranch that I’m very thankful to hunt. Mostly the open of Florida prairie, the land is flat as a board and dotted with wet-weather ponds, islands of palms, palmetto flats, and scrub oaks stands. The back forty consists of tall pines and broom sedge that is about as close to Old Florida Cracker as I can imagine a place can be these days. Since this is a working ranch, the natural habitat is also broken with a citrus grove and numerous cow pastures and sod fields. Near the Gulf of Mexico, the poetry sunsets are among the best you’ll find in Florida.

The wildlife is abundant. Hogs churn up the ditch bottoms and creep across pastures. Turkeys flock and run down the roads in front of the truck. Whistling ducks feed in the reeds and sandhills are just about a pestilence in the sod. Deer, once almost non-existent here, swarm the fields in the summer mornings and evenings. Bachelor groups of bucks feed in the wet-weather ponds. The females herd up like pronghorn. Both genders are legal with a bow this time of year, but the main objective was a mature buck in velvet.

I’ve hunted summertime velvet bucks in South Carolina, but that was with a rifle. The bucks there flood the soybean fields in the evenings, and with a scoped rifle this is no big deal. Approaching the Florida Summer Buck with a bow was daunting. For one, narrowing down where the deer would feed is next to impossible with the buffet of goodies available to them. We had corn feeders, but the hogs and turkey are more likely to visit these stations than Mr. Tines. The size of the land is intimidating, too. Without any major contours in the land, the traditional strategies of hunting funnels and similar features were moot. Deer just oozed out of the woods into the fields. Picking a bow stand...just imagine the frustration.

The water was prohibitive. This year’s summer rains had left the ranch soggy. Getting back to the better locales would have been a sticky, anger-the-cowboys mess. I’m thinking particularly of the out-of-the-way pine stands where the older bucks on the ranch tend to hole up.

Really, the primary obstacle was the heat. As one might imagine, it was stifling. Since I can not keep a stand there on a permanent basis, I toted a climber down two weeks prior to the hunt and hung it in a location I’d scouted and knew to be reliable for bucks year-round. Anyone who has used a climber in temperatures over 70 should cringe when I tell them the temperature reading from my truck Friday morning read 82. For me, hunting in the 90 degree evenings was out of the question. I wore a lightweight leafy outfit, a sweat wicking shirt, and board shorts; it still didn’t help much. If that wasn’t enough, the herds of vicious mosquitoes chased me up the tree and were quite enough to induce a Panic Sweat. I may pen a movie script based on this experience. Skeeters 3-D.

Anyway, the Therma-Cell did finally kick them back to a dull roar, and I managed to catch Shut Eye as I waited on dawn. My big plan for the stand location was simple. Behind me was a thick swamp where I knew bucks bedded. Ahead was a green cow pasture and pond where I knew they fed. I sat in a strip of cabbage palms and pines that separated the two regions where they mingled between both.

I’d shaken out C’Mere Deer when I placed the stand. I figured since we were hunting deer on a feeding pattern before the acorn crop, I should sweeten the deal. Could go ahead and name it, C’Mere Cow. After sunrise, the bovines were slipping around the stand, feeding in the long bahiagrass raising all sorts of mooing hell.

It was a beautiful morning, and as hard as I tried, I just could not get comfortable in the heat and humidity. Then the texts came from the others. No one was seeing much from the stand. Harris missed a small hog – well, he’d rested the lower cam of his bow on his leg before the shot, and his arrow limped out and into the mud. We labeled the incident an equipment malfunction. Not sure if that’s accurate, but we rolled with it. PJ missed a doe on his first-ever bow shot. Sure, the doe was 45-50 yards away. He’s hooked on bowhunting now, though. Brother T had whacked a boar with awesome cutters and wetters that he should mount, but most everyone was on the move back to their trucks. Trace, who was hunting a stand a couple hundred yards away, texted that he was ready to call it after seeing a flock of hens and poults, and I agreed to meet him.

As the weekend progressed, everyone saw antlers, both velvet and hard-horned, but the sightings came from the cabs of vehicles. The enthusiasm of stand hunting perspired out of almost everyone midway through Saturday. The hogs were not cooperating, either. The ranch hired a young cowhand for the summer, and he’d been running dogs at night. Just doesn’t take much pressure before a hog’s ears perk at the sound of an engine. Cole arrowed a nice boar Friday evening, and that was our total swine count for the weekend.

