Pennsylvania Game News - September 2017 - 57

determined bowhunters visit.
And although I spent many years
hunting the hard-to-reach wilds of Fulton
and Huntington counties for big boys, the
biggest bucks I've ever glimpsed were
around home, in the Philadelphia suburbs of Chester and Delaware counties.
It's where they have adapted to human
progress, hanging out in small woodlots
surrounded by housing developments
and shielded by safety zones that rule out
any use of ﬁrearms, but not archery gear.
So I don't head for upstate mountains
in quest of wall-hangers anymore. My
odds are better sitting in my backyard
tree stand.
Drop-away rests are superior to brush rests. Maybe
for competitive archery, at
the highest levels, dropaway rests make for smoother, cleaner
releases. But I use a brush rest because
it keeps the arrow glued to the rest under
almost any circumstance and the brush
has had minimal effect on my arrow
ﬂight as the vanes slide through it.
Shorter, lighter bows
are just as efficient as
longer, heavier ones. With
advanced technology and
featherweight components, modern
compound bows have become shorter
and lighter than ever. My current carbon
compound is just 28 inches axle-toaxle and weighs about 3½ pounds. It's
a dream to shoot, handy to carry, and
super-maneuverable in a tree stand. But
while it's plenty efﬁcient and reliable for
all of my hunting needs, it's not going
to outperform longer, heavier bows of
equal quality. At shorter distances, the
advantage of a heavier, longer bow might
be negligible. But at longer distances, the
SEPTEMBER 2017

longer bow wins hands down. It provides
a more solid rest with extended axle-toaxle length that is more forgiving. It's
just basic physics.
Peep sights are critical for
shot accuracy. For competitive compound shooters, peep sights, coupled
with sight pins and kisser buttons make
for consistent, solid anchoring. But for
almost any hunting scenario, a kisser
button, coupled with a sight pin equipped
with a level to deter bow canting, is good
enough.
The occasional mischief caused by
glaring light and deep shadows can
render a peep sight useless. I discovered
this one October afternoon, and it cost
me the buck of a lifetime. I never used
a peep sight again. A kisser button, sans
peep, consistently anchors my shots and
my accuracy hasn't suffered.
The number of antler
points reflects a buck's
age. When I started bowhunting back in the early
1970s, a surprising number of older
hunters mistakenly believed the number
of points on a buck's headgear were
indicative of its age.
While a mature buck might eventually
sprout more points than it had when it
grew its ﬁrst rack and fawns born in the
spring are almost always button bucks
in the fall, a 1½-year-old buck can boast
anything from spikes to eight or more
points.
A much better gauge of a buck's age
is antler spread and antler mass, regardless of the number of points, at least up
to a point.
Nutrition and genetics also play their
roles and if a buck lives long enough,
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