Ep. 79: Archery 202
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As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days in the field. This show is about translating my hard-won experiences into tips and tactics that'll get you closer to your ultimate goal, success in the field. I'm Remy Warren. This is Cutting the Distance.

Welcome back, everybody. I hope you've been enjoying these podcasts. You know, we're talking a lot about bowhunting, and if I think about bowhunting, then I got to think about successful bowhunting. And really, to be a successful bowhunter, there's thousands of things that need to go right. And while much of it might seem out of your control, there's archers out there who seem to just find consistent success. And I'm going to talk to you about that.

And I believe that this is due to limiting easy mistakes to shift the odds slightly in the hunter's favor. So the last four episodes, we've been going over everything it takes to become a new bow hunter from gear and setups to shooting in your backyard to then shooting at games.

So this week in Bowhunting 202, we're going to just take it a step further and talk about the advanced considerations of things like wind, shot angle, and then the noise in your setup, how to adjust it, and how to just push those odds in your favor. But before we do that, I want to tell a story of a recent hunt of my own where I cut a corner and unfortunately paid for it.

So last week I found myself down in Arizona chasing coos and mule deer. It was kind of a last minute decision, really. I just kind of, I actually got a new bow and I'd been shooting it and I'm like, man, this thing is just driving tax. I'm shooting it great. I didn't have a lot of time with it, but I thought, okay, it'd be fun to go take this out on a hunt.

the archery over the counter tags are available. And I just kind of figured it was like a Sunday and I'm like, Hmm, I'm going to go to Arizona. So I started packing up my truck and then left like Monday morning and started driving down there. And I, I only had a few days to, of the week to hunt. So it was just kind of a bonsai trip, I guess, just load up the stuff, head down, do a little solo exploring and see if I can't get on a buck. So

I got down there and actually the place that I used to hunt, it seems like it'd been pretty dry recently, but there's big storms moving in. I don't know if you're from the West right now, but we're getting hammered with some storms. So it was, it was rainy and actually fairly cold, but I think it'd been pretty dry before. And when I got into the area, the first thing I noticed was, okay, a recent burn where I was planning on hunting. Now hunting burns can be great, but in this particular instance, there is no grass. Um,

The conditions just weren't great for the deer. And because of it, I didn't really see any deer. I saw the first day I got on a small fork and horn mule deer buck and probably could have taken a shot, but I decided to pass. I had three more days left and figured, meh, first evening, I'm going to look around.

Now, the place I was hunting, it was quite a walk to get in there. It's, I don't know, maybe four miles, I would say, just like to get into the hunting area. Not that that was necessary, but I just figured I'd go somewhere where I didn't have to really run into other hunters. And I ended up spotting a lot. So I moved past the burn and it ended up making me have to hike a little bit further. And I get past the burn and

Now I'm in good, good habitat, start spotting does, but just no bucks. It's like the rut. I couldn't figure out if it should have been prime rut, but it was like the rut was over. It's like the bucks were either locked down with does or they were just off on their own. And that makes it a little bit difficult, especially with deer that can be hard to spot in the first place. So I started picking out lots and lots of does, just no bucks, which I'm like, all right,

first full day in. So I kind of got there a half day, spotted that mule deer buck that evening. And then the first full day, I mean, I hunted hard. I put on miles. I'd have to, let me look at my watch. I think I put in like 16 miles that day. It's just something crazy. And I was doing a lot of glassing as well. So a lot of that walking was just in the dark to a good vantage and then moving along this long ridge up the mountain and then back down.

And right at last light, I spotted like a big coos deer buck, a giant. But unfortunately, he'd popped out, seen some does, and then it was the only rutting activity I saw. Then he just started chasing those does. And, uh,

So I go back the next day, a big, like just heavy rains, hail starts moving in. I don't actually see anything. I, I came up on a tiny spike coos buck that I actually, he was like 10 yards away. And then outside of that, nothing. So I decided I'm going to go move areas and try somewhere a little bit different for mule deer, but I only had one day. So it was a five hour drive from where I was at on the other side of the state, but just a little bit better mule deer country.

