Indholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2019 i Petersen's Bowhunting

Imagine you’re standing high on a Montana mountaintop, with the September sun warming your shoulders and a gentle breeze in your face. It’s day five of your seven-day, DIY, backcountry elk hunt, and your tag is burning a hole in your pocket. You planned all year for this adventure, and now, with time becoming the enemy, the clock ticks just a bit louder with every passing hour. Suddenly, while scanning the valley below through your binoculars, you spot a few brown specks of movement. Quickly retrieving your spotting scope and tripod from your pack, you confirm your suspicions. There, in a meadow about a mile away, is a small herd of elk, including an impressive, 6x6 herd bull! Quickly stuffing your scope back into your pack and shouldering its load,…

In my feature for this issue (Frosty Morning Magic, p. 28), I discuss the best places to spend your mornings during the rut. We all know that success comes from being in the right place at the right time. The feature is all about the right place; here, I want to dive into the right time. There are two ways to look at the rut, depending on what kind of buck you are trying to shoot. If you are just trying to kill a buck, the entire rut is good. Every day, there are some bucks on the move looking for does. Any traditional rut spot will work — funnels in general, but more specifically, those funnels near food in the evenings and doe bedding areas in the mornings. However,…

Xpedition Archery may be relatively new to the archery industry, but it is far from green when it comes to engineering and manufacturing. The founders of the company married their passion for bowhunting with the expertise they gained from nearly 50 years of technological and manufacturing experience in the aerospace industry. Xpedition has impressed me with its bows as a result, so I expected good things from the Mako X. The Mako X is built on a Dual Plane X Bridge riser designed to add strength and reduce vibration without weight. Acting as the rig’s engine is a pair of XS-M hybrid cams, which join forces with highly pre-loaded split limbs to generate some of the highest advertised IBO ratings in the industry. An axle-to-axle length of just over 33…

This might be the biggest debate related to morning hunts. I have tried just about everything, but I now start walking when I can just barely see the ground rather than heading out in the dark. Then, without a flashlight, I take off at a fast walk. Because I can see most of the limbs, I can zip through the woods quickly and quietly. Deer and other animals tend to move more at this time than they do in full darkness, too, so there is generally more overall activity in the woods, reducing the likelihood of my approach being noticed. Depending on the length of your walk, you can use this method and still get settled into your stand before legal shooting light. As a side note, deer don’t generally…

The Five Stages — Take Down Big Bucks Arrows and broadheads must do five things to bring down game: turn kinetic energy into lethal momentum, improve flight accuracy/trajectory, maximize penetration, produce internal/controlled expansion and create a fatal wound channel. Slash INsetBlade Arrows do all of this via their weighted outserts, which house two expandable blades. These blades, in addition to the 3-blade fixed broadheads included with the arrows, produce a wound channel 275 percent larger than those of Slash’s competitors, all while increasing FOC and penetration. Slash Arrows come three to a pack (one is for practice) and sport 2-inch Blazer vanes. MSRP: $59.99 Contact: Slash INsetBlade Arrows, 713-444-0788; slasharrows.com Eyes on the Prize Featuring LightWave DSP technology, Sig’s Kilo 3000 BDX 10x42mm range-finding binoculars are able to range deer…

As a bowhunter, scouting intelligence doesn’t get any better than in-season trail-camera pictures delivered in real time via cellular technology. Confirmation that you’re hunting the right area, at the right time, doesn’t come in a better form than a shooter buck that has no idea his picture was just taken! Snapshots of mature bucks in August are encouraging; however, the odds of centering that buck in your peep sight come October are frighteningly low. That’s why maximizing the number of cameras you have afield during the season — and maximizing your use of the insights they offer — is so critical. As a deer manager, the explosion of cellular trail-camera technology that we have seen in recent years has had a greater impact on my work than any other tool.…

In the last three issues, I discussed four of the 10 features I consider mandatory for the ultimate Western bow-hunting sight: fiber-optic pins, bubble levels, fixed pins and a “floater” pin. We’ll go over each of the remaining features in depth and then discuss how to maximize your personal sight’s effectiveness. Repeatability Repeatability is an adjustable sight’s ability to come back to the exact same position after being moved. In other words, repeatability is the sight’s inherent accuracy. Two things come into play here. First, the lack of “play” in the sight — you should not be able to wiggle any of the sight’s components once it is locked down. For example, when I was shooting 3-D tournaments years ago, our bows had a tremendous amount of vibration because we…