The Florida season starts so early now because of the variance of the rut in the South Zone compared to other places around the peninsula. Towards Big Cypress, Immokalee, and other areas down there, the rut is happening now. The rut on this ranch is in October – sometimes when you’re gerrymandering a hunting zone, you pick the best highway boundary you can and make a go of it.

I didn’t bother to stand hunt again after that first morning. My excitement level just could not be amped up to the appropriate November level. Call me weak, whatever. I never gained confidence in my stand location, anyhow. I thought, perhaps, I’d have better luck cruising the property and spying a buck to sneak up on or come back later with a pop-up blind. It just didn’t work out that way.

I’m curious to spend the next few weeks online researching what others did this summer to tag velvet bucks down south. By the time next August rolls around, I’ll probably be ready to beat the heat again, hopefully better prepared.

And hopefully I won’t have to get married again to create a reason for the trip.

(BTW besides the hunting conditions and wimpiness on my behalf to hunt, the trip was awesome. Thanks to everyone who made it happen. Just a blast!)

TWL Classics - Archery Aggravation

Originally Published September 2008

My first deer of the 2008-09 season I spied from the truck while bumping down a back ranch road in Sarasota County one early evening. She fed in a food plot, oblivious to the dual exhaust and hip-hop bass blaring from the Dodge. I parked the truck and slipped up a ditch bottom, using overgrown dog fennels and palmetto bushes to shield my approach. Broadside and 20 yards away when I drew back, this was the deadest deer I’d ever seen, and I’d started thinking of Venison Piccata when I got home.

Instead, the Grim Reaper-tipped Easton ST Epic skipped off a strand of barbed wire, up and out of the strike zone. Gone.

Would-be deer Number Two entered from the corner of a soy bean field in SW Georgia. An old, gray, nervous doe, she hung up in the tree line around the field watching her nearly full-grown, soon-to-be orphaned offspring eat the man’s crops. She finally paced into the field, broadside at maybe 15 yards and began feeding. She’d eat real nice, considering a summer’s diet of soy bean.

Instead, as I shifted my weight to draw down on the doe, the foot rest emitted an awful creak as any bolted metal would from being left ill-maintained in the elements for nine months. She whirled around back to cover, stopping suddenly and just long enough to sail an arrow over her back and into the Peach State clay. Gone.


My girlfriend, Carolyn, makes this guttural groaning noise whenever she’s frustrated, or I laugh at a fart joke. It goes like this (put your ear close to the computer and you can hear it!), “ugggggggghhhhhh." I hear it quite often, but quite often mimic it when discussing bowhunting.

So, my bow season is off to a poor start. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. I spent a week in Georgia hanging stands and seeing plenty of does and coyotes, and sandwiched that hunt between two trips to a private ranch in Sarasota County for an extended bachelor party for my good friend, Travis. And I popped a few pigs down south with my AR-15 on down times between stand hunting.

What’s kinda neat is how different each hunt was. In Georgia, the rut was still a few months away – late November, early December. The bucks are invisible this time of year to anything but trail cameras and headlights. I don’t even expect to see antlers until that time. Daylight shy, too much hunting pressure, who knows, but that’s the way it’s been since I took to leasing property there a few years back.

Now, down in Sarasota – in Florida’s South Zone – the bucks are nearly ready to Rock the Casbah. This last Friday morning I awoke from my pre-dawn stand snooze to see a beautiful chocolate-racked 6 point standing in the wide open of a sod field. After years of hunting the dense cover of the Southeast, catching this buck idly standing out for the world to see was a bit like when the scientists saw their first dinosaur in Jurassic Park – just something you don’t see every day.

He eased his nose to the ground and worked back to thick cover, never coming closer than 80 yards or so. Several minutes later, a small seven and a smaller five followed the same trail, noses desperately trying to sniff out some sign of early morning delight.

On this ranch, only mature deer may be harvested. This six seemed to fit the bill. His shoulders were broader than his followers; the rack had mass – for a South Florida buck – and was easily past the ears, with long G-2’s.

