http://coloradobowhunting.org/ Colorado Bowhunters Association - Blog RSS Feed 2.0 en-us Sun, 19 Apr 2026 01:14:24 GMT Sun, 19 Apr 2026 01:14:24 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/15568/Colorado-Bow-Hunter-Magazine--August-2025 blog Click Here to Read   Thu, 28 Aug 2025 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/15568/Colorado-Bow-Hunter-Magazine--August-2025 http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/15357/Bones blog What do skulls, puppies and wildlife photographers have in common? They were the ingredients for my incredible Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep hunt. I come from a family of hunting enthusiasts. I have wanted to chase a ram for as long as I can remember. My Uncles and Grandpa have their Dall sheep mounts decorating their living rooms from a trip to the Northwest Territories in the late 80's, and I can't help but fixate on those rams when I am ever in their homes. I have been like most in Colorado and applying every year for one of the coveted Bighorn Sheep tags. That is where the ingredients started coming together. In 2020 I harvested a big 6x6 bull elk late into second rifle season. A good friend of mine suggested an acquaintance of his that could do a nice European for me. That is where I met Tracy and Helen. They showed me their incredible trophies and in conversation I mentioned my desire to hunt sheep. Tracy told me how sheep are his biggest passion and if I ever drew a tag to let him know and he would help me get one. The next piece came a couple years later when we purchased a puppy for my recently retired Father-in-law from one of my wife's friends. When we went to their home to pick up the puppy, the first thing that caught my attention was a great set of Ram horns sitting in his living room. 2 hours later we were leaving and Geff asked me where I had been applying. He encouraged me to apply in unit S57, the Big Thompson canyon, and try to get one with my bow. The final ingredient for me was a long-time family friend, Fred, is a wildlife photographer that does a lot of his work in Rocky Mountain National Park and of course the sheep that fill the canyon that leads to it. I have followed his work for years and thanks to his sharing on social media, I was able to watch all the Rams he captured in the Big Thompson. This further encouraged my desire to hunt one. In April of 2024, I was on an online work meeting like any normal Tuesday morning. I was zoning out so I decided to glance at my social media. One of the groups I follow had a post mentioning that Bighorn Sheep tags were drawing. I hesitated to look at my bank account, knowing I was more than likely going to be disappointed. I decided to look anyway and I almost fainted when I saw that there was a large charge by Colorado Parks and Wildlife. I quickly logged off the call I was on and immediately called the first person that I had to tell. Tracy answered the phone on the first ring as if he was anticipating it. We immediately made plans to get a ram in December. He was along for the show. Next, I raced into the house to tell my wife and kids the news. They were excited that they would get to help me prepare and scout for my ram. Still running completely on adrenaline, I texted Geff and Fred. Geff agreed to help be the muscle on the hunt and Fred was all in to help with the scouting. I had my team put together, the expert, the muscle, the scout and the support. Fred began combing through his pictures he had taken in 2022 and 2023. We found a few that were pushing between 8 and 9-years-old. Those rams, if they made it through winter, would be our hit-list. This unit is not an expedition-type hunt. You don't horseback   into a drop camp and rough it for days at a time. Instead, these are very accessible areas, much of which are right along main tourist routes for Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. The sheep here are fairly used to the tourists and photographers stopping at pull-offs to watch them. The entire unit is within a 30-minute drive of my house, so the plan is going to day hunt the area. On July 29th, all my plans began to go up in smoke. Literally. The Alexander Mountain fire began right at the base of the Big Thompson canyon. My heart sank as the conditions fueled the blaze and it began to race up the canyon, torching all the sheep habitat in its path. I called Tracy and he was very concerned by the reports of where it was tracking. It wasn't until August 18th that the fire was finally contained 100 percent and travel was opened back up to the canyon. It looked like a warzone. The hillsides that the bighorn sheep would use to rut in the fall were torched and resembled the moon's surface. I was fearful that I would receive a call from Parks and Wildlife cancelling my hunt. I gave it a couple of weeks and reached out to their office and was relieved to hear that I was still able to pursue a ram in the unit. Rumors were swirling of wildlife that had been caught in the fire and horror stories of possible casualties in the sheep herds. Hoping for the best, I knew I was going to have to lean