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