So I drive there, get there at dark, camp the night out. And then I'm looking at my Onyx map, just like cruising through areas. I mean, while I'm out there, I'm constantly scouting for new spots, looking for areas. So I'm just flipping between my map layers, going through the regulations, kind of reading up on this area. I'd hunted this particular unit, but not this side of the unit for a very long time, maybe 10 or 15 years ago. So I just couldn't even remember the accesses and

where legal access was to get into the area and all that kind of stuff. So I'm just like, you know, at night, just spending time going through and planning out my hunt for the next day. I end up, uh, before daylight getting up and start hiking in and get to a good glassing vantage and start picking out deer. I'm like, okay, cool.

I spotted a small mule deer buck with a group of does and he's kind of like moving to water, but there'd been so much rain. They never had to go to water. So they just started moving up the canyon. Figured, well, this is a good glassing area. A lot of great little breaks in here. If I see a buck, I'll probably be able to get a shot. Just how good the terrain was. And it was very glassable. So my plan was, I'm going to just kind of move up the ridge. It's maybe a three, four, three mile long ridge or so.

and then glass into the shade for the day because I'm imagining that these bucks are probably going to pull off by themselves if it's anything like I was seeing in the other spot. It's like the bucks were not with the does and sure enough I started picking up groups of does, no bucks. So I hike up, you know, I'm quite a ways away from where I started and it's starting to become evening and I'm glassing, I'm just glassing every little fold in the mountain as it becomes available as I'm moving up this ridge and

And I finally spot a mature buck. I'm like, sweet. Oh, this is so good. And he's bedded in a place where I can get to this ridge. He's going to be facing where I'm coming from, but the wind is blowing in my direction. It's like perfect concealed approach. So,

I climb down. I make a big loop around so he doesn't see me. Get up on the top and start working my way down. This is my last day. It was a very short trip, but I put in some serious miles. I drove a long ways. It's like a

20 something hour drive. I don't know. So I get into position, I get up on the ridge and I take my boots off. I'm like, all right, I'm going to make this one stock count. I've got the camera with me. I'm doing a little self-filming, uh, just to add insult to injury, you know, make thing, make something that's already difficult, more difficult. That's just the way I like to do it. And so I start creeping in, I'm coming down the ridge. Well,

I figured out, you know, I've got on my map where he's at. I'm looking and I'm just kind of dropped down this one Canyon ahead where I'm going to go up the next little rise and then creep in. And I blew a buck out of there, a different buck that I didn't see. I'm like, Oh crap. Is he going to take this deer with him? What's going on? So I just tell myself, look,

You don't know what happened on that next two ridges over where that buck was. Yeah, it's likely that deer took him, but if it's not, you don't want to go in there hastily and blow it. This is my best opportunity. It's probably going to be my only opportunity. So I've got to make it count. So I creep in and stalk in just like I was going to. And sure enough, I see the buck laying there. I'm like, sweet. Now it'd been cloudy all day, but unfortunately it's like just decided to get sunny, right? Right as I'm closing in.

So I keep creeping in. I've got this bush on the ridge in front of me that I can keep in between the bucks I cite myself. And I get into position, range the buck. And unfortunately, like where he's laying, there's just no way to get closer. But he's far, but not too far. He's 50 yards. Perfect. Like that's a doable shot. I mean, I can definitely hit where I'm aiming as long as the circumstances are right. It should be perfect.

So unfortunately the sun's beating down on me and I'm like, I'm not, and he's kind of looking my direction. So there's no way that I'm just going to draw back, stand up and try shooting him like this because he's going to blow out. And so my thought is I'm going to wait for a cloud to come over when he's looking away or the better scenario. I'm just hoping he falls asleep.

So I'm sitting there, I'm baking in the sun and just laying watching, trying not to get a neck crank. And you know, the buck's like looking in my direction and then looking away, looking, but the clouds just will not come cast a shadow. I mean, I don't want to just be standing out in the open. So I'm just sitting there. I have 30 minutes goes by. Cool. Just waiting, waiting hour goes by. All right. Sooner or later, this buck's either going to stand up, start feeding. That'll give me a shot, fall asleep, like do something stupid.

So I keep waiting, keep waiting. And then I just see the buck starting to nod off. And I think, oh yeah, this is a done deal. This is perfect. Buck falls asleep. I'm like, all right, now I don't need to wait for the shade because it should be good. So there's the hill in front of me. I've got a good blockage of this bush. So I draw back on my knees. The buck doesn't move. I anchor back and settle in nice. I slowly stand up. There's no wind. It's dead calm.

