Speaker 1: As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics they'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance before we get started. What
Speaker 1: I want you to do is picture yourself at the
Speaker 1: top of a mountain after two weeks of hunting. You
Speaker 1: are on the biggest deer of your life. You do
Speaker 1: an epic stock I'm talking top shelf epic. You get
Speaker 1: in within range, you draw back. As you draw back,
Speaker 1: the buck turns and looks at you. Okay, what do
Speaker 1: you do? Think about it for a second? Do you shoot?
Speaker 1: Do you wait? The buck standing broadside? You've ranged this
Speaker 1: right now? I think the right answer is I need
Speaker 1: more information, and that is a correct answer. But what
Speaker 1: I hope is from what I consider probably the best
Speaker 1: hunt I've had in my life, I learned a lot
Speaker 1: of hard lessons. Now I had some a great end
Speaker 1: story with some great success, but there were some pretty
Speaker 1: hard lessons learned along the way. And I will think
Speaker 1: about this hunt for probably the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: It's my encounter with one of the greatest deer I
Speaker 1: have ever seen, and still to this day, and I've
Speaker 1: seen some pretty good deer. Now, I think the lessons
Speaker 1: learned at that moment I have carried through throughout hunts
Speaker 1: from two thousand five until now that have made me
Speaker 1: overall a more successful hunter. And it is because of
Speaker 1: the encounters with this buck. So I want to tell
Speaker 1: you the story of what I consider the greatest dear
Speaker 1: of my life. Now, let me set the stage for
Speaker 1: you a little bit. The year is two thousand five
Speaker 1: now in the state of Nevada. In two thousand five,
Speaker 1: if mule deer hunting was a fine wine, this would
Speaker 1: be the best wine you could get. This year, it
Speaker 1: was just a perfect storm of good antler growth, I
Speaker 1: would say, high deer populations, everything, just the stars just
Speaker 1: lined up. Now, I had drawn a deer tag in
Speaker 1: an area that I had hunted. I'd never actually personally
Speaker 1: had a tag in this unit. However, I've spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in there with my buddy, who had
Speaker 1: had tags over the years. We scouted it. We found
Speaker 1: some good areas and I thought, man, I want to
Speaker 1: come back and hunt this tag next year with my
Speaker 1: bow in this same County. I would say that year
Speaker 1: some of the biggest deer ever taken with the bow
Speaker 1: were taken. I think the new archery world record was
Speaker 1: shot that year by guy named Greg Crow, and he
Speaker 1: took that buck with his bow not too far from
Speaker 1: actually where I was hunting. So you just gotta I'm
Speaker 1: just setting your mind right to know that this year
Speaker 1: everything was lined up for one of the best hunts
Speaker 1: you could probably ever have. And I would say that
Speaker 1: I'm telling a story about the biggest deer I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Now you're probably wondering, well, have I seen pictures of
Speaker 1: this big deer? You have to listen to this story
Speaker 1: and hear what happens. I scouted this unit. I don't
Speaker 1: even know how many days, to be honest, quite a few.
Speaker 1: I think I made two or three scouting trips during
Speaker 1: the summer. I'd hindpoint in the area where I wanted
Speaker 1: to be, and there was a high concentration of bucks
Speaker 1: in there. I'd seen multiple bachelor groups of ten bucks
Speaker 1: or more all years wide four by four's I had
Speaker 1: seen some just tremendous deer, and I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: all right, I've never seen so many good deer in
Speaker 1: my life. I'm gonna really hold out and try to
Speaker 1: find the best year I can. I've got. The entire
Speaker 1: season is shortly after high school. I took my college
Speaker 1: during the spring and summer semesters, so I didn't have
Speaker 1: to go back to school yet. I had the entire
Speaker 1: month of August to hunt meal deer, and that was
Speaker 1: my plan. I arrived in the area quite a few
Speaker 1: days before opening day, glass and spotting bucks, just watching.
