Pennsylvania Game News - January 2013 - 57

MANY PARTS of the state have shooting leagues that bring archers together to improve their shooting skills.

aiming ability, and you’ll be susceptible to pushing or pulling arrows ofﬂine. Shoot both and perfect all your aiming skills. Back Up Kaufhold has seen plenty of bowhunters who tend to torque their bows just a tad the instant they release an arrow. Shooting at a target 20 yards away with a bow that slings arrows at more than 300 feet per second, that little twitch isn’t always detectable. “Back up to 50 yards and every mistake is magniﬁed,” Kaufhold said. “If you’re used to shooting at 20 and 30 yards, back up to 50 or 60 in the offseason. You’ll ﬁnd out real quick if you’re doing something wrong.” The math is simple. Pull an arrow one inch to the left at 20 yards and that drift away from the bullseye is going to grow the farther the arrow travels. “Long distance shooting really helps you tighten your form,” Morgan said. “You can get away with some stuff at 20 yards, but to consistently hit the bull at 60 yards, you have to be pretty tight. Become proﬁcient at hitting the bullseye at 60 yards and a 20-yard shot will feel like a gimme,” Kaufhold added. “The conﬁdence you’ll gain at making that 20-yard shot — which is a typical, real-life hunting shot — will be through the roof,” he said. And if you have to take a long-distance, follow-up shot at a deer, you’ll be prepared for it. Kaufhold doesn’t recommend bowhunters take a ﬁrst shot at a deer more than 40 yards away, but once a deer is hit, the only thing that matters is ﬁnishing the job. “I’m a ﬁrm believer that if you can get a second arrow into an animal you’ve already hit, do it,” he said. “If you hit a deer at 15 yards and it runs out to 60 and stops and you have a clear shooting lane, put another one in him. You’re helping yourself recover that animal. And if you regularly practice

at 60 yards, you’ll at least have some conﬁdence in making that shot.” Aim Small, Miss Small Often when he’s preparing to shoot at a deer, something will catch Kaufhold’s eye in the vital heart-lung area that he will key in on as his aiming point. It might be a tuft of rufﬂed or differently-colored hair. It might be a shadow. He likes having a small target to bear down on because, as Mel Gibson’s character in the movie “The Patriot” told his sons before they ambushed an English military convoy, “aim small, miss small.” “The vital area on a deer is roughly the size of a standard, 9-inch paper plate,” Kaufhold said. “I don’t want to just hit the plate anywhere. I want to hit one exact spot on the plate. If I aim to do that and I’m off by an inch, I’m still on the plate and I’m going to kill the deer.” Take a series of pie plates and draw circles of varying sizes in the center, ranging from one as big around as the top of a soda can to one the size of a 50-cent piece. As you become proﬁcient shooting at the larger circles, switch plates to increasingly smaller ones to tighten your grouping. For added difﬁculty, move back from 20 to 30 yards, then 30 to 40 yards and so on. Kaufhold warned not to shoot solely at bullseyes or you could develop target panic and/or become dependent on having a circle-shaped aiming point. “On a live deer, you might have to aim at a line or something that has no real shape at all,”

Pennsylvania Game News - January 2013

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