And I'm like, okay, sleeping buck. I'm just going to put, you know, he's got a good open quartering away. I pick my spot and I just hold on that spot and think I've got all the time in the world, which I do. And I, the bow goes off. I release perfect shot. But that buck it's like when my bow went off, it sounded like a, to me, it like a gun went off. It was just like so loud. Whap.

And the arrow flew and that buck jumped up and that arrow hit exactly where I was aiming in that buck's bed. And that buck ran off, not knowing what happened. The buck like ran off 50 yards, making noise, like a hundred and something yards. Now looking around, I just sat down. I was like, dang it. He heard the bow, jumped the string. My arrow hit perfect where I wanted it to go. Yet there was no buck there by the time the arrow got there.

And I started thinking about it. I'm like, okay, it was my other bow. I wouldn't have had any problem, but I generally go through my bow and try to find like things that are noisy and what have you, but I hadn't spent a lot of time with this bow. I put pretty much the same equipment on it, but I decided since I didn't have a lot of time to broadhead tune, I was just shooting mechanical broadheads and they didn't really fit in the quiver. Right. So that was a little bit of noise. Then normally I go through and tape everything up and I had a lot of sound dampening tape on my bow already. Um,

But the one thing I didn't think about was my rest. And I didn't notice how loud everything was because when I'd been shooting at home, it was slightly windy and maybe it just wasn't that...

intense moment where you're sneaking in on a buck and you notice. And that's why I like to hunt with the same bow a lot. But every time I get a new bow, there's a few little kinks I need to work out. Hopefully I work them out on the range, but I didn't take the time to do it this time and unfortunately paid for it by a buck jumping the string in a situation that I thought for sure was a done deal.

So even as a professional that does these things all the time, you know, I sometimes skip a few little corners and those little corners, those little things that you can pay attention to mean the difference sometimes between going home successful and going home with a story of an arrow in a buck's bed.

When you're setting up a bow, there's a few advanced considerations you should include, especially for compound bow shooters, in both the setup and the practice. And they include a proper level of the bow sight on all the axes, understanding what to do when shooting on a slope, and then the ability to adjust for wind, as well as silencing your setup.

So I think that those things are very important and just little tiny details that make a big difference when it comes to being successful in the field, harvesting game animal. One little thing can go wrong and that can be the difference between you punching a tag and not.

So let's start with the level of the bow. You know, a lot of guys might think this isn't really a big deal. And for all intents and purposes, it might not be. If you're just shooting, you know, on very level terrain at 20 yards or from a tree stand at 20 yards, some of these things might not make sense.

As big of a difference as they do when you start to extrapolate that out over longer distances or start hunting mountains, Western big game. I think for Western big game hunting, especially when you're hunting in the mountains, having a site with a level that is actually level is make or break, especially when it comes to those longer distances, steep angles, or even just getting

standing on a slope. All those things are going to affect the shot. So let's kind of break down your bow sight. And what we're going to be talking about is how to level your sight. And we're going to be working up to leveling it on the third axis. And not all bow sights have this, but I think that if you're, if you're going to be serious about bow hunting, if you're going to be hunting Western animals like elk deer, mostly mule deer, who knows, maybe draw a sheep tag or antelope or whatever, uh,

Having that ability to shoot a little bit further, but also knowing you're going to be encountering angles, you need to make sure that all these things are level. So I'm going to break down right now the steps for leveling the bubble on your bow sight.

So the first two measurements of, I would say, leveling your site housing are going to be the first and second axis. And these things are going to be done on level ground. All we're really doing is we're actually just making sure that the level on your boat is true so that the bubble on that level is

is true to the level of the ground. So what we're going to do, I mean, this can be done in a vice. This can be done. However, we just need to make sure that when that bow is level up and down, left and right, that the level on the site is true to that. So you have a baseline.