Speaker 1: What I was trying to do is watch their habits,
Speaker 1: watch their movements, try to figure them out. So if
Speaker 1: I if the buck that I decided I wanted to
Speaker 1: chase appeared on opening day, I would know how to
Speaker 1: get there. I would know potentially what that deer was
Speaker 1: gonna do. Now muled year, you might think you have
Speaker 1: a pattern, but they do some erratic stuff. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily like patterning a white tail. Early in the season,
Speaker 1: when they're in their velvet, they tend to feed in
Speaker 1: an area and be out in the open more. However,
Speaker 1: they don't always bed in the same place. You might
Speaker 1: think they're gonna go left because they've gone left the
Speaker 1: last two days, and the next day they just go
Speaker 1: a completely different way and go bed on another mountain,
Speaker 1: so they can be fairly erratic, but I just wanted
Speaker 1: to understand what the general movements of these deer were
Speaker 1: before I even started hunting. On Opening day, I spotted
Speaker 1: what I considered a pretty good buck. If you know
Speaker 1: deer scores or whatever, it's probably plus buck. I thought
Speaker 1: that that would be the biggest deer I've ever taken
Speaker 1: in my life. I'm gonna stalk this deer. As I'm
Speaker 1: stalking that dear, I end up midday finding another deer,
Speaker 1: and the other deer I found was by far the
Speaker 1: largest deer I've ever seen, and what would have been
Speaker 1: a potential world record mule deer. Now, for me, hunting
Speaker 1: is about a lot of things, primarily food, meet the adventure,
Speaker 1: the challenge of it. But when I had seen that
Speaker 1: big buck, I thought, there is probably no greater challenge
Speaker 1: than to try to take that one deer one because
Speaker 1: it's so big. You know, there may not ever be
Speaker 1: another point in my life where I find a deer
Speaker 1: that rivals that deer, and the challenge of just hunting
Speaker 1: that one deer, I was welcoming it. I thought, this
Speaker 1: is going to be hard, but I'm up for this. Challenge. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got that. I watched the dear bed he betted
Speaker 1: in what I considered a spot that would be a
Speaker 1: good spot for a stock of that first day, that
Speaker 1: opening morning, I stalk in the wind is okay. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say it was great, but it's okay. The
Speaker 1: deer is betted out on a point. There's this this
Speaker 1: small hill that came up in between these two mountains,
Speaker 1: and he had betted just below in the tall sage.
Speaker 1: There was a mahogany tree that was casting a little
Speaker 1: bit of shade. However, as the day moved on, I
Speaker 1: kind of expected this buck to move. Yet he never
Speaker 1: moved when the shade got out, and I think it
Speaker 1: was because of the stage was tall enough where it
Speaker 1: provided enough shade, and then there was a pretty good
Speaker 1: breeze blowing toward that buck. Now, the best approach would
Speaker 1: have been for me to pop up a little further
Speaker 1: up the ridge. However, I think he would have winded
Speaker 1: me from there. So I decided to make an approach
Speaker 1: where I went essentially paralleled the ridge behind him and
Speaker 1: then would pop up over and he should be bedded
Speaker 1: right below me. And I was gonna plan to stock
Speaker 1: to that mahogany tree where the shade it was actually
Speaker 1: putting shade on him earlier in the day. I get
Speaker 1: over there, I take my shoes off, I make my
Speaker 1: long stock. I get you know where I could start
Speaker 1: to see. I started glassing the brush and I see
Speaker 1: his antler tips. This buck is huge. I range it
Speaker 1: and it's about sixty yards. I arrange the tree. The
Speaker 1: tree's thirty yards in front of me or so, so
Speaker 1: I get low. I pretty much put my bow in
Speaker 1: my back army crawl in. At this point the wind
Speaker 1: the days getting later, and the winds are starting to
Speaker 1: get a little shifty. I crawled to that tree. I
Speaker 1: range his antler's thirty three yards. I think perfect. I
Speaker 1: am going to wait here until this buck stands up.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting nothing. The wind's getting
Speaker 1: a little shifty. I'm getting a little nervous. I'm shooting
Speaker 1: downhill at this point, or will be when he stands up,
Speaker 1: And I think to myself, I've got I think it
Speaker 1: was probably it was a seven pin sight, and I
Speaker 1: thought I might as well make this a slam dunk.
Speaker 1: I've been sitting here for an hour. Probably I might
Speaker 1: as well get to an even thirty yards. Thinking back,
Speaker 1: that scene stupid, but you have to remember that time
Speaker 1: my bow wasn't as fast as they are now. The
Speaker 1: difference in three yards could be a hit or a miss.