Manufacturer: Xpedition Archery, 844-263-3665; xpeditionarchery.com Model: Mako X Riser: Aluminum, reflex, Dual Plane X Bridge Grip: Torqueless, wood sideplates Limbs: Pre-loaded, split limb Draw Weights: 40, 50, 60, 65 and 70 pounds peak Cam System: XS-M hybrid Letoff: 80 percent (adjustable with draw stops); 83.85 percent (as tested) Draw Lengths: 24 1/2–30 inches, in half-inch increments; modular String: GAS, 59.625 inches Cables (x2): GAS, 34.56 inches (Y), 38.25 inches (C) Brace Height: 5 inches Axle-to-Axle Length: 33.31 inches Weight: 3.9 pounds (advertised); 4.1 pounds (as tested) Finish: Realtree Edge, Badlands Approach FX, Molten Black, Tactical Sand, Ops Green Advertised IBO Speed: 364 fps Suggested Retail Price: $1,099 Comments: Top speed and a good shooting experience!…

There are times in life when something amazing happens, the kind of amazing that puts a smile on your face nothing can erase. For me, Nov. 19, 2018, was one of those times. I had two jaw-dropping photos of a buck from two of my trail cameras that October, both taken at separate times of the month. I even printed them out and hung them in my hunting room for motivation — I just couldn’t believe a buck like that was roaming around in my area. Those photos produced many sleepless nights for me, as I couldn’t stop thinking about the buck long enough to fall asleep and really dream. A plan soon formed: I would save my Ohio buck tag for the big whitetail, as well as my money…

In the late ’80s, I was coming into my own as an elk bowhunter. I had spent many years in Colorado learning the ropes, and I was consistently taking good bulls. Seeking to expand my horizons, I set my sights on the relatively obscure country of southwestern New Mexico — the Gila. My first outing to this new-to-me habitat instantly had me wondering what I had gotten myself into. The country bore no resemblance to the rugged, alpine country of Colorado I was so accustomed to. This mid-elevation, dry, warm environment was going to stretch my learning curve much wider, but that was OK. I had heard that the big ones lived here, and I was determined to find out whether such rumors were true. My hunting area was deep,…

If you’ve read any of my previous columns, you know how important I believe a solid anchor to be. I have always taught a three-way anchor system: release-to-hand, hand-to-face and face-to-string. If I had to say which one of these is most important, I would say face-to-string contact. How consistently you anchor the string to your face determines how consistently you center the peep with the sight,as well as the left and right position of the string when at full draw. These will greatly affect your arrow’s downrange impact point. So, I like to “micro-anchor” my string to my face. Some people touch the string to their cheek or the side of their nose, but for me, there’s never been an adequate way to make sure I had the string…

I settled into my ground blind and checked my watch: 15 minutes till legal shooting time on opening day of bow season. I began methodically pulling gear from my pack and arranging it conveniently around me: grunt call, rangefinder, tripod, etc. I removed the quiver from my crossbow, then I reached into the pack for my rope cocker. That was when the first pangs of panic hit. Within seconds, the contents of my pack were all on the ground — no rope cocker! More frantic fumbling through pants and jacket pockets produced similarly unsatisfactory results. The day, and the season, was off to an inauspicious start. Deer hunters carry a lot of gear into the woods, much of it somewhat superfluous. However, even among the items that aren’t entirely necessary…

Hypodermic NC: Another Devastating Design from Rage In the business world, it is often said that climbing to the top is hard, but staying on top is harder. After all, being a market leader puts a target on your back, and even the most successful organizations must constantly adapt to stay ahead of the competition. Few companies in the bowhunting industry can boast a track record of success that rivals Rage, a brand that has dominated the mechanical broadhead market for more than a decade. Based on the devastating results my friend and I enjoyed while using the all-new Rage Hypodermic NC (No Collar) on our recent Montana pronghorn hunt, I feel confident the brand’s popularity will continue for the foreseeable future. In many ways, the Hypodermic NC represents the…