Petersen's Bowhunting April/May/Spring 2020 Shooting Issue

The Vegas Shoot is the world’s largest, richest and arguably most prestigious archery tournament. This year’s event, held back in February, attracted a record 3,816 shooters from all 50 states and 53 foreign countries who competed for cash prizes totaling more than $490,000. The most hotly contested division is the Compound Open Championship, where this year 263 men competed for a $54,000 top prize and a victory that is archery’s equivalent of a Super Bowl title. Of those 263 competitors, few entered the tournament any hotter than Hoyt Pro David Houser, who two weeks earlier qualified first overall in the Open Pro division of the Lancaster Archery Classic by posting a score of 599 out of a possible 600. Houser shot even better during the first two rounds of qualifying…

There are many things that affect the accuracy of your shot. As I often say, archery is made up of a million tiny things you have to repeat every time to be consistent. One of the most overlooked things is release pitch when using handheld release aids such as a thumb button or hinge (especially with a hinge). If you change the angle you hold your release at when you’re at full draw, your impact will be different. Some people shoot with a steep angle, while some people shoot with their hand almost flat. Honestly, there is no right or wrong way to hold a release aid, but it does have to be repeatable. If I take a hinge-style release aid, shoot with it at a steep angle and then…

With this being the first Whitetails column of the 2020 growing season, there is no better time to hit the reset button than right now. I’d like to dedicate this column to an aha moment I had in 2019 that completely changed how we are designing food-plot programs. Adapting this new approach to food-plotting could be the answer to making this your best whitetail year yet! Each year, there are five or six new strategies that positively impact the whitetail-management programs I’m involved with. While I would like to tell you that all of them are the result of careful scientific research, some of the most significant are actually pleasant surprises we stumble upon quite accidentally. After all, Mother Nature doesn’t play by our rules, and she regularly throws us…

Most of your stands really aren’t very good, are they? Neither are mine, but they keep getting better. That’s the key: Finding that needle-in-a-haystack stand is a process of elimination. Scouting will put you in the general area — say, half an acre — but it takes time (sometimes several seasons) and a sharp eye to narrow that half-acre down to the perfect tree. Just 50 yards can make a huge difference. One simple fact still drives me: No matter how smart a buck is, if he is moving, he is probably passing upwind of at least one tree. Now, which one is it? Most properties have at least one tree where the wind, terrain, cover and deer movement are all in your favor. Unfortunately, those trees are hard to…

A friend recently told me he took his bow to a pro shop to have it tuned. Because he lives in another state, I wasn’t familiar with the pro shop he went to. I’m always interested in how other people tune bows — especially people who are in the business of tuning bows. So, I asked him what procedure/technique they used — paper tuning, etc., etc., etc. He said he wasn’t sure how they had tuned it, because he didn’t stay to watch. I was flabbergasted, to say the least! I certainly shouldn’t have been surprised, because I have heard this same story many times before: A customer drops their bow off at a pro shop and then comes back a few days later to pick up their now “perfectly…

It is said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. The archery industry is rife with inventors and engineers continually seeking ways to build better contraptions that help make us more successful. Constantly looking over their shoulders are bean counters more concerned with the market forces of supply and demand. The most successful companies are those that use the latest and greatest in materials, engineering and technology to answer customer complaints and desires. If something works for one company, others are quick to mimic it; thus, we get trends. I would venture that no segment of the outdoor industry is trendier than archery. As the past few years prove, and this year’s crossbows emphasize, those trends are often driven by customer…