I'm going to break down these, like some people get confused on, well, what's the first axis? What's the second axis? And some sites don't necessarily even have a first axis. It's just, it's just machined in a certain way that it does this. So what the first axis is, would be like,

the site housing itself. Now my site, um, I use the fast steady XL spot hog. So I can actually like turn that site housing. It's like the site housing thing that holds your pin. I could rotate that 360 degrees, like forward, backward, like roll it, um,

like roll it forward if I wanted or roll it back so that would be the first axis and what I want to do is I want to make sure that that is level with a level bow so I put my bow in a vice straight up and down I've got a level for the string there's actually mine's kind of two ways such as the left and right cant so the cant of the bow would be if you're holding the bow on its riser whether the top limb's bent left or right so we want to make sure that the bow is straight up and down and

And then we're going to level that first access based on like, say the front of the riser of the bow. So you could put a level on that, like a small carpenter's level, uh,

And then get that front sight housing. I actually just put a level, like a carpenter's level right back on that site housing and just level it once that bow's locked off level. Most bows don't have that. So you don't even really have to worry about it. And I would say that this is out of leveling everything. This is probably the least important because most it just comes level that way.

The most important level would be your second access. And what this is doing is this is just leveling the site. So the left and right to tell if your bows canted. So what this would do is like, you know, just imagine a level on a table. What we're doing is we're leveling that site to the ground, like a flat plane. So, you know, to,

to make sure that that bubbles between the two indicator markers and just centered in the level itself that's on the site. So you don't want one end to be lifted higher than the other. So it's going to just be adjusting a site kind of like rocking it left or right, if that makes sense. So it'd be just like if you had a level on a table and the table wasn't level, so you had to shim one side. So we're kind of just pushing one side up or down to level that actual level in the site.

I hope that makes sense. This is the most important because it's kind of the baseline for everything. And for most shooters, this is going to be all you really need. When you're shooting in the backyard, shooting at targets, shooting at short distances, you just want to make sure that the bow that you're holding back at full draw when you level it out is truly level to the ground. And why that makes a big difference is because if your bow's canted one way or another, that's actually going to change your point of impact.

And sometimes you might not even notice the fact that you're canting that bow one direction or another. So what canting is, is say the, when I shoot a traditional bow, I actually can't intentionally to push my arrow one direction and to open up my sight picture. So

It's the top limb leans one way. So if I'm canting right, the top limb is leaning to the right. Now on a compound bow, you try to shoot that thing perfectly straight up and down. But if your top limb's canted left, then your arrow will impact further left. And if it's right, it'll impact further right. Because it's changing your sight picture and where that arrow's going to go.

So once we've got that second axis level, one way that you could do that, if you don't have like a bow vise or a shop that you can go to, I've done it many ways where I just put the two limbs up against a wall that I've already made sure is plumb. So I take just a carpenter's square, put it up against a wall, actually near a jam or a window opening so the site can actually stick out.

Into whatever you're doing. So I'll put the the bow up against the wall I'll put the carpenters level like up against the bow make sure it's level like the left and right It's not canting one way or another so just you know might maybe because the design of the boat might allow one side to be Off a little bit. So I'll make sure if it is then I'll shim it so it's it's level and then I just look at the level on my site and

Say, okay, is this level as well? And if not, then I'll adjust it to where it's now level. Then I'll lock it down. We're good to go. It's as easy as that. You could do it just up against a wall if you want to. And honestly, that's how I do most of mine.

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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

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And that is really just kind of like, I think of it as the mythical third axis. What the third axis is going to do is it's going to make sure that that bow is level, not only on flat ground, but as we angle that bow down. So if you were to draw back and now you've got a 45 degree shot off of a ledge, which is about guaranteed in mule deer hunting.

we need to make sure that that bow is still maintaining its level. So as you move down or up, that that level is actually true to the level of the horizontal plane that you're standing on.

Now you're going to be on a slope, so that's changing a lot of things like the way that things feel, but also we just on flat ground want to make sure that shooting at an angle, that level is actually level. And to do this, we're going to be doing it by pushing the site housing away or toward the shooter, kind of like a hinge on a door.

So that's what the third axis is. You're probably like thinking like everybody else. Well, how exactly does it work? Why would it not be level if it's level? And I think the best answer comes from the movie Joe Dirt when he just meets his dad and he's like, how exactly are rainbows made? How exactly does the sunset? How exactly does the posi tract rear end on a Plymouth work?