Speaker 1: So I decided to crawl up three more yards, which
Speaker 1: I've been sitting here for hours. As I start my crawl,
Speaker 1: I'm about one yard into this crawl, I feel the
Speaker 1: wind hit the back of my neck. A quick swirl.
Speaker 1: The buck's head whips up. The bucks stands there broadside,
Speaker 1: and I'm caught off guard. He's standing looking around because
Speaker 1: the wind just swirled. He had no clue which way
Speaker 1: that scent. He just picked up a little bit of scent.
Speaker 1: But I draw back. The buck must have heard me.
Speaker 1: I was not set up very well. He takes off,
Speaker 1: bouncing away, and there goes the buck of my dreams. Now,
Speaker 1: at this point, I've been thirty yards or close around
Speaker 1: thirty yards to this giant deer. He disappeared, he ran off.
Speaker 1: I was unable to relocate him. Now for the rest
Speaker 1: of the hunt, all I can think about is this
Speaker 1: big buck, and probably pretty much, truthfully, for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life. But I'm thinking about this dear, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing other great bucks, but in my mind, I know
Speaker 1: nothing else will do. Is this, dear or no, dear.
Speaker 1: I will go home empty if I don't get another
Speaker 1: chance at this buck, is what I'm thinking. I think
Speaker 1: it was about two weeks later of hard hunting. When
Speaker 1: I started out hunting. I had my dad was with
Speaker 1: me and one of my good buddies, Art, and they
Speaker 1: all had to go back to work. I said, now
Speaker 1: I'm staying out here. I'm going to just continue hunting
Speaker 1: for this big buck. So a few weeks goes by.
Speaker 1: I think I was hunting a little over a week
Speaker 1: by myself, maybe more. Those guys come back. It's a weekend.
Speaker 1: We all. I'm showing them all the good deer that
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I'm like, yeah, I think my dad had
Speaker 1: a tag with me as well, so I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you should try stalk in one of those bucks.
Speaker 1: And I'd have these deer just named in patterned and
Speaker 1: never seen that big buck again. So we're glassing up
Speaker 1: in this giant basin at the top of the mountain,
Speaker 1: and lo and behold there is that big buck with
Speaker 1: about ten other bucks that are bigger than most of
Speaker 1: the deer i'd seen the previous week. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just a group of older age class animals in the
Speaker 1: highest basin in the unit. Altogether, it's like there used
Speaker 1: to be this picture. They called it a Magnificent seven,
Speaker 1: and I think it was just photoshop. There was the
Speaker 1: seven giant bucks on this skyline, and it just it
Speaker 1: looked unreal because I think it was unreal. It's just
Speaker 1: a product of photoshop. But this was a similar scenario.
Speaker 1: I decide, Okay, I'm gonna go up there. It's about
Speaker 1: a three mile hike into where these deer are, maybe
Speaker 1: four a lot of elevation gain. Now I watched the
Speaker 1: bucks bed. I load up my packet. I stuffed my
Speaker 1: sleeping bag in a harp, a little bit of food.
Speaker 1: I've got a Fannie pack just so when I dropped
Speaker 1: my main pack, I have some water and some other
Speaker 1: things with me. So I started up the trail. Hike
Speaker 1: up the trails pretty high elevation. We're talking around ten
Speaker 1: thousand plus feet and I started the hike at so
Speaker 1: that's a major climb. It's a four thousand foot vertical gain.
Speaker 1: I started this spot in the mid morning. I'm just
Speaker 1: hoping that they're still there by the time I get there.
Speaker 1: I get into position up, I dropped my pack. I
Speaker 1: load up my little Fannie pack with a flashlight and
Speaker 1: some water, maybe a snack just in case. Start glassing
Speaker 1: and I spot the deer bedded the big buck and
Speaker 1: his friends. So I start my crawl, crawling, crawling. It's
Speaker 1: about a two hour crawl across this big plateau flat
Speaker 1: because I can kind of I'm kind of in the open,
Speaker 1: so I'm putting this big rock between me and the deer,
Speaker 1: crawling to that rock, moving from rock to rock, bush
Speaker 1: to bush. It starts to get on dark. I'm now
Speaker 1: at this point, probably eighty yards from this big buck
Speaker 1: and the other year. So he gets up and starts feeding.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking myself, come my way, please, come my way.
