Monday, July 25 found me suddenly on the treadmill cranking out number 7 running steps at an incline of 10!  An excellent workout for an old guy.  I’m still only going a mile and then doing my pushups and situps but I was sweating like the dickens.

Later in the evening Weasel and I hit the field for a bit of practice.  I stayed at 25 yards for most of my ends, with one at 30 and another sitting at 20 yards.  Without boring you too much, here are the pictures of some of my ends:

These are in order as I shot them, end one, end two etc.

This last end was my 30 yard end.  Pretty tight for me.  And the next picture is of the end I shot while sitting at 20 yards:

All in all not too bad a nights practice.  You can see 4 of Weasels targets above mine in this last picture, that was four of his six shots while sitting at 20 yards, his other two were yellows as well.

With the hunt just a few days over 3 weeks away, it’s time to really get serious about the practice.  Time to don the loaded backpacks and shoot away!

July 27, 2016

Bears Butt

My time has been consumed by trying to get my Trooper back on the road, but my mind is still in the archery game.  Always thinking about the upcoming hunt and how I want to put down an elk and a buck with one ethical quick kill shots on each of the animals.  For months now I have known I had to purchase some “higher quality” arrows for this hunt, some that are built straighter and more consistent than the ones I’ve been shooting at targets.  Don’t get me wrong, the ones I have been using are great, especially for how poorly I actually shoot, but I want to take a little of the fudge factor out of it for shooting at game animals.

Well, I finally went out and bought some Gold Tip Kinetic arrow shafts.  Just the shafts mind you as I wanted to put on my own fletchings.  The shafts come with inserts and nocks but no feathers.  They come in 30 inch lengths also and I had to have them cut down to my desired length.  Right now I know a lot of you are saying, “you need to tune them to your bow and cutting them down to a standard ‘what you think you need’ length won’t do that”….nuff said….My desired length is 28 1/2 inches.  So, I had the guys cut 3/4 inch off each end of the shafts.  Back home I rigged up the fletching device and started putting on the feathers.

A rather ‘busy’ looking picture, but I have found that 4 fletching my shafts gets my arrows stabilized quicker and they seem to fly better than 3 fletching.  I have chosen a parabolic shape to the feathers as well, only because someone said they would cause less wind deflection should the wind be blowing when I shoot.  I’m fine with that even though the more traditional look of shield shaped feathers are cooler looking.

And since I have chosen green as “my color” of choice in archery, I 4 fletched them alternate green and white.

Once the feathers were on the shafts I could glue the inserts in and let them dry.

The next day, I screwed on some field tips to 9 of the shafts and 3 of them were adorned with 125 grain “Badger” brand single bevel broad heads!  It is time to try these bad boys out.  My hopes were high as I headed to the field to fling them down range.  In the field the wind was blowing pretty hard but I decided I would shoot anyway.  At 25 yards, I shot my old trusty arrows first, just to get warmed up.  After 4 ends of 4 arrows, I figured I was as warmed up as I needed to be.

So, out came the newby arrows!

Those are pictures of ends one through four, all shot at the lower left circle.  As you can see, even though they are not all clustered together like a pro would have them, they are consistently low.  They actually weigh a slight more than my old arrows and so I will have to work on my aiming technique.  I really like the way they feel when they shoot.  They are much smaller in diameter than what I have been shooting and when I shoot the older arrows after shooting these skinny little guys, it feels like I’m shooting a broom stick.  Anyway, these are my “hunters”.  Speaking of hunters, I then decided it was time to try the broad head arrows out.  I have three with the Badgers on them and one with a field tip, all of which are in my home made quiver, you know the one with the spam can as the broad head end!

I gave them each a fling down range!

I have to admit to you that I did move up 5 yards and shot from 20 yards!  I am very pleased with this result.  Another thing about these single bevel broad heads is this, they twist in flight and continue twisting when they hit the target.  Each of these arrows went into the bale about 9 inches and when I pulled them out, the shafts turned nearly 1/2 a full twist!  What will that do to an animal?  I am extremely excited for the hunt now!  Not only do these arrows fly like darts, they will devastate what they hit.

So, if you are a new recurve bow shooter and are drawing about 45 pounds of draw weight and a 26 inch draw length, try my combo.  Gold Tip Kinetic arrows in 500 spine, cut to 28 1/2 inches and a 125 grain tip.  I’m not saying they will work as good for you as they do for me, but it sure is a good starting point.  You can refine things from there on.

