Know your distance
I learned a valuable lesson this weekend. Mark off your distances and know them well. I had a coyote walk right under my stand. He caught me off guard eating a sandwich. He looked straight up at me and I didn’t move. He slowly started walking away which gave me enough time to lay the sandwich in my lap, grab my bow and aim.
He stopped and turned broadside giving me a perfect target. I judged him at thirty yards or less, steadied my aim and missed!!
Of course he ran off. I shot just over his shoulder. I could not believe I missed him. When I climbed down and walked over to get my arrow. I turned back to look at the tree I shot out of and judged the distance to be around twenty yards at most.
I couldn’t believe being up in the air between fifteen to twenty feet made the shot look that much farther.
The lesson I learned is before I head up a random tree, mark off a few places for distance before I climb. I was completely honked off that I missed such an easy shot. As mad as I was at myself I realized that I learned a lesson the easy way. That could have been a nice buck.