It just does. So if you know that that just works, you're just going to be a lot better off. It doesn't really matter how it works. You go into a lot of different details of it, but it does work. So when you're leveling that third axis, it really needs to be done at full draw.

Because your grip plays a lot into that factor of how your bows torqued in a certain direction. And so I like to make sure that it's, I do the third axis always at full draw because it doesn't make any sense for me to do it when it's not at full draw because obviously it's, it's for shooting and shooting at an angle.

So there's a lot of different ways you could do this. The way that I do it, I actually have a little tool made by Hamsky and what it is, it's like once I've leveled my site on level terrain in the vice or up against the wall, then I can clip this thing on the site and it's got this bar on it. And so what I'm trying to do is make sure that my pins and everything, when I'm angled down at something that's plumb, that the level in there reads true.

So with that tool, I actually have a corner in my house that I've double checked with Carpenter Square that it is plum and it should be because I made it myself. So in that corner, I use to make sure that my axis is on. So I draw back and then that tool has like a bar with like a pin on the top and the bottom. And I level that bar in that plum line, in that crack of the corner, and then make sure that the level itself on the site

is level. Now, another way to do it would be to use like a plumb bob where you could just run a string with, I don't know, some washers or whatever tied to the bottom, nail it up on a rafter in your garage or something like that. Come to full draw and then put your, say, if you got multiple pins, put your 20-yard pin and your bottom pin on the level line and then slowly bend at the hips down to a 45 degree following that line down, keeping your 20 and your bottom pin on

that plumb line and then once you're down at that angle check the level and see if when your pins that should be level you know the line of the pins are lined up on that plumb line whether that bubble level is balanced out or not and if not then you either need to push the site away or bring it towards you depending on which side it's on you can play with that a little bit

So that's the way to do it. It sounds very confusing, but I think it's a, it's something that needs, you know, a lot of people get these sites, they say, oh, third access and nobody takes the time to adjust for it.

And honestly, in many instances, there's very few times where I haven't had an angled shot at something because the way that you sneak in the type of stocks that are probably the most successful or the type of terrain you're in, you're going to need that. And you know, Western hunting, you're shooting out at ranges from 40 to 50 or 60 yards. Sometimes even in closer ranges, those steep angles, I think it does make a difference. I know it does make a difference because it could impact left or right somewhere you don't want. So yeah,

Do that once you've got that set at full draw, then just go prove it out in the field, shooting at a target and make sure that everything's right. And you can always adjust when you're shooting. Maybe you find out when you're out there shooting, you know, if your left and right is different as you're shooting at an angle, we'll adjust that third axis level on the site and you should be good.

Now that we've got our site completely level, I think there's some special shot considerations when you're shooting on a hill. If you go out into the field, if you think about hunting scenarios, you're probably not going to be on level terrain in most Western hunting situations. I guess the only one that probably bucks that would be antelope hunting. But even then I find some just like weird angles when I'm out there. And part of it is, it's just when you're on a hill or on a slope,

It's very deceiving to understand what's level. Your body holds you up naturally and you think that, oh, this is level. But when you're trying to hold like a bow out there, it's completely different because what gravity is doing is it's pulling you in the downhill direction. Yeah.

So the unfortunate part is, let's say I've got a deer across the canyon. I've got one slope going one way and the deer's below me. So I would just think, okay, I'm going to just draw back and maybe so my slope, imagine like a slope going downhill. I'm standing on it. So obviously I'm facing downhill probably if I'm right-handed shooter and the deer's like in this little goalie coming up the other side or bedded on the other side, something like that. A shot that I've seen a thousand times.

And I go to draw back. Well, what happens is I feel like it's level, but gravity's pulling the top of that limb downhill. So what that's going to do is it's actually going to make my, now that I've got a level bow and everything, when I go to put my pin on that deer, I'm going to look and it's going to show that the bow is level.

not level. So I'm canting one direction and that's going to push my arrow away that I don't want it to go. So I try to compensate, but it's really hard at full draw. I found to actually compensate against gravity. What my go-to is for this type of shot or when I'm on a hill is before I draw back, it's way easier to fall into gravity and get level than it is to push against gravity to get level. So what I like to do is it can be a little deceiving, but I tried to like

lean into the hill or lean into the direction overcompensate in the opposite direction on my draw. So I want to be drawn, drawing back, kind of leaning back toward the hill. And then once I settle in, it's a lot easier to bring it with gravity to that level position.

