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AH elite
Simon K Barr travels to Mexico leaving his beloved bolt-action rifle at home and draws a bow on his first a whitetail buck. Having quite recently started my archery career, I felt my transition from bullets to arrows from a rifle hunter’s perspective might be of interest to others with a natural curiosity in other forms of hunting.
Previously, my own blinkered perception of bow hunting was that of Realtree-clad ‘rednecks’ sitting in trees for hours then high-fiving over dead deer. I could not have been more wrong. I have now been lucky enough to hunt in both North America and Africa and take several animals with bow and arrow. I am by no means an expert but feel I have a deeper understanding of the equipment, principles and philosophy – and I reckon it’s about as much fun as you can have with a piece of string.
It all started when a great friend of mine returned from his first bow-hunting trip. When managing deer for as long as he has, pulling the trigger has become clinical mathematics. There is a satisfaction in doing the job well but a quickened heart rate has all but withered into fond and distant memories. When returning from his first bow-hunting trip, he become a raving bow evangelist bursting with enthusiasm for his newfound passion.
He explained in detail that the first time he drew his bow on a deer, or at least tried to, he was literally paralysed with excitement and could not move. Buck fever had got the better of him. My interest increased dramatically at this point. What scenario could be so exciting that he of so many years experience was rendered a gibbering wreck? Suffice to say, I then saw photos of a two very impressive whitetail bucks he managed to take with a bow later that week.
I knew a little bit about ancient bows. I knew (along with most patriotic Englishmen) that Henry V’s English archers defeated a French army five times their size with longbows in 1415 at Agincourt. I also knew that 138 perfectly preserved longbows were discovered in sediment on the seabed inside of Henry VIII’s war ship the Mary Rose in 1982. These bows had a draw weight of 180lbs, making my friend’s compound bow seem positively girly at just 68lbs.
I studied his modern contraption that looked half way between a cat’s cradle game and a washing line. It was quite a different beast than the trusty old piece of plywood and butcher’s string I had when I was a boy. The fundamental basis of a modern compound bow is that it uses a levering system with cables and pulleys to bend the stiff limbs thus storing more energy than a traditional longbow. At the top of each limb there is a cam that offers a mechanical advantage when drawn back.
As the bow is drawn, the draw weight increases to a peak and then ‘lets off’ a certain percentage of the peak draw weight before a stop. The let-off is commonly between 65% and 80% of the peak weight meaning you can hold the bow drawn with far less pressure on your arms other than the weight of the bow itself. This reduced strain therefore translates into steadiness and far better accuracy.
The bow I had before me was made by market leader Hoyt. This mean looking set up had a draw weight of 68lb. As I quickly realised drawing the bow is not something you can just do. I failed to get the string back past the cams on my first attempt. You do not pull the string with your arm but use the muscles in your back and chest like a piston – easier said than done. Cycling the bolt on a rifle this is not. Drawing requires practice, over and over until muscle memory aids the process.
Unlike a longbow, your hand and fingers do not touch the string. You have a trigger release strapped around your wrist that clips onto a loop on the back of the string. This is released with a hair trigger operated with your index finger. As luck would have it, my index finger knows all about triggers so felt more than at home here. Once the bow is drawn, aiming is much more like shooting a rifle with open sights than you would think. A circular washer or ‘peep’ is attached into the bow string at eye level that you look through as a rear sight when drawn. On the ‘riser’ or front section of the bow near the opposite hand you have a sight with several optic fibre TRU-GLO pins that act as a foresight.
The pins can be adjusted up and down to counteract the trajectory of the arrow for exact distances. Normal is 20, 30, 40, 50 yards – further away than that and an arrow has lost too much energy to effectively penetrate the skin of a big animal. Generally, you would not shoot at game further away than 30 yards. When drawn, and the rear of the arrow is anchored at the corner of your mouth, you align the relevant distance pin in the centre of the peep and cover the intended target, exhale and pull the trigger release. It sounds easy but takes a lot of practice to perfect.