Speaker 1: He starts feeding, starts feeding my way. The way this
Speaker 1: is this country's bill is it's a big open basin,
Speaker 1: but there's a few little cliffs in there, and he's
Speaker 1: feeding right to the cliff just off to my right.
Speaker 1: I start crawling. As soon as he gets out of sight.
Speaker 1: I run up to the cliff edge, moving as fast
Speaker 1: and as quiet as I can. I get to the
Speaker 1: edge and I spot him. I pop up. He's directly
Speaker 1: below me. It is steep downhill. I'm on the edge
Speaker 1: of the cliff shooting down. I'll be shooting down at
Speaker 1: this book. I ranged the buck. I think it's fifty
Speaker 1: five yards perfect. I've been shooting all summer. I could
Speaker 1: shoot a bottle cap at fifty five yards, no problem.
Speaker 1: I draw back, and as I draw back, that buck
Speaker 1: turns his head and looks at me, and I just
Speaker 1: see this giant rack moving. He looks at me. I
Speaker 1: set all my pin square on his body, take the shot,
Speaker 1: and the buck doesn't Neo Matrix dodging the bullet, drops
Speaker 1: his back, ducks the string and the arrow flies right
Speaker 1: over his back. He jumps out and starts running down
Speaker 1: the hill and stops about a hundred and eighty yards out.
Speaker 1: My heart sank. Now you gotta remember this is a
Speaker 1: group with a bunch of other good bucks. I think
Speaker 1: to myself, I have hunted hard. I'm all the way
Speaker 1: up here. And as I do that, one of the
Speaker 1: other bucks in the group, which is probably not the
Speaker 1: smallest buck, but definitely not. He's in the lower half
Speaker 1: end of the buck. He's probably the third from the
Speaker 1: bottom as far as size. Walks out and stops and
Speaker 1: stares downhill at the buck that just ran off, and
Speaker 1: he these thirty something yards, probably thirty I think it
Speaker 1: was thirty three yards. He's looking away, and I think
Speaker 1: to myself, I'm not coming off this mountain without a deer.
Speaker 1: I draw back, I said on my pen, I take
Speaker 1: the shot. I hit him right behind the shoulder. The
Speaker 1: buck runs maybe ten yards, falls over stone dead and
Speaker 1: tumbles down the mountain a little ways. Now as I
Speaker 1: walked down there, of course all the other deer just
Speaker 1: watching this one buck, and I can nearly walk up
Speaker 1: to these other deer, which in any other circumstances would
Speaker 1: have run away immediately. And I'm pretty excited because this dear,
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't the biggest deer in the group,
Speaker 1: is the best year I had ever taken with any weapon,
Speaker 1: gun or bow, and definitely the best buck I had
Speaker 1: taken with the bow. He was passed these years. Giant
Speaker 1: four by four hundred and seventy two inch type buck.
Speaker 1: Just a great deer, and I was pretty excited. Now
Speaker 1: it's starting to get evening, I get to the deer,
Speaker 1: I decided to, you know, take care of him, get
Speaker 1: the deer out, and I figure, well, I'm up here.
Speaker 1: It was a long ways in there, so I go back,
Speaker 1: get my pack and all my stuff, pull my sleeping
Speaker 1: bag out, set my tarp up. It's a little I
Speaker 1: didn't want anything to eat the meat, and there's nowhere
Speaker 1: to hang the deer. So I ended up just thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll just sleep essentially with this deer. That way, if
Speaker 1: any coyotes or whatever around, they aren't going to get
Speaker 1: the meat. So I set my tarp on the ground,
Speaker 1: throw my sleeping bag down. It was so steep though,
Speaker 1: I kept slipping off, so I ended up taking my
Speaker 1: para cord and it was actually just that almost like
Speaker 1: clothesline type chord, tying myself to a rock, making a
Speaker 1: little anchor, sleeping on the mountain right there with the buck.
Speaker 1: Then in the morning, getting up, finishing quartering out, and
Speaker 1: getting the meat all taken care of, and then packing
Speaker 1: the buck down. Now I had never been more excited.
Speaker 1: I had just taken the best year of my life.
