It is my belief that many hunters do not even think about their pins when a large buck is in front of them. They just point and shoot. The more pins, the less likely they' ll pick the right one.

I think it' s best when you don' t have to think too much. If you need to concentrate on your anchor, your grip, your left elbow, the distance to the target, or almost anything else under the pressure of having a big buck within range, you' ll probably find out that you tend to forget it all. I believe it' s best to have as much as possible ingrained so deeply that your decisions become instinctive, and not something you have to think about.

On my bow, I set my one pin at 23 yards. It will shoot a couple inches high at 15 and a couple inches low at 30. If I aim for the center of the kill zone, I' m likely to make a killing shot no matter how screwed up my decision making gets with the deer in front of me. I would never take a shot past 30 yards, so this pin placement works very well.

When I target shoot or shoot 3D, I still use only the one pin. I use these contests to hone my hunting skills and not to win some tournament, therefore my setup remains exactly as it would while hunting with the exception of the fieldtips. I shoot in a league during the winter to keep sharp. I shoot with the same 5 guys each week and we all shoot hunting setups. Everyone of us uses one pin, hunting weight arrows, high draw weights, short bows (we hunt out of tree stands almost exclusively) and hunting releases. This is great practice for developing a repeatable shot without having to think about it.