By doing that, I think that you're going to find a lot more success and a lot more precision shooting at hills or downhill. And then one other consideration is when you're shooting up or downhill, you know, remember that you don't want to just move your arm down because you got to remember, as we talked about shooting, anchor is everything, consistency in that repeatable consistency. So if I just move my arm down 45 degrees, but keep everything the same,

Well, my anchor point's not going to be the same. I'm not going to be looking through my peep the same, and it's going to be a little bit off. So what I like to do is I like to bend at the hips. I know some people like way over exaggerate this, but you know, I want to make sure all I'm doing is keeping my same form and then bending with the shot. So nothing changes in my form because I'm shooting up or downhill. And that's key to making those good shots.

The next advanced consideration is going to be wind. And all these things really have to do with the level of the bow as well. So you think about wind. Wind can affect your arrow in so many ways. Mostly it's going to be affected in a left or right movement. There's very few times that I've stocked something and there hasn't been wind. Where I practice, where I shoot a lot, it's always windy. Where I hunt a lot is always windy.

You know, the ideal would be the wind in your face. And there are ways to compensate for that, but it's not necessarily as drastic as the left or right winds. But you will encounter a lot of crosswind in practice shooting at 3D targets, 3D ranges, whatever. But in hunting situations, you're going to encounter it a lot.

And understanding how your arrow flies in the wind and how to compensate for it is huge. So there's two ways that you can do it. And there's two ways that I do it. The first is just holding off. So let's say you've got a deer facing left.

He's bedded into the wind or standing into the wind. And, um, you let's say it's like a 10 mile an hour wind. So you can just hold off. So if he's facing into the wind, I put it a little more forward on his shoulder, release the arrow and hope that the wind pushes my arrow into the vitals. Now, another way to do it. And one way that I use a lot is what people call bubbling or like just can't in the direction that I want the arrow to go. So

I can use my bubble in the level as a gauge. So it's a little bit more precise and then I can aim at the exact spot that I want to hit. So what I'll do is like, let's say the wind's coming from my left. You just can't the bow. So you put the top riser of the boat into the wind. What that's going to do is that's actually going to push my shot. So if I'm canting the bow left, it's actually going to push the arrow left. How? I don't know. It just makes no sense, but it really works. And the further out you go,

the more drastic that is. So I can use the level, my bubble level. So I'll tip it left so that I'll push that bubble to the right side of that line. And I can gauge how much my arrow is going to go left by seeing how much that bubble is moved over to one side. So I can just go drastic full as much as I can, or I can kind of go just a little bit if it's a light breeze or whatever. And then that allows me to aim on one particular spot and hit that spot.

It involves a lot of practice, but I like using canting the bow left or right to adjust for the wind because I can actually practice that without wind, which is really cool because you can go out, go out to 40 yards, try this, shoot one perfectly level at the center, then aim at that same arrow, but go drastic with your, with your bow, like tip the top of the riser right

real hard, take a shot, then do it left real hard and see where the bubble is and see how much it moves. So, you know, if I go all the way, it's about for me to,

eight inches with my setup, you know, 40, 30 yards or whatever, which is actually found is pretty good for a fairly stiff wind. So I can kind of hold in the right spot. I can camp the bow into the wind and then I can hit where I'm aiming. There are times where I will choose to use the method where I just hold on one side or the other. So a good way to figure that out is shoot in the wind and

shoot it at target aim at the center see how much it drifted over then just hold the opposite direction into the wind shoot it's good to understand that as well as canting the bow because you need to understand how much the wind is going to push your arrow and by doing that you're going to be a lot lot more successful so now let's jump to the last one and the one that really got me this last week and that's noise this is something you can do at home and throughout your practice

or throughout while you're practicing, understanding where different noises are coming from. And you want to do this by kind of getting your hunting set up, set up. So like I said, you know, I normally use fixed blades, but I decided to try some mechanical broadheads and they, I actually couldn't stick them in my quiver fully. So they were in there kind of shaking around, rattling around, um,

You know, that's something that I knew about, but I didn't necessarily think would be as big of a deal until I took it into the field and was like, okay, things are actually a lot louder now.

than I was expecting. I'm a big fan of, I don't even know what they call it. It's like moleskin, you know, stuff you put over like a blister or whatever. They've got it for bows. It's just sound dampening tape. It's like fuzzy tape. I know it's super old school, but I live by that stuff. I cover everything I can in it. I cover my stabilizer in it. I try to find things like where my dropway rest drops down. I'll put some of that felt stuff. I put it all along the riser on the shelf where...