Speaker 1: I had a great hunt, an incredible stock, and a
Speaker 1: shot at that giant deer. Now at the time that
Speaker 1: I got on that buck, I honestly didn't fully understand
Speaker 1: that line of sight was not the same as horizontal distance.
Speaker 1: So my range finder at that time was just line
Speaker 1: of sight. It didn't angle compensate. Now, luckily, if you
Speaker 1: buy a range finder, now all the calculations are done
Speaker 1: for you, it's a lot easier. But at that time,
Speaker 1: you know, my range finder only gave me line of
Speaker 1: sight distance. And what that is is the horizontal distance
Speaker 1: is the only distance that truly affects the arrow because
Speaker 1: it's based on the poll of gravity down. So if
Speaker 1: you imagine I'm shooting off of a perfectly vertical cliff,
Speaker 1: and I use my line of sight range finder and
Speaker 1: I ranged that deer at say seventy yards, Well, if
Speaker 1: that deer is only thirty yards from the base of
Speaker 1: the cliff, directly below where I'm standing, then I would
Speaker 1: use my thirty yard pin on that deer that the
Speaker 1: line of sight says seventy yards. Modern range finders now
Speaker 1: do that calculation for you. It's fairly difficult to figure
Speaker 1: that out in the field. And if you want to
Speaker 1: know more about that, I mean, you just get a
Speaker 1: vortex range finder and it explains the whole horizontal distance
Speaker 1: as well as the line of sight distance, But at
Speaker 1: that time I didn't know the difference, so when I
Speaker 1: was aiming for the line of sight, that was one thing.
Speaker 1: There was a major mistake shooting at that buck. Now,
Speaker 1: another little mistake was that I think I probably shot
Speaker 1: it the inopportune time. The buck just happened to be
Speaker 1: turning his head looking up. I got a little impatient
Speaker 1: and a little more excited than normal, because, knowing what
Speaker 1: I know now, that deer wasn't really looking at me.
Speaker 1: He was more just looking in my direction. I should
Speaker 1: have waited for him to move his head back to
Speaker 1: feeding or in a position where he's looking away. So
Speaker 1: I think that that played into it a little bit
Speaker 1: as well. But the main thing was not understanding shooting downhill. Now,
Speaker 1: from that point forward, I added downhill practice, because the
Speaker 1: majority of your shots out west on spotting stock big
Speaker 1: game animals are gonna be downhill. You're in a mountain,
Speaker 1: generally the best approaches from above. So by practicing these
Speaker 1: downhill shots, I became a lot more lethal and a
Speaker 1: lot more proficient. But I'm going to go into a
Speaker 1: few tips on the ways that I make those downhill
Speaker 1: shots count. Now, these lessons for shooting downhill are not
Speaker 1: just for archery hunting. Honestly, a lot of these techniques
Speaker 1: can be applied to rifle hunting, and it's not just
Speaker 1: for Western hunting. If you are a tree stand enter,
Speaker 1: all of your shots are gonna be at a down angle.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of things that you might glean
Speaker 1: from this. Even though you might not be shooting as
Speaker 1: far as is say spot and stock hunt may need
Speaker 1: to or you don't have to deal with the slope
Speaker 1: of a hill. The real at the basics, the mechanics
Speaker 1: of shooting downhill and uphill for that matter, are the same,
Speaker 1: no matter your weapon choice or where you prefer to hunt.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget my first cus deer hunt in Arizona
Speaker 1: archery hunt. I snuck in on a buck. It was
Speaker 1: below this band of cliffs feeding in the cactus. So
Speaker 1: I sneak out get to the cliff. It's pretty much
Speaker 1: a straight down shot. I crawl out to the edge
Speaker 1: and my plan was I'm gonna draw kneeling, which is
Speaker 1: normally what I do out of sight so he couldn't
Speaker 1: see me, and then I'm gonna stand up and shoot.
Speaker 1: I go to draw my bow back and as I
Speaker 1: draw my bow back, my arrow falls off the string.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what the heck? I never had that happen before.
Speaker 1: So I put the arrow back on drawback again. As
Speaker 1: I draw back, I notice that it pops off again.