on my team and we were going to have to look in areas that weren't the normal target areas. September came around and the elk rut hit. Fred was busy chasing the herds around the park to capture images of the rut. Tracy was taking in heads from the archery season for euro mounts and Geff was getting his shop setup to start processing big game animals. I was training hard, hiking in the mornings, shooting my bow in the afternoon, and riding my exercise bike in the evenings. I was already double-checking my gear, making sure I had everything I could need. One morning my wife asked when I was going to start driving up and looking for sheep. They should be moving into the canyons and looking to group up. She suggested we drop our daughter off at school and take a drive. The canyon still was haunting with all the burn scars. We drove all the way to Estes Park and hadn't seen a single sheep. After a quick lunch, I decided to take the route through Glen Haven and see what was around. At this point we were just trying to find anything with fur or feathers to entertain my 4-year-old son. As we drove around a corner in the twisty canyon, my son squealed out, "SHEEP!" There, about 30 yards off the road was an absolute bruiser of a ram, dark chocolate in color, grazing away. I quickly flipped around at the next turnout and raced back to where the ram was. My uncle gave me the advice that when I saw the right ram, I would know. This was the one I knew I wanted. I know that hunting with a bow, you must be flexible on what presents an opportunity, and this ram may not even be around in 2 months when the season opens.   We took a ton of pictures and then headed for home. I called Tracy and Fred and told them both about this ram. It was still very early, and Tracy said there would be a lot of time to catalog inventory of the sheep. Fred and I planned to return up the canyon in a couple of weeks to see if the chocolate ram was around. As November was passing by, I was in the canyons at least twice a week. Most trips were my wife and I driving up after taking the kids to school. We were seeing sheep every trip that we made. The ewes began moving around in groups of 4 to 8 and then rams started trailing them. I would find the chocolate ram almost every week. He wasn't grouping up but instead staying solitary in one area. I then noticed he was losing weight rapidly. One morning Fred and I went up and were on a mission to find this ram so he could get pictures of him. We went up the canyon without seeing him and then turned around to head back. As we came back down, there he was! We pulled off and Fred began to work. He and I discussed the condition of the sheep, and it was then that we named him Bones. His horns looked massive. They were a very light brown color, especially compared to other rams we have seen. He was also much darker than any other rams. This majestic king was in his decline and would probably not make it through winter. As we headed down the canyon, we would watch for vehicles pulled over which was usually a sign of wildlife nearby. In the narrows, there was a group of cars pulled off looking up towards the top. We pulled in behind and realized one individual was a good friend of Fred's. This is where I met Julie. She and Fred had known each other for a long time and after some of the other people left, we informed her about Bones. After that, Julie became a very helpful scout and extra set of eyes on Bones. With all three of us watching him, we had eyes on Bones almost daily leading up to December 1st.   The day finally arrived. The archery ram tag for S57 goes for the entire month of December. The time and effort had been invested. I had 3 target rams that I would pursue. The plan for day 1 was to dedicate completely to Bones. We knew this ram. His favorite bedding area, where he watered, his trails between each. The team was very confident we would at least get a stalk opportunity if we found him. First daylight broke and we eased around the bottom of the slope he liked and took up glassing positions. Within the first couple of minutes, I had Bones located as he grazed down a ravine about 300 yards up. Geff and Tracy quickly setup spotting scopes to keep an eye on the ram. Fred moved further down the canyon to a different vantage point with his camera. I began my ascent in a parallel ravine to the one Bones was coming down. I had quickly determined a route that would hopefully intersect me with his path to water. As with all sheep country, the terrain is very deceiving. Rocks that from the bottom looked like basketballs were the size of a Volkswagen Beetle when I got to them. I climbed over and around obstacles to get to the point on the ridge between me and Bones. I was prepared as far as my stamina goes. I made it to the spot I wanted to ambush him in about 10 minutes. It felt like forever because of how deceptively steep the last part of the climb was. I had to traverse it on all fours to keep from losing balance and falling. Between me and the ram was a very large boulder, about 15 ft across. It was time. I had to ease around the rock to have a