Dirty J, who’d also seen the bucks from a ground blind not too far from me, spent the remainder of the morning scheming with me on how to get the drop on that six. We could move the stand, set up another ground blind, use some doe urine and grunt calls and lure him in. It all sounded real good, but the weather got hotter, the wind began swirling, and everything quit cooperating. Been nice to get a shot. Hope someone does; he’s a nice deer.

I did have one last opportunity for some venison. That Friday evening I returned to where I’d seen that buck. As I parked my truck, two does stood, again, out in the open. Without spooking them, I’d hit the tree line and figured I could stalk through the dense cabbage palm island and out to a pine tree surrounded by tall palmettos, well within bow distance.

I worked my way through pig trails and banana spiders, popping out once in a while to check on their position. I got oh so close when I felt just the tiniest tickle of breeze on the back of my neck, and I knew it was over. The wind had shifted out of the East and blew my sweaty stink out into the field. Predictably, they high-white-tailed it.

With a rifle, in theory, I could have the venison piled high already. But that’s the challenge, and eventual satisfaction of bow hunting. I have several more bow hunts this season before I gladly set aside the PSE for a long gun. Maybe I’ll eventually connect tag a buck or a doe with the stick and string.

Almost certainly I’ll be making this noise again soon.

“Ugggggggghhhhhh!”

Summer Archery Practice Tips

Believe it or not, bow season starts July 31st in Florida’s South Zone. I have a hunt scheduled in that area for the weekend of August 7th. I am nowhere near ready – practice-wise – for this trip.

Admittedly, practicing in the summer is not all that fun. One can get in a hurry to ditch the humidity. Bugs wreck concentration. Dehydration cramps muscles. Combine this with the typical offseason rust and the situation can get frustrating in a hot second. I’ve never found shooting a bow to be all that difficult given half-way decent tackle, but poor form from lack of attention and rush is usually the difference between bulls-eye shots and those that bury in the muck.

It took me a few seasons to figure out a trick to evade all of this – slow down. These days when I start this annual ritual, I'll pick a distance - usually the 20 yard mark - and loose three deliberate shots spaced with 30 seconds or more in between. This permits me to concentrate on relocating proper stance and anchor point. Again, when rushed, these little aspects of shooting a bow are lost.


After six shots, I’ll back up to thirty yards and wait a minute between shots. Forty yards about the same. Then, I’m done for the day after 12 arrows. As the days progress, I’ll up my quota, but still allow the patience to take calm shots. Shooting with others is a fine way to balance this time.

Shooting in the heat leads to off-accuracy consequences. I used to zip through my duties just to get it over with and return to the A/C. I sweat like a field laborer just getting out of bed and loathe myself for it. The oppressive Sunshine State heat really bothers me – but I will not go afield unprepared, so I compromised with myself. Clean the guilt by shooting fast and not shooting often. No Bueno!

A few years back, this design ruined my left shoulder trying to fit what should have been a several week regimen into a few days. Granted that bow did not have the let-off my current one does, but the results on the Block target were tragic. Lost a couple arrows. A few reminded me of the fighter planes King Kong batted down in the movies, spiraling and looping out of control as I torqued the various muscles used in bow shooting to compensate for the pain.

Irritated and not fully aware of my situation, this all led to one thing – Allen wrenches. Sights and rests were adjusted, and by the end of it, I had one big rat’s nest of a problem that took a start-from-scratch approach to correct. The shoulder pain lasted through November, but I slowed way down to get back to where I started.

Next, your muscles – well, at least mine – can tire easily in the heat. Another reason to slow down the tempo and not work into a sweaty mess. I take a water bottle or two and have a sip between sequences and wrap a bandana around my forehead to keep sweat out of my eyes. So I look strange, but I typically keep the broadhead in the bull. In Florida, shooting in the late evening helps, assuming it’s not raining buckets.

The act of bowhunting is a precision game and often conducted in less than ideal temperature and weather. It makes sense to me to practice in these conditions and adjust. The first step after unleashing that bow from the case from whence it’s spent the last nine months is to steady yourself for this knowledge. From there, work patiently through the sweat and tears. The success of your season may well depend on it.