Speaker 1: The broadhead was clipping my riser and pulling the arrow
Speaker 1: off the string. Like what the heck. I kind of
Speaker 1: look at it real quick, thinking, okay, maybe something's move
Speaker 1: something's wrong. Like everything looks good. So I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: let me just see. I put the arrow on, and
Speaker 1: I thought I was drawing back level, because when you
Speaker 1: shoot on flat ground, you just naturally balanced the bow
Speaker 1: to the horizon. You just kind of go perpendicular to
Speaker 1: the horizon. You see. Well, I look at my level
Speaker 1: on my site and it is just way off to
Speaker 1: the left side. I was canting my bow so hard,
Speaker 1: yet I thought I was drawing at level. So I
Speaker 1: go to what feels like in a natural position, balance
Speaker 1: it out, drawback. Fine, I stand up, I bend down,
Speaker 1: I shoot, and I killed the buck that right there.
Speaker 1: It never entered my mind how much the slope of
Speaker 1: the hill affects I would say, not only the pull
Speaker 1: of gravity on your bow, but just where you think
Speaker 1: your bow is level. When you're shooting downhill in the mountains,
Speaker 1: you aren't just shooting straight down from a flat spot
Speaker 1: most times, like you would say from a tree stand
Speaker 1: or if you were practicing, you're up on your roof
Speaker 1: shooting straight down. You also have to encount for the
Speaker 1: pitch of the hill because you're gonna be on a mountain.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the buck might be right below you, but there
Speaker 1: might be some slope where you are. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: that I've learned is the slope affects the pole on
Speaker 1: your bow. What it wants to do is it wants
Speaker 1: to pull your bow downhill. And your mind sees the
Speaker 1: horizon out there, and you think that put my bow
Speaker 1: perpendicular to that should be level. What you don't realize
Speaker 1: is the way that your bow is canting. It might
Speaker 1: look level to you, yet because you're standing on a
Speaker 1: pitch of a hill, it's actually not level. So what
Speaker 1: I do. The first thing I do when I go
Speaker 1: to draw my bow back on a mountain is I
Speaker 1: lean the top of my bow uphill. Now it feels
Speaker 1: unnatural at first, but what happens is when I draw
Speaker 1: back with the top of my bow uphill. As I
Speaker 1: draw back and settle. Gravity starts to pull the top down,
Speaker 1: and what that should do is allow me to level
Speaker 1: and stop it where I need to level, but not
Speaker 1: fight against it in an unnatural way. Because if I
Speaker 1: have the top of my limb downhill already, I draw back,
Speaker 1: which might feel better when I draw back. Now I
Speaker 1: realized my bow isn't level and I'm forcing it against
Speaker 1: gravity the other way. What that's doing is putting in
Speaker 1: some weird hand torque. It's not natural, and when I
Speaker 1: take that shot, it's not going to be as good
Speaker 1: as a shot because I'm putting undue stress in my
Speaker 1: grip and the way that I'm trying to force that
Speaker 1: bow the wrong way. Now, when you shoot on flat ground,
Speaker 1: you're just drawing back. You're getting to your anchor point
Speaker 1: and you're shooting. I think a mistake that I have
Speaker 1: made in the past, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people make, is what you'll do is you'll see the
Speaker 1: animal below you. You draw towards the animal. Well, when
Speaker 1: you do that at an angle, your anchor point might
Speaker 1: not be the same as you've been practicing on flat
Speaker 1: ground all the time. So as you draw back, what
Speaker 1: I like to do is I'll draw back level and
Speaker 1: then I'll bend it my hips, keeping my same anchor
Speaker 1: point as I go to shoot that animal. Now, I
Speaker 1: think some people overexaggerate this. They go straight and then
Speaker 1: they really really bend down. I just think you need
Speaker 1: to do it in a way that keeps your anchor point. Now,
Speaker 1: if you draw, if you practice all the time drawing
Speaker 1: back and anchoring, that's okay because you'll get that same
Speaker 1: anchor point. But you got to remember you want everything
Speaker 1: to be the way that you practiced. So if you're
Speaker 1: practicing a lot on level ground drawback like you're on
Speaker 1: level ground, then don't just move your arm down because
Speaker 1: that's not keeping your same anchor point in the way
Speaker 1: that you're looking through your peep You now just bend
Speaker 1: the hips and let your front arm follow as you
Speaker 1: aim towards that animal. Now, another thing that I've learned
Speaker 1: when shooting downhill is I've made this mistake a lot
Speaker 1: of times the animals below me. I draw back, I level,
Speaker 1: everything's good, I bend at the hips, I go down
Speaker 1: past the deer, and then I try to aim up
Speaker 1: at the deer. So what I'm saying is my pin.
