Growing up, I focused on sports. I spent more time on a field, in a weight room, or in a gym than anywhere else. My summers went to sports camps and working with high-level football coaches.
Once I walked away from competitive athletics, I dove headfirst into professional archery. My skills grew fast. I carried many of those learned regimens with me to the archery field.
As I progressed as a pro archer, I saw how my practice dramatically helped my hunting. Drills like one-shot counts, need for speed, playing the wind, filling your gaps, and knowing your range all came into play when I suited up in camo, and I started filling all my tags. In this post, I want to share some great backyard drills that’ll bring you bowhunting success.
One Shot Wonder
What I loved about shooting professional 3D archery was learning the importance of one arrow. It’s not like target archery where you shoot groups of three to six arrows at the same target all the time. The 3D game was all about ONE arrow and ONE target.
That’s relevant in the hunting world for multiple reasons. When you’re shooting a single shot and then scoring that arrow, you learn fast whether you seized the moment or messed up bad. If you have multiple arrows in the targets, your brain wants to focus on all the good shots and ignore the one or two that missed.
If those misses were one of your first shots in the hunting woods, you’d have blown your opportunity.
A great drill is to get in the habit of shooting one arrow at each distance of your pins, almost like a walk-back drill. If you have a four-arrow quiver, focus intently and shoot one at 20, then one at 30, then 40, and finally at 50. Next round, do the same in reverse order.
If you have multiple targets, stand in one place for this drill and pick your target for one shot. Then range your next target and make one single shot on it. You don’t need a 3D target for this drill; any target works.
The big factor is slowing down enough to make one shot count. Focus on the details of the shot, use your rangefinder to know the yardage, and pick a specific spot to aim at.
Avoid treating this as repetition practice. This drill is totally focused on being a one-shot wonder.
To take this a step further, do this at first light before you’ve had your coffee or fully woken up. This helps you rehearse cold bore archery training. Making a few shots without a warmup mirrors what it’s like on a hunt.
This is a drill you can do in the yard even if you don’t have time to fully practice. Wake up, wait for first light, and do one round with only the arrows in your quiver. When you can go 100% vital shots without a warmup, you’re hunt ready.
Need for Speed
One of my favorite times of year to hunt is late August through September. I love this stretch of the season; it’s when I’m out chasing mule deer, elk, or pronghorn. Most of this hunting is on foot, and I’ve learned time and again that there’s a need for speed.
When I say “speed,” I’m in no way referring to rushing the shot or making a fast shot. It’s the opposite. This is about learning to hurry up, then recover quickly so you can make a smooth killing shot before you miss your chance.
In hunting situations, we’re often in a hurry or running to a certain spot, and then BAM, there’s the buck presenting a shot. The window to act closes fast. If you aren’t prepared, you’re going to fail to make the shot, or worse, rush it and get a poor result.
In field competition, I learned the importance of this drill; many times we shot in steep mountainous terrain. My heart was pounding out of my chest from climbing hills, and most scores would fall. Then I started working on drills that helped me condition myself to lower my heart rate faster, which had an immediate effect on accuracy.
A drill I started was to pick up the pace when going to retrieve my arrows and return to the shooting line. I’d often jog to and from targets. (Have your arrows safely stowed beforehand.)
The goal is to have a pace that gets your heart beating and recreates a hunting scenario. Once I returned to the shooting line, I’d load an arrow and focus on deep, slow breaths to slow down that heart rate. In through the nose and out through the mouth.
Breathing is directly related to heart rate, and heart rate is directly related to the control you have on your bow.
For this drill, make haste to and from the target and make your shots with intent on control and execution. This is a great drill to combine with the One Shot Wonder technique. Your goal is to get faster to and from the target and shorten the amount of recovery time needed to make good shots.
Playing the Wind
The biggest factor affecting all archers is the wind. Wind is a powerful element, and an arrow is greatly manipulated by it. Lots of factors influence how much or how little the wind will affect your arrow.
In hunting, the moment of truth isn’t going to wait for the wind, especially for western hunters in open country. Your success as a hunter will be determined at some point by your ability to shoot properly in the wind.
In 2004, I was at a tournament qualifying for a US team, shooting at 70 meters (77 yards). On the first day, the wind gusts got so bad that another target with arrows still in it came rolling past my sight pin and then rolled off the range. I let my bow down and waited for the four archers chasing their target to go by.
I shook my head, regrouped, and made my shot. A day later, I won a gold medal. I had learned to shoot as best as possible in windy conditions, and that only comes from practicing archery in the wind.
Your success hunting in the wind will increase tenfold if you learn these tips. Find a spot to practice where you’re protected from the wind so you can make good shots and not feel anxious from gusts blowing all around the target.
The takeaway from this drill is learning how much wind affects your arrow without it making you want to punch your trigger. Here at my house, I have a little corner with my fence where I’m protected from the wind. Once my arrow passes three feet from me, it’s in the wind.
An arrow will drift in the same direction you lean or “cant” your top limb. Your sight bubble is your guide on how much you’re leaning your bow. Many people miss on a calm day to the left or right with their bubble off center.
Your bubble matters. Knowing your bubble correction can only help on a windy day if you practice with it first.