visual on the ram. There would only be a moment to take the shot if he was there. I knocked an arrow, paused for a couple extra breaths to calm my nerves. I took three gentle steps and was at full draw on the third step. Suddenly, 15 yards away the ram stepped into view. He was broadside, angled down to my right. The big ram caught my movement out of the corner of his eye and froze to look. That was my opportunity, and I released the Scheels Outfitters Vendetta arrow tipped with a 100 grain Montec G5 broadhead. The shot was solid. The ram turned and attempted to trot back up the draw that he came from. He moved up on the next ridge to a rock outcropping and then expired. What came next was in slow motion. The ram fell out of view off a ledge. I heard the loud crash as he landed at the bottom, about a 30-foot fall. A flash of light brown flew and went crashing below. I worked my way to where I last saw the ram. Below I could see Fred walking towards the side of the hill. Geff, Tracy and Helen were also headed my direction in along the road. I reached the spot where the ram fell and looked below to see his dark chocolate form resting against a pine tree that was growing in the rocks. I found a path to him and made my way down. Every part of me was shaking. The adrenaline rush had completely taken hold and was causing me trouble navigating the rough ground. Finally, I was at the ram. He was magnificent. His color was even darker up close.   I then realized what that was I had seen flying. His skull had broken completely away at the base of the right horn. I sat down in complete admiration of this beautiful animal. I sat down next to Bones there on that rocky hillside and I cried. They were tears of joy and gratitude for this animal's life. Then came the cheering from below. My team was all there, Fred holding the missing horn in his outstretched hand to show he found it. A pickup pulled up just then and it was my uncle and cousin who had decided to take a drive and see how my hunt was going. A short time later, Geff, Tracy and my uncle had scurried up the steep slope to me. I had moved the ram over to a spot that I could safely begin field dressing him. Tracy had the broken horn with him and we were able to hold it enough to take some pictures and then made quick work of the rest. The pack-out was challenging as there wasn't an easy route off the hill. We all slipped and slid our way down the slope. Most of the time on our backsides. Once we made it to the bottom, there were hugs and celebrations to be had. Julie even showed up to catch the end of the festivities. My heart was beyond full. All the work and preparation came together in the end. My team was there to experience it with me. Bones was a once-in-a-lifetime ram. He was 10 ½ years old, and 7/8 curl. His Pope and Young official score came in at 173 1/8". We found out that his health was poor due to a fractured skull he has sustained during the summer months. That also explained why the right horn had broken off. I am forever thankful to those that so generously offered their time and expertise in helping me achieve this milestone in my life.   Tue, 17 Jun 2025 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/15357/Bones http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/13967/Colorado-Bow-Hunter-Magazine--May---June-2024 blog View Here Fri, 20 Sep 2024 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/13967/Colorado-Bow-Hunter-Magazine--May---June-2024 http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/12204/Colorado-Bow-Hunter-Magazine--July---August-2021 blog View Here Mon, 14 Aug 2023 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/12204/Colorado-Bow-Hunter-Magazine--July---August-2021 http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/11303/Shoot-Your-Way-to-Better-Bowhunting blog Four bowhunting/3-D experts provide tips you can put to practice to make 2022 your best year ever!  Did you have a dream season? Is your freezer full and your taxidermy bill high? If so, good for you. Possibly, however, you're on the opposite end of the spectrum. Maybe your season was a nightmare. One you'd just as soon forget. Either way, there is always room for improvement, and there's no time like the present to get the 2022 ball rolling. As bowhunters, our goal should always be a clean, quick and ethical kill, and the advice to come from this sage group of veteran archers, if put to practice, will make you more efficient in the woods this fall.  One resounding theme, after sitting down with each of these stick-and-string gurus, was the importance of 3-D archery. While nothing can simulate an actual in-the-woods encounter, a competitive 3-D shoot gets the blood pumping and can spike the nerves. Settling your pin on a 50-yard bedded buck in front of your peers and executing a perfect shot is easier said than done.  When you can toe the line, control the butterflies and drop an arrow in the 10-ring, regularly, you'll be that much more prepared for a heart-pounding big-buck encounter. In addition to reading and heeding the shooting tips to come, give serious thought to attending as many 3-D shoots as you can in the coming months, and if your able, hit a few on our must-shoot list.   