Speaker 1: Let's say my pin now, goes below where I want
Speaker 1: to hit, and I'm trying to push the boat up
Speaker 1: into the kill zone that pin. The trouble with this
Speaker 1: is and it's it's hard to fight because gravity is
Speaker 1: pulling your bow down and you're trying to force your
Speaker 1: bow up. Well, what that does is as you release,
Speaker 1: you're putting so much pressure that it pushes your hand
Speaker 1: up when you shoot. And I have had a few
Speaker 1: instances where I've done this and just shot right over
Speaker 1: the deer's back. Now I can think of the times
Speaker 1: that I've missed downhill. I don't think that I've ever
Speaker 1: missed shooting below an animal. It always goes over the back,
Speaker 1: over the back, And that's because these little things that
Speaker 1: are if you just think about it, if you're trying
Speaker 1: to aim up on an animal that's below you, you're
Speaker 1: really fighting it to get that pin settled where you want.
Speaker 1: And when you let go, all your energy now that
Speaker 1: you only have one hand on that boat is going
Speaker 1: up and as soon as you release the string, you're
Speaker 1: just gonna shoot high. So what I'll do is I'll
Speaker 1: drawback level, start aiming down. I'll get close to the
Speaker 1: back of the deer, and then I just keep bending
Speaker 1: my hips down and settle from the top down. I
Speaker 1: try not to go below. Now if I get low,
Speaker 1: I'll just kind of move back up higher and then
Speaker 1: try to settle down on the animal. As opposed to
Speaker 1: being low and pushing my pin up to where I
Speaker 1: want to shoot. I'll get my pin above exactly where
Speaker 1: I want to hit and let it slightly lower to
Speaker 1: the spot that I'm aiming at. I think the most
Speaker 1: important thing with downhill shooting is just practice. Now I'm
Speaker 1: fortunate I can just go to the mountain and shoot
Speaker 1: downhill pretty much daily if I want not. Everybody has
Speaker 1: that luxury. Now, if you have somewhere you can practice,
Speaker 1: if you practice it in your backyard, if that's allowed.
Speaker 1: There's been times where I have shot off my balcony
Speaker 1: to get some downhill shots in. I've literally shot off
Speaker 1: my roof. I've shot off of a ladder. I mean,
Speaker 1: as long as it's legal to shoot wherever you're shooting,
Speaker 1: and you can shoot off your roof, you can shoot off.
Speaker 1: Just be careful, don't fall. Don't call me and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I fell off my roof. Your tips sucks. But get
Speaker 1: that practice in. I know, guys that tree stand hunt
Speaker 1: all the time, and they practice shooting out of a
Speaker 1: tree stand they put up in their backyard or a
Speaker 1: ladder stand. Like that's a great idea. Just have some
Speaker 1: incline when you're shooting at a target to get that practice,
Speaker 1: to get the draw cycle down, to get that aiming down,
Speaker 1: to practice moving down onto the targets opposed to pushing up,
Speaker 1: even though you probably should aim down all the time.
Speaker 1: I think the practice, you might surprise yourself at the
Speaker 1: type of shots where your arrow hits, even though you
Speaker 1: have a range finder that gives you not your line
Speaker 1: of sight but your true ballistic range. You say you're I.
Speaker 1: I shoot a double pin, which acts like pretty much
Speaker 1: a single pin, so I can set my pin exactly
Speaker 1: for the yardage that my range finder reads. Now, in practice,
Speaker 1: I find that the steeper the angle, the more exaggerated
Speaker 1: and lower I have to aim. And the reason is
Speaker 1: isn't because okay, maybe the true range is correct and
Speaker 1: that arrow will hit where I want it to for
Speaker 1: that site. But what's different is my perception of the target.