Oh and by the way, I went with Weasel to shoot last night after it cooled down to 90 degrees.  I was rather pleased with my practice ends:

That was my first end at 25 yards!  Next is my second end.

We continued to shoot until we got wore out, but before we called it a day, I shot one end at 30 yards…the results?

They are still hanging around the bulls eye.  And then one last end to call it a day…back to 25 yards I went….

I’ll take that night of practice and call it good!  I’ve said it before, I’ll continue to say it….those critters are in trouble!

July 23, 2016

Bears Butt

Today is July 18, just 32 days away from the opening day of the Utah bow hunt for 2016!  I’ve been reading and reading and reading about bow hunting big game and besides practicing my shooting and maintaining form and consistency, all the experts are saying that the sport is not only physical, but it is a mental game as well.  I figure that since we just finished putting the hay in the barn, which is a very physical chore to say the least, especially for older people like me (soon to be 67), I should start a physical fitness program of my own to get in tune with the upcoming hunting season.

This morning was day number one!  Sherry set her alarm for 5 am and was quickly out of bed and on the treadmill hammering out her routine.  It didn’t seem like a very long time before she was yelling up the stairs that the treadmill was open for my turn at a good run, walk or whatever I had in mind.

Well, there isn’t any sense making it such a big deal, I mozzied down the stairs and took my supreme position on the plastic and metal machine.  It has been nearly two years since I last visited this automatic torture machine and so I gently pushed in the number “1” on the console…..a humming and then the floor beneath my feet began to move….way slow….Number one was not going to cut it for me.  I thought, as I pushed in the number 2 button, that I was just very glad I wasn’t on some kind of rehab program in which the number one would have crushed my being and caused me to fall onto the floor.  I’m very fortunate to have what health I have got.  Well, number 2 was too slow as well, and so to hurry things up I pushed the number 4 button….WHOAHHHAAA baby!  Not today!  That was over the top for day one and I backed it down to number 3.  At least on number 3 I was able to walk fast to keep up with it.

Number 3 was a good enough pace for me and I watched as the lights indicated my current position on a make believe oval track.  On this particular machine there are tons of lights and numbers always changing showing me just how perfectly good everything was going.  It neglects the participants heart rate, hard breathing, lack of water and cramping leg muscles, but it sure does like to show off how well it is doing.  After about 10 minutes I decided I needed to begin with some “slope” to the footing and so I pushed the limit and cranked that baby up to its max of 10.  I could do some research and tell you that each slope number is a degree of slope, but I don’t think that is the case here.  Each number, I have determined, is the pain level in which the backs of your calves will hurt after just a few steps at that level.  10 was killing my calves, but in my mind I was chasing down an elk with my arrow sticking out of its chest and going straight up the steepest of the steep hills in the area where I hunt.  So today’s workout consisted of the treadmill and then 10 pushups and 10 situps and finished with a straight leg stretch to touch my fingers to the floor in front of my toes.  All in all a good first days workout.

The goal for the future (next 20 or so days) is a similar routine every morning and increasing the length and strenuousness of the workout and the number of situps/pushups etc.  Maybe by the end of the month I’ll be where I was a few years back, running, walking and extreme inclines for a 40 minute time frame.  We will see.

So, again, with the thought that the hunt is not only a strenuous one, but a mental one as well.  I will just have to get myself into a mind frame where the adrenaline won’t take effect until after the shot.  Again, we will have to see what happens if and when that event occurs.

Equipment?  Well, I have my new arrows purchased.  I decided on 500 spine arrows and went with the Gold Tip Hunter Kinetic model.  I have 12 of them and will go have them cut down to 28 1/2 inches, probably today.  These arrows come with a .006 inch straightness tolerance and so I’ll have the arrows cut from both ends to get my length.  That should give me the straightest part of the shafts to work with.  Then with the feathers I bought a few weeks ago, I’ll 4 fletch them in Right Helical to match the 6 Badger brand Right Helical single edge broadheads I have also purchased.  I think my hunting setup will work just fine and I sure hope to bring home a cow elk and a buck deer during the hunting season.

You might say, with all the other things that have been going on lately now behind me, that my mind is now consumed with the upcoming hunting season.  It’s never too early to start practicing right?!

July 18, 2016

Bears Butt