The Killer His name is Yahsti Perkinskiller, and he's one of the best archers I've ever had the pleasure of shooting with. A master of controlling the mind and executing flawlessly during crunch time, Yahsti is known for his get-it-done ability in the woods and on range. His harvest list is long and distinguished, and his 3-D accolades include wins at the North American Indigenous Games and the Red Deer Valley Shoot in Canada, which is Canada's largest and most prestigious 3-D shoot.  "The time is now," Yahsti said. "Now is the time to stop doing what you've been doing for years. For many, that includes grabbing a bow that is too long with too much draw weight and going out and shooting arrow after arrow. Doing this actually leads to regression. It leads to making bad habits worse. If the bow is too long, extra movement is required. Having to tuck or raise your chin or move your head in any way to get your nose to the string is an unnecessary step. We want a draw cycle that includes as little movement as possible.  "In addition, if you can't hold your bow out in front of you and pull it straight back with ease, you're pulling too much weight. Too much weight means having to lower or raise the bow to reach full draw. Again, this is extra movement. Not to mention the fact that it will lead to injury, and at times, because of weather conditions or nerves, not being able to pull the bow back at all.  "Take the time to truly find a bow that fits you. If you plan to stay with your current model, make sure it fits you perfectly. Take the time to get your draw length exactly right. This may include adjusting your cam modules or doing some tinkering with your cables. Find where you want to be in your anchor — where it feels most comfortable — and take a measurement on a horizontal line from the corner of your lip to the throat of the nock.  Do this until you find the ideal measurement. This will be one that allows you to reach full draw and not have to peek up or down to center the peep. Don't get frustrated. I cut my loop off seven times during my most recent setup. Now is the time to do this stuff. Now is the time to build perfection. If you're not confident with your tuning abilities, visit your local pro shop and have them help you achieve your perfect draw length.  Get the most out of your equipment and shoot as many 3-D shoots as you possibly can in the coming months. Remember, that deer will be at his very best. You better work your butt off to make sure you're at your best as well."   The Hammer A legend in the world of archery, Tim Gillingham works tirelessly each year to make sure his arrows are lethal in the woods and find the 12-ring on the foam he shoots.  "If I had to give one tip that archers need to do this offseason, it would be to surround themselves with great shooters," Tim said. "If you want to shoot better, shoot around and get tips from the guys and gals that are consistently getting done on the range and in the field. Most of these people are great teachers, and love to pass along what they know. If you surround yourself with the best archers you can find, you will become like them." Of course, Tim, being a gear guru, had some other helpful tips archers can do this offseason as they start to prepare for the fall of 2020. "I love shooting today's high let-off bows," Gillingham said, "but I just shoot better when I'm shooting a higher holding weight." "During these offseason months, tinker with the holding weight on your bow. I say this for a pair of reasons.  First, the more tension there is in a system, the harder it is to make a mistake. Another thing a higher holding weight will eliminate is your dwell time. Dwell time isn't a good thing. If you have to wait micro-seconds for the arrow to load up once you trigger the release, the more negatively you can influence the shot.  When I have a high let-off, I really have to make sure and follow-through a lot better. When I have higher holding weights, the arrow hits where the pin is. I hold 22 pounds with my target bow, and while this is a bit much for the hunter, I do recommend around 17 pounds of holding weight for the bowhunter. I challenge you to play with your holding weight. Remember, those who try nothing learn nothing. "I also recommend playing with the mass weight of your bow. This will be accomplished with your stabilizer setup. When your nerves are jangled on the 3-D course or your knees start knocking because your target buck walked out, nothing will help you stay on target like mass weight.  Play with the length and weight of your front and rear stabilizers. If you can find ideal mass weight and marry that weight with a solid holding weight, you'll be on your way to better shooting. "Lastly, tinker with your arrow weight. Again, if an arrow is too heavy, it stays in the bow longer and gives you more time to influence the shot. Know your gear and learn your gear." Mr. Prime Time One of Prime Archery's top pro shooters, Kenny Lantz performs in the woods and on the competition trail. Aside from the numerous game animals he's piled up over the years, Kenny won the IBO World Championship and National Triple Crown in 2007. In 2009, he struck gold in the prestigious Southern Triple Crown. Most recently, Kenny topped the podium at last year's ASA in Foley, Alabama. When it comes to handling the pressure and performing, Kenny had this to say.  "There are so many great accessory products on the market today. I really feel guys and gals are doing themselves a disservice if they don't get out there and test some stuff. If you're not happy with your sight, rest, stabilizer or whatever, find one you are happy with. In archery, confidence is everything. You may need to play with your peep aperture so that every time you pull back your bow, your housing is perfectly centered. There are so many different things you can do.  Kenny realizes, when it comes to archery, there are different strokes for different folks.  "I could recommend switching to a hinge or thumb-activated release, and while that may help some, it won't help everyone. What will help the archery masses is to shoot with others. Shoot with buddies and make small wagers for fun. Get the blood pumping and learn how to deal with the jitters.  Join a league at your local pro shop. Few things, in my opinion, boost accuracy like spot shooting. You can make a bad shot on a 3-D target and still hold a 10. If you make a bad shot at 20 yards on a spot target, you're out of the X. Learn to aim small and miss small.  In addition, jump in some 3-D tournaments. Getting out and walking a course is great exercise, and you're getting to shoot at lifelike animals in hunting-type scenarios. The more 3-D you shoot, the easier it becomes to block out the noise and just focus on making one good shot, and that's what you need to do in the woods.  You spend your work vacation chasing game, and when you get that opportunity, you want everything to be muscle memory. Though you can't replicate the feeling of shooting at a live animal, you can train your body and mind to block everything out and focus on making a good shot." The Beast Phil Mendoza is the owner of No Limits Archery in Denver, Colorado, and is a certified archery coach. Over the years, I've taken a lesson or three from Phil, and can testify to the fact that his knowledge is sound. In addition to his coaching, Phil is a top-tier bowhunter and was the first-ever Train To Hunt National Champion. Phil's tip, while as he put it, " is a tad less sexy," is paramount to becoming a more proficient archer. "You need to journal, and record keep," Phil said.  "You need to create an archery journal. This includes journaling your daily shooting, competition shooting and your hunts. As you begin preparing for 2020, write down your progress. Be honest with yourself and take note of what you need to improve on and what's going well.  As the weeks and months roll by, you can and need to look back at your journal and track your progress. Having weeks, months and eventually years of notes to look back on will give you a solid baseline to go off. You can look back and see how you're improving." Real advice from some real good shooters. What you do with it is up to you. Remember, next year can be better, even if last year was border-line perfect. As archers, there are always things we can do to take our shooting and our success to the next level.   Jace Bauserman in an outdoor writer, adventurer,    Tue, 01 Nov 2022 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/11303/Shoot-Your-Way-to-Better-Bowhunting http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/11302/How-the-CBA-Influenced-My-Life blog Life is an interesting thing. At age 20, I would have never dreamed that the CBA would have changed my life and my family in the way that it did. Heck, I had never even heard of the CBA. In 1976 I started to bowhunt by myself and after two years I was ready to give up. Then, by chance, I joined the CBA. My closest Area Rep, Rod Washburn, was about one hundred miles away and he gave me the help and support I needed.  So much so that I became an Area Rep for my area. After a couple of years, I volunteered for the CBA board as the East Regional board member and then Vice-Chairman of Operations. Then in 1985, a couple of events turned my life upside down and I lost the family farm. I was raised to be a farmer, nothing more and nothing else. Now the farm was gone. My whole world fell apart. It would forever change my life and also that of my wife and our three young sons. I was blessed that I had the love of my wife and sons to help. It was also about that time, once again, that members of the CBA reached out to me. I spent a lot of time with both Larry Baker and Tony Seahorn.  They knew I was hurting and after a lot of support and conversations, I realized I had some options in life. One option was to go to college, but no one in my family ever attended college. I didn't know if I could make it through.  