Speaker 1: If I'm at a forty five degree angle looking off
Speaker 1: of a cliff at a deer, its vitals are not
Speaker 1: looking the same as a broadside target. What I see
Speaker 1: through my eyes is completely different than a deer that
Speaker 1: is just flat standing there. I can pick that spot
Speaker 1: on its vitals where I want. When I'm shooting down,
Speaker 1: I really see the top of its back and some
Speaker 1: of its side. So I have to consciously tell myself
Speaker 1: aim a little lower. That way my arrow will actually
Speaker 1: impact slightly higher than where I'm aiming. And this you
Speaker 1: just have to figure out through practice practice at different
Speaker 1: angles and different distances, because it changes and is more
Speaker 1: exaggerated the further out you go and the steeper you go.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that people always talk about is, okay,
Speaker 1: now that we've got these range finders that give us
Speaker 1: our true ballistic range. There's been times where I've been
Speaker 1: in the mountains and I've ranged something and it goes, Man,
Speaker 1: that looks so far away and you range it yards, Well,
Speaker 1: it's the line of sight might be eighty year, a
Speaker 1: hundred yards depending on the angle you go. Well, that's
Speaker 1: only a forty five yards shot. Yes, gravity is affecting
Speaker 1: your arrow as a forty five yard shot, but you
Speaker 1: still have to execute a shot as good as you
Speaker 1: would at the actual line of sight. Even though gravity
Speaker 1: only pulls your arrow a certain distance. You're just compensating
Speaker 1: for the drop. But what you see is a hundred
Speaker 1: yard shot. If it's a hundred yards line of sight,
Speaker 1: that's the type of shot you need to execute. If
Speaker 1: you can't make a hundred yards shot, even though your
Speaker 1: arrow only drops for forty five yards, there's less margin
Speaker 1: of air as far as the drop in the arrow.
Speaker 1: But you have to be as steady as you would
Speaker 1: for a hundred yard shot because you still have other
Speaker 1: factors like wind resistance, cross winds, as well as the
Speaker 1: target looks a long ways away because it is a
Speaker 1: long ways away. Now, gravity might not affect your arrow
Speaker 1: the same as your line of sight, but you still
Speaker 1: have to execute that shot like it's a further shot.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people forget that. So
Speaker 1: they go to a they go to shoot off a cliff,
Speaker 1: They range it like forty yards, that's within my range,
Speaker 1: and then they miss and like, how did I miss that? Well?
Speaker 1: You missed because you're treating it like you're shooting at
Speaker 1: something that's forty yards, not something that's a hundred yards,
Speaker 1: like your line of SIGHTE. Yeah, you might only use
Speaker 1: your forty yard pin but you really have to focus
Speaker 1: in and execute a shot that might be further than
Speaker 1: your ability. So that's something you have to factor in
Speaker 1: when you're in the mountains. How far can I actually
Speaker 1: shoot downhill? And that only comes with practice, you know.
Speaker 1: I just really wanted to talk about this because I
Speaker 1: think that once you grasp shooting downhill, you're going to
Speaker 1: be more successful. The reason is because most of the
Speaker 1: opportunity I have mountain hunting is downhill shots. Stocks are
Speaker 1: more successful coming in from the top. A lot of
Speaker 1: animals bed in a way where they're facing downhill. So
Speaker 1: if you get the right can issues and you can
Speaker 1: pop over ridge shoot down a cliff, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: overall more successful hunting big game. Hopefully you enjoyed our
Speaker 1: first podcast. I really just want to thank everybody for
Speaker 1: listening through it. I really appreciate you. Feel free to
Speaker 1: reach out via social media, send me some feedback, give
Speaker 1: me some ideas on questions you'd like answered, as well
Speaker 1: as maybe some stories you'd like to hear. I'm open
Speaker 1: to any kind of suggestions. Give us a good rating
Speaker 1: wherever you're listening. That will that always helps. I think
Speaker 1: next week I want to tackle the topic that I
Speaker 1: get asked quite often, and it's regarding bear country. What
Speaker 1: do I do in bear country? How do I stay
Speaker 1: safe in bear country? What do I do with a
Speaker 1: bear attacks? I think I can answer a lot of
Speaker 1: those questions as well as I love to share a
Speaker 1: few stories of close encounters I've had with both black bears,
Speaker 1: brown bears, grizzly bears. So next week we'll talk all
Speaker 1: things bears. I think you'll really enjoy it, and as always,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. I really appreciate you, and stay
Speaker 1: frosty all right, talk to you later. M