Here’s what I do at home. I take my bow outside on a perfectly calm day and shoot groups, canting my bow using a quarter bubble to even a full bubble. Then I write down or take a mental note of how far the impact lands off center at each distance depending on how much bubble is leaning out of level.
A full bubble at 20 yards will drift less than a full bubble at 40 yards. Writing them down is best so you have a reference.
From there, practice in the wind behind your wind barrier, using what you learned during the calm day to lean your bubble. If the wind is light and consistent, you’ll find that a quarter to half of the bubble out of center gets you in the middle.
The amount of drift changes for each person’s bow setup, so do your homework. Heavier, smaller-diameter arrows will drift less than a lighter or fatter-diameter arrow. The type of broadhead you use affects drift, too.
Mechanical heads have much less drift than a fixed blade. The bigger the blades, the more surface area gets grabbed by the wind.
Blade surface area is why I prefer 100-grain heads over a 125-grain. That’s why I like our heavier inserts we sell with our arrows as a standard practice. I boost the front weight in my arrow with heavy inserts but use the smaller, compact broadhead.
I shot a great black bear on a spot-and-stalk with high winds. I had to use my bubble to compensate and still made a great hit.
Filling Your Gaps
One neglected practice for bowhunters is learning to fill your sight pin gaps. Most hunters practice at even distances like 20, 30, 40, 50. How often do you learn how to hold your pins at 36, 44, or 53?
Success as a hunter comes from knowing your gear. Regardless of whether you’re shooting a single-pin movable sight or a multiple fixed-pin sight, know your gaps.
As a baseball player, I was constantly drilled on hitting in the gaps. My diversity as a batter improved when I could hit anywhere, not at one fixed range.
As a hunter and pro archer, I’ve learned more about how my bow shoots by trying it at distances that aren’t round numbers. You’ll learn a lot about ballistics, drop, and rise by shooting at the gap distances.
I rarely have an animal stand perfectly at a specific distance long enough to perfectly range it and perfectly set my sight. I’m successful in the field with my two-pin bow sight setup and knowing where to hold on the fly to make the arrow hit the mark, even if that animal shifts positions by several yards.
A great practice technique is to shoot at odd distances. For example, if you’re shooting at 36 yards, try making some shots with your 30-yard pin held high. Then try some shots with your 40-yard pin held low.
Try some shots focusing on your spot through the gap between the two pins. See what’s easiest and most accurate for YOU. Everyone’s different, and one of those three gapping methods will suit you better.
With this drill, you’ll learn a lot about your arrow drop and start to compensate on the fly. You’ll know how to make a 30-yard shot even when you have a single pin set at 20 yards. This drill is most effective if you can practice it on a 3D target similar in size to game animals.
The Range Game
When I was being recruited for football, I had to prove my abilities to the scouts. One was throwing balls at random distances with perfect accuracy. Learning to estimate distance is an absolute for a hunter.
When you hone your ranging skills and combine them with your ability to fill the gaps, you’re practically a bowhunting ninja. I’ve tried countless ways of practicing range estimation. The method that works the best is a “confirmation” method.
Always keep a laser rangefinder with you to confirm the true distance immediately after you take your best guess. Always estimate the target before you range it. If you made a huge mistake, use your rangefinder to see where you were off.
Maybe you thought a bush or indention in the ground was 30 yards, but it was actually 38. At that point, range until you find where the 30-yard point actually sits. Over time, this calibrates your brain to be better at judging distances.
Back when I shot professional 3D archery, my score and paycheck were almost always determined by how well I judged the distances to the targets. I practiced judging targets as much as I shot at them. Each and every shot, I’d step to a slightly new spot in my yard and take my best guess at the distance.
Then I’d use the rangefinder to confirm whether I was right or wrong. With time, your mind’s eye starts to calibrate distance the same as your rangefinder, but this is a drill I did as much as I shot.
How often do you use your rangefinder or guess yardage during practice? Unless you’re a 3D shooter, I doubt you do it often.
As hunters, we’ve become dependent on rangefinders and wouldn’t be accurate without them. They’re amazing tools, but don’t make them a crutch.
Learning to judge distance works differently for most people. Some are good at knowing depth and guess a total number.
Some people are better at finding a 20-yard reference and then guessing past that. Others like to find a halfway point between them and the target and guess the distance to that.
I’ve always done best guessing in 10-yard increments to get me close and then guessing on the small numbers at the end. I’m sure it’s from looking at first and 10 so many times on a football field before I started shooting professionally, and it’s stuck with me.
Find what works for you and take your best guess, then confirm the distance. If you made a serious mistake on the estimation, use your rangefinder to find the spot where you were fooled.
I’m a Target Archer to Be a Better Bowhunter
Thirty years ago, I started hunting with a bow. It was addictive. Then I started competing as a professional as a way to become the most efficient hunter I could be.
I learned fast that my practice ethics as a ball player, and drilling in practice what I need to rely on when it’s game time, carried over directly. My drills prepared me correctly as a competitive archer, the same way they prepared me for becoming a better bowhunter.
I saw immediate results in the field once I suited up in camo. If you want a cool head as a hunter, implement these drills into your backyard practice. They’ll boost your success in the field.
