Getting the Gear Dialed In

The past few weeks this blog hasn’t been super active. I’ve been mainly getting ready for hunting season. Every morning and evening, I’ve been practicing with the bow to rebuild my shoulder strength. Diet and Sleep have been pretty wholesome.

One goal since coming back to the city was finding other hunters to partner up with and learn from. I joined a few of the New York State Hunting Forums and did some networking. I created a small online club for beginner/intermediate hunters in New York City to coordinate hunting treks. When I set the group up, I didn’t want it to be all total novices, because then I felt like it’d be “the blind leading the blind.” Yet I didn’t want some folks so experienced that they would be averse to going out with new hunters like me.

Last Friday was important, as I got to put faces to three of the hunters I’ve gotten to know on the internet. All of them are like me in that they’ve been hunting a few times, but they are still new to certain aspects, weapons, or species. In a sense I felt like we had complementary skill sets. I, for example, can give great advice on rifle selection, scopes, ammo, etc, but ask me to track a deer and good luck. One guy lives in the Bronx, and knows the public hunting spots within an hour of NYC. That’s invaluable.

After meeting and getting a feel for these guys, we decided to go out this weekend.

Today we went to a local public shooting range to zero our arms and test our gear.

First, we started on the rifle line and I confirmed zero:

Then we moved over to the Known Distance (KD) bow range. There I got to fire my bow at 10, 20, and 30 yards for the first time. Practicing at 15′, I really didn’t adjust the bow at all, so I just knew that the bow hit “low and right” and could mentally adjust. Out on the KD range however, I learned the features of my Spot Hogg Hunter sight.

The sight is trick. Each pin can be manually adjusted or the entire sight can be adjusted with two allen keys. After figuring out how it worked, I got the 10, 20, and 30 yard pins sighted dead on. The pins required some adjusting from the prior owner because we reduced the draw weight by 12 pounds, so the velocity was correspondingly lower. Also, I learned that the sight is electronic, It’s got a rotary switch that controls the light output of an LED in case there isn’t enough ambient light to light up the fiber optic pin dots.

My group sizes, while nothing to brag about, would have been clean and ethical shots on a broadside whitetail shot. I didn’t shoot beyond 30 yd as that’s the limit of what I’d do at my skill level.

I also tried out my “affordable” Simmons LRF600:

Intended to hold me over until I can afford a pair of Bushnell ARC 1600’s, the Simmons will be great for ranging Bow targets.

Time to turn in. Tomorrow is Archery-Only Whitetail.

TheNouveauJäger