The night I went to open enrollment for college, I don't remember why, Mary Anne and our sons were there because they were still living in Eastern Colorado. They were sitting in the hallway waiting for me to come back from seeing a student counselor. I do remember what she said when I told her I had huge doubts about whether I could make it.  Her response was, "Well, you can't finish if you don't start." That was the beginning of eight years of working full time and going to school at night. I graduated in 1993 from CU Denver with an engineering degree, two weeks before my oldest son Terry graduated from high school.  With the help of another CBA member, Jim Graves, I had started working a few years earlier for Martin Marietta, (which later became Lockheed Martin) as a technician and then as a test engineer upon graduation.  My work allowed me to perform shock and vibration testing on anything from piece parts up to completed satellites. Throughout those eight years, and beyond, I stayed involved with the CBA, taking on several board positions. I hardly ever missed a board meeting. I never missed a Banquet or Jamboree.  Today I am blessed that all my sons Terry, David and Brian are hunters and soon we'll be adding the grandkids to the group. I am very proud of my sons who have done very well and now have families of their own.  I will be forever grateful to the CBA and those bowhunters, both past and present, who helped me when I needed it the most. The bonds we still share will last a lifetime. I had a wise bowhunter tell me that we need to be part of something larger than ourselves.  The CBA has been around for more than fifty years with a rich history of always working for the bowhunters that hunt this state. For me and my family, CBA is family.  Life is an interesting thing and do any one of us know what is waiting for us? What will we be doing in the years to come? At age 20, I could have never dreamed of what would happen to my future as a result of being a member of the CBA. Will the CBA change your life? Maybe, but you won't know if you don't start.   Mon, 31 Oct 2022 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/11302/How-the-CBA-Influenced-My-Life http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/9849/An-Interview-with-Bill-VanderHeyden-on-Arrow-Building-for-Hunting blog Matt Jackson: I'm here with Bill Vanderheyden, Co-Founder and Lead Engineer of Iron Will Outfitters and in this interview we will be discussing arrow construction. In this article you will quickly learn some of the top considerations and methodology you may use to build your "perfect arrow". Bill Vanderheyden: In past years, a lot of the arrow setups had been geared more towards target archery and maybe 3d shoots. Arrow weights that are light and fast.  More recently there's been a push for arrow weight to be really heavy, as heavy as 650 grains. I think it's left a lot of people, especially new archers, confused about what's right for them.  What applies to somebody shooting 15 or 20 yards, isn't the same as somebody that's going to shoot 50 to 60 yards. I don't believe, for out West Big Game hunting, either extreme is right. It's more somewhere in between.       You need to look at the science and the physics and understand which factors are important and how it can help you be a more effective hunter. I've spent many years working on it for myself. And that's really what I want to share here.  Matt: That's awesome. Let's just jump right in.   Mass Bill: Let's start with mass first. Your bow's gonna have a certain amount of energy because of your draw force curve. Whatever poundage you're shooting, whatever draw length, that's really going to determine how much energy you have.  Hang with me here, I'm gonna jump around a little bit from energy to momentum. Momentum (P) equals mass (M) times (V) velocity(V).   (P=MV) That's the most direct way to quantify how much penetration you're gonna get and how much momentum you have left down range. In that straight line, momentum is a vector quantity.  So that direction matters here, but really it's maximizing that mass times velocity (M x V) at the target that will give you the best indicator of how much force you're going to get. (F=MA) And so, this is Newton's second law of motion here, force (F) equals mass (M) times acceleration (A).  (F=MA) Acceleration is change of velocity over time. So you rearrange that little bit and momentum (P) is going to equal force (F) times time (T). (P=FT) So having the most momentum you can have down range is gonna give you the most force times time on that arrow, penetrating through the animal. So what can you do to maximize your momentum? You can also reduce the force it takes to penetrate and that's by broadhead design.  Let's just talk about maximizing momentum. As you increase mass, you will increase your retained momentum down range and there's really not a threshold. It's a continuous improvement.  The negative though is, with increasing mass, the trajectory drops off. To me there's a balance there. What I recommend is go as heavy as you can for the trajectory that you want. For most people, that's about 450 to 550 grains of total arrow weight. That's a good balance between mass and speed really.  