Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May/Spring 2020 Shooting Issue i Petersen's Bowhunting

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…

DID YOU HAVE A DREAM SEASON IN 2019? Is your freezer full and your taxidermy bill high? If so, good for you! Possibly, however, you’re on the opposite end of the spectrum. Maybe your season was a nightmare; one you’d just as soon forget. Either way, there is always room for improvement, and there’s no time like the present to get the 2020 ball rolling. As bowhunters, our goal should always be a clean, quick, ethical kill, and the advice you’re about to get from this sage group of veteran archers, if put to practice, will make you more efficient in the woods this fall. One resounding theme, after sitting down with each of these stick-and-string gurus, was the importance of 3 D archery. While nothing compares to an actual…

When it comes to hunting turkeys with a bow, a ground blind can be critical to success. After all, turkeys have legendary eyesight, and even shotgun hunters who move at the wrong moment regularly get busted by these wary birds. For bowhunters, the challenge of getting into position for the shot is magnified significantly. In fact, consistently bow-killing toms from the ground without a blind is widely considered one of our sport’s biggest challenges. Ground blinds give turkey bowhunters a tremendous advantage by concealing movement before and during the shot. And unlike deer — notorious for being spooked by recently placed blinds — turkeys tend to ignore them, allowing hunters to set them up the day of the hunt and hunt from them without alerting their quarry. Despite their proven…

AS ELK HUNTS GO, this one would rank right near the top of anyone’s list. The rut was in full swing, and as soon as I opened the door of the truck and stepped out into the cool, pre-dawn darkness, I knew it was going to be one of those magical mornings you never forget. The sound of mating calls filled the air, and it didn’t take long to realize there were potential targets in nearly every direction. My heart rate quickened as I hastily slipped my pack onto my back, grabbed my bow, put the wind in my face and hurried into the fray. The hunt was on! Yes, as elk hunts go, this was about as good as it gets; only this wasn’t a September elk hunt 12,000…

While I find it hard to hunt sheds and scout at the same time (I spend all of my time scouting and forget to look for antlers), the two go hand in hand. The best time to find antlers (typically late February through mid-March in much of the whitetail’s range) is also the best time to scout. You can learn a lot about the lay of the land and how the deer relate to it when traveling during this time. The vegetation is mostly gone and you can see the subtle terrain features that influence how deer move. You can also look for the more obvious things, such as bedding areas. These can be hard to find and probably not smart to look for (too much intrusion) during other times…

Featuring bone-crushing power and the game-changing new ACUslide silent cocking/de-cocking mechanism with internal braking, TenPoint’s Vapor RS470 is a must see for crossbow hunters looking for a premium 2020 rig. This innovative new offering provides blistering speed and an excellent shooting experience via features such as RX7 cams, Reverse-Draw configuration and much more. Crossbow TenPoint outfits the Vapor RS470 with its RX7 cams that employ a spiral cable groove for 404 degrees of rotation. This, along with a long power stroke, results in greater potential speed, while an extra 10 fps is pulled from the company’s Sling-Shot Technology. As the string is being drawn, it partially and momentarily contacts a set of rollers mounted to a stationary fixture partway down the barrel. This produces a bend in the string until…

As a dedicated bowhunter, I have always longed for more opportunities to pursue my passion. My season consisted of only a month in the whitetail woods when I began bowhunting, but as I matured, I extended my time afield by heading west each August and September to hunt pronghorns, mule deer and elk. I effectively tripled my bow season by adding these species to my outdoor agenda. Coues deer made my list of annual hunts a few years later, thus extending my bow season through January. I was essentially spending three to four months bowhunting each year, and for a man of modest means, that was a far stretch! Nevertheless, as I’m sure you know, a bowhunter cannot and will not be satisfied — he is always longing to commune…

I could give you a long list of reasons to put a trophy axis deer hunt on your bucket list, but the two best ones — beyond the trophy antlers, at least — are timing and affordability. With the axis rut peaking in late spring, the timing couldn’t be better for bowhunters looking to bridge the gap between turkey and deer seasons. Sure, you can spend the summer bowfishing and shooting 3-D tournaments, but if you want a bona fide big-game hunting opportunity, there isn’t much competition at this time of year. Axis hunts are also quite affordable relative to other outfitted hunts. In fact, you can enjoy a fully guided trophy axis hunt with meals and lodging for roughly half what you’d pay for a quality Midwestern whitetail hunt…

The doe seemed to appear out of nowhere, cresting the ridge to my right before slowly feeding around and behind me. The wind was at my back, so there was no danger of her catching my scent, but I also didn’t have a shot. I wasn’t too concerned, though, because I couldn’t decide whether she warranted shooting so early in the hunt. Darkness was beginning to creep across the horizon as the doe made her way to my left. After what seemed like forever, she stopped to feed behind some downed trees about 35 yards away. I still didn’t have a shot, so I settled back onto my climber’s seat to see whether other deer would make their way past. The doe had begun to feed back the way she…

By the early ’90s, I’d already been bowhunting Pike County, Ill., for a couple of years. The hunting industry’s spotlight had yet to fully shine on the area, and the ability to access good hunting ground with nothing more than a handshake and hard work was common. Times were good; I was in the prime of my life, and big bucks were plentiful. With a couple of seasons under my belt, I had come to realize a certain property posed a unique problem. The farm consisted of 90 percent tillable ground, with a wooded hill of approximately 10 acres situated directly in the middle of the parcel. The hill was linear, forming a ridgeline that snaked its way through a massive sea of corn, at least during the early stages…

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…

It was supposed to be a mere scouting trip. He certainly wasn’t well-rested. His friend and fellow target archer David Houser wouldn’t arrive in camp for several more days. Yet Tate Morgan came face-to-face with more than a dozen elk only a few minutes after leaving his truck one September morning last season. What happened next would have rattled a less experienced bowhunter, but Morgan’s career as a competitive shooter, as well as the total confidence he had in his gear, helped make the difference. Morgan, 26, of Billings, Mont., was fresh off the firing line, having driven 11 hours from a tournament in South Dakota the night before. The event’s timing had kept the Hoyt pro shooter from hunting Montana’s elk opener, but he was behind the wheel and…

In the world of turkey hunting, calling has always been the primary method of filling tags. It is also the most fun way to kill a tom. Honestly, nothing says spring like a big, old longbeard responding to your calls with a thunderous gobble that echoes through the hardwoods. Communicating with these birds is a blast! Over the years, however, I have come to the conclusion that many wise, old toms have figured out our love for calling them, and this has made it more difficult to trick them into thinking the soft purrs and yelps they’re hearing are a real hen and not a hunter! As a result, I now find myself calling less and waiting more — and filling more turkey tags in the process. The Challenge It’s…

I am going to tell you a shed-hunting story. I am not a huge shed hunter, but this was my finest hour — maybe my only hour. First, a little context. Every good story has a backstory to set the stage and create the needed drama. My backstory could quickly morph into a full-blown story, so I will strive to keep this short so we can get to the shed-hunting part before you lose hope. I started hunting a particular buck in 2009. He was already pretty nice. I would have shot him, but like all bucks his age (he was 41/2 years old then, to the best of my knowledge), he was mostly nocturnal. Though I hunted him for 30 days, I only saw him twice. In 2010, he…