So having finally got the knack of drawing, I fired my first arrow far more accurately than I expected and was instantly hooked. I was astonished with the accuracy at 30 and 40 yards. With practice I was able to get a two-inch group, the same acceptable sized group for rifle shooting deer at a similar distance. Quite remarkable to think this technology was basically invented some 64,000 years before my first arrow was fired.
Without delay, I had to purchase a bow. I furnished myself with the very same Hoyt my friend introduced me to and of course the next natural step was to book a hunting trip to Mexico. Before we went, the only deer we could practice shooting in the UK was a high-density 3D foam whitetail buck. Bow hunting has been illegal in the UK since 1963. It wasn’t explicitly banned, but archery equipment wasn’t included in a list of permitted hunting weapons. This was then backed up with the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and reference is made in the Deer Act 1991 to arrows not being permitted as a means of lawfully killing deer. To me this turn of events seems a great shame given one of our greatest moments on the battlefield was with bow and arrow against the French and our English archers were feared the world over.
Many questions remained unanswered about the effectiveness of a bow in comparison to a rifle. Is it up to the task without the hydrostatic shock of a bullet? I have done the maths and worked out that my 400-grain arrow with a 100-grain broadhead travelling at 300fps would deliver nearly the same amount of kinetic energy as a 9mm pistol at point blank. So if placed correctly, the same as with a rifle, this would be enough to get the job done. I was told a heart or double lung shot is the only way to shoot deer with a bow, shoulder shooting may result in the arrow not penetrating the shoulder blade and a lost or wounded deer.
Other than the bow set up itself, the most important piece of equipment you need is a top quality range finder. The trajectory of an arrow is extreme particularly from 25 to 40 yards where you may be trying to judge the distance of an animal. Take away the guesswork and get a range finder that can range as close as 10 yards. I have found the best one to be the Leica Rangemaster CRF – 1600B as it also has an angleometer that gives an equivalent horizontal distance if you are in a tree stand.
On my fourth morning of sitting in blinds and tree stands, my patience and enthusiasm were rewarded. To get 15 or 20 yards from a deer perfectly presented broadside is no mean feat, even if you are sitting in ambush. Every noise is detected by the thousands of years of evolution in the deer’s senses. And it is electrifying. Having watched a clearing of rutting bucks for over two and a half hours, a mature buck finally offered his vitals and my moment had come. Bursts of adrenaline focused me like never before. Surprisingly clear headed I drew silently, aimed then nearly as silently released the arrow, a far cry from pulling the trigger of a rifle.
The razor sharp broadhead sliced straight through the chest cavity just above the heart and passing clean through the entire body of the beast turning a tap on as it passed. The deer jumped and kicked out reacting in a way I was familiar with. An incredible sense of relief stuck me as I saw the deer staggering to cover with reassuring amounts of blood jettisoning the pump house on every one of the last steps this deer would make.
Then, the adrenaline overwhelmed my own senses and the shakes hit me. What an experience.
When a hunter spots a deer from 100 yards and lines up the crosshairs of a rifle, the hunt is already drawing to an end. For a bow hunter 100 yards is merely the beginning of a tough journey. To stalk through terrain of the deer’s choosing, using raw field craft and stealth in an attempt to outwit it to 20 or 30 yards before delivering a well-placed shot makes you appreciate how easy hunting with a rifle can be.
I will never lose my passion for rifles but my bow is definitely my alternative calibre for hunts abroad where legally possible to do so.
Author:
Simon K. Barr
Although in his childhood, he often went hunting with his father, Simon’s first love was fly fishing. Later he also developed a passion for hunting on dry land. For Leica, as well as various international hunting magazines, he reports his hunting adventures, which lead him to some of the most remote regions of the world. He loves the great challenge that hunting offers. Together with his wife the 36-year-old hunter lives in Scotland, and he is already looking forward to taking his newborn daughter hunting for the first time.