The arrow might rest when I'm sneaking around. Just anything to take a little bit of a ting out. I put it around any kind of moving part. Well, not like a mechanical moving part that will affect the operation, but something that might...

release sound. And I found that it does dampen the noise a lot. There's other things you could do. It's kind of old school and I do it for my traditional gears, like string dampeners, like these little, I don't know, whisker looking things on guys bows or like a tuft of beaver. I actually used to use that a lot, like a, like a ball of like beaver hair, different stuff on the string to kind of silence the string.

For most bows, there are like these rubber string silencers. Some bows come with them now. Actually, a lot of bows come with some kind of thing to help dampen the noise. But it's one thing that you definitely want to consider and try to do it before you get out in the field as you're practicing. If something seems loud and it's hard to say, well, what's loud? I mean, I've got one bow that I kind of thought was loud and yet I've never had anything jump with it. So it's just a certain frequency that they were okay with.

Um, but generally what I like to do is go through my gear as things, the things that I know will make noise. I start to tape over and even make some personal adjustments on stuff. I know there's some drop away rest that I've just taken the bottom or the top kind of like cage, if you will, out of there, because it's like, it doesn't necessarily affect the function of it. Maybe protects it a little bit, but yeah.

But, you know, when the drop weight drops and hits something, then I like try to prevent that. Or I like to put this noise dampening tape around a lot of different parts that might emit sound at some point. So that's something really good to consider because one, I would say if I'm thinking about it, 90%.

percent of the times that I've either missed a deer or didn't hit exactly where I wanted is because the animal jumped the string. And maybe later on in a future podcast, we should really talk about anticipating the jump and some of the strategy behind knowing where to aim and when to aim off and things like that. But most of that comes from, you know, if you sneak in, everything is unnoticed and

the animal hearing that sound and then reacting to that arrow coming their way. It doesn't matter how fast your bow is at considerable distance, at some distance, they can definitely move enough to make your shot a good shot, a bad shot. And that's really nothing you can control, but it is things you control by quieting down your setup and making sure that everything that might make a loud noise or a noise that sends the animal running can be dampened to where they don't notice it, or they don't make as big of a reaction as fast.

I just want to thank everybody again for listening and all the great feedback. So many people pumped on this kind of format of just kind of breaking down what you need to get ready for archery, especially early in the season. I think now's the perfect time to get started. There's a lot of people thinking about it. There's a lot of people that have been bow hunters their whole life. I hope some of this stuff, maybe these are things that you haven't considered in the past and will start to kind of think about and consider. I try to talk to the guy that's been

hunting his whole life and the guy that's brand new. So try to find some of the common ground things that we all need to know. And those little advanced tactics that just make you better over time.

Don't forget to send in your questions, please, at RemyWarren on Instagram. And if you have Instagram or whatever, feel free to follow me over there. It's a great way to interact with each other and get those questions. I'm going through there here pretty soon, so make sure you send those, and maybe they'll be for future episodes or whatever. But send in your questions, please.

This is, I mean, we're concluding our bow stuff. So we're going to go into the Q&A next week. And then I've got some cool stuff planned as far as next month. I kind of like the format that I've been doing and I got a lot of great feedback. So one of the ideas that I'm tossing around is just kind of like this gearing up idea, as well as getting ready for all the application stuff. So we're going to be doing a lot of that afterwards.

just planning for hunt kind of content, but also some of the, some of the things that you can get, some of the things that you can get into, uh, some fitness stuff in the future, a lot of cool stuff in the pipe. And I thank you guys all for, you know, just sending me messages and ideas and things that you want to hear, because I, I say it every time pretty much, but I really do want to tailor this toward the things that you guys want to learn and the things that I think will make everybody better hunters out there this coming fall season.

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