Ready or Not

[jighed]

I am new to archery and have decided, along w/my son, to shoot instinctive. He has a recurve, mine is in the mail. I have been shooting everyday for 3 weeks, split finger out to 20 yards. I can pick the target or spot on the bag and get fairly close to it. But, thats a bag target and I know if I miss my spot no harm done, miss the bag, just go pickup the arrow. Make a bad shot on a deer...
I can tell already that I will have to be very mentally prepared to trust my instincts when the time comes.
How do you know when your instinctive shooting is reliable enough to take a deer?  My plan is to make my first archery season hunt this October.

[jighed]

I know my 3 wks of shooting is minimal compared to most of you who have shooting 10,20,30... years. I know I need A LOT of practice, just letting you know my experience level.

Be careful out there

[McDave]

There's only two things it takes to be a good instinctive archer: good form and lots of shooting at all the distances you plan to hunt.

Good form comes first; it doesn't do you any good to shoot a lot of arrows with bad form.  To develop good form, you might need some help from someone who knows what good form is.  Then again, maybe you can develop it on your own.  I read and reread Fred Asbell's books on instinctive archery and looked at his videos, and tried to do everything exactly as he said.  Still, I had no way of knowing if I had good form, and wondered if I did, until I attended one of his shooting clinics.  After observing my shooting over the course of the clinic, he pronounced my form "good," and that pronouncement, as much as anything else, relieved a lot of my doubts, and let me focus more on my shooting and less on whether I had good form.  The clinic helped, but most of what I learned came from his books and videos.

My belief is that an instinctive archer needs to shoot a lot of arrows, every day if possible.  It is easy to know when you're good enough to hunt: when you can consistently place a group of 3-4 arrows into a 6" pie plate at the distance you plan to hunt.  Some folks don't like that rule, so I'll try a different one: when you can walk outside first thing in the morning and consistently place your very first arrow into that same pie plate.  Take your pick.  Shoot at animal targets.  Shoot a lot.

Be aware that none of us are perfect.  If hunters were limited to those who could do what I said above 100 out of 100 times, very few people could hunt.  Other things, such as excitement, buck fever, being in strange terrain, sleeping on the ground, etc. could cause you to miss.  Good hunters also miss.  Rifle hunters miss.  For the sake of your own conscience, just don't have that be because you took a shot outside of your proven range.  We hate it when we don't get a clean kill, but it happens.  We have a duty to track any game we might wound until there is no reasonable chance of recovering it.  That's also part of hunting, and if the thought of that bothers you too much, maybe you shouldn't hunt.

[Al Snow]

Hard to say.  I guess the nearest answer is "you'll just know."  But truthfully, you simply won't know until you shoot at the first deer.

Something that will help a LOT, though, is to hunt small game first.  Squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, whatever.  Use the equipment you intend to hunt deer with:  broadheads, the works.

By October, if you practice enough and do some small game hunting in early fall, you should be ready.

Your first couple of shots at deer, wait until they're well within your comfort range.  A lot of deer have been taken at 5-10 yds.