For me, I'm shooting around 500 grains or a little more. I'm shooting around a 72 pound bow with a 30 inch draw. I do have the advantage of a little more draw length.  Matt: What's the feet per second (ft/s), please? Bill: I just set up an arrow to test our 100 gr single bevels. It was a 504 grain arrow going 288 ft/s. Thank you. I can dial my site down and shoot 130 yards. So to me, there's no reason to go a higher speed than 288 ft/s. If you are higher than that, add some mass. It's gonna be better for you.  In fact, I'm gonna set up a hunting arrow. That's just a little heavier than that for me personally, more like 525, 530 gr. I might drop my speed down to 285 ft/s, but I'll gain a little advantage in mass.  Matt: Will you share with us why 280 ft/s is the magic number for you? Because there are some successful archers out there that say speed never hurt me. Let's address that.  Bill: Yeah. Like I said, there's a trade off when you get more speed, you can shoot further. Your trajectory is a little flatter. Here's the advantage. If you range an animal and it moves a few yards. Let's say the animal is at 60 yards, that flat trajectory is helpful.  It's kind of a personal preference there on what trade off you want to make between mass and speed. What I would tell you is that increasing mass will help everybody penetrate better. It's gonna slow everybody's arrow down too.  280 ft/s is a great range for a nominal speed. And I really just would say like 265 ft/s to 285 ft/s is great. You go up over 290 ft/s and the problem with that is drag (FD) is proportional to velocity squared.                                                                 FD∝v2 F D ∝ v 2 A fast light object slows down a lot more than a slower heavier object. So that's the retained momentum issue here. Which is why increasing mass, choosing mass over velocity, will give you more retain momentum down range. Think, if you are really going faster and lighter, you're hurting yourself on penetration.  I'll eyeball judge things too. If they're under 50, I'm gonna get a shot off quickly. If it's 50 or over, I'm gonna range and get that pretty dialed. Just know, 10 feet per second doesn't matter that much on how much you're gonna miss by. A lot of guys like that speed for that reason, it's a little flatter trajectory and that's why there's a balance there.  The other bad thing about having too high speed is drag is proportional to velocity squared. It makes it harder to get your arrow to fly really well and tune your bow because of that higher velocity and higher forces on your arrow. If everything's not perfect, it makes it more difficult to get good arrow flight.  Good arrow flight is really number one in this whole thing.  If you wanna go up a little bit in mass, don't just add a bunch of point weight and not be properly spined, because arrow flight is number one. You need that momentum going in a straight line. So if you're underspined, your arrow will have excessive flexing and you're losing a bunch of energy and momentum that you could have had there.  If you didn't and your bow's not tuned, your arrow could come fishtailing off of your bow. There's a couple problems here. One is, you have a bunch of wasted momentum there.  If your arrow is not traveling in a straight line, it's gonna slow your arrow down and you're gonna have less retained momentum. So if you have to shoot a mechanical to hit the target, you should really fix the root cause there. It's possible your arrow is underspined or your bow isn't tuned.The point is you're getting a lot less momentum than you could have had if your bow was tuned and your arrow was spine properly.  Also, it takes a tremendous amount more force to get a pass through. It's kind of a double whammy there. You have less momentum out there and it takes a lot more force to get that through the animal. This means you're not going to penetrate nearly as far.   Front Of Center Weight (FOC)  Matt: Now that we have a good understanding of the importance of considering your arrow's mass, let's talk about the optimal percentage range of an arrow's mass placed nearer to the point in relation to the center of the arrow. We all know this as an arrow's front of center (FOC) weight. Will you take us through how to calculate an arrow's FOC weight percentage and your recommendations to achieve optimal arrow flight? Bill: To calculate your arrows FOC weight follow these steps. First, find the balance point of your arrow. This is your arrow's center of mass. From that point, measure the distance to the center of your arrow front to back on length. Divide that number by the total arrow length, that's your front of center percentage.  10% to 12% has been recommended for target archers for years. A lot of the arrow manufacturers recommend 12% to 14% for broadheads. I've done a lot of testing at 12% to 16%. That's what I recommended.  You'll hear out there you need to have 20% FOC or that going from 19% to 23% can increase penetration by 30%. Well, that doesn't agree with physics. It really doesn't.  It's what I see happening a lot right now. People will hear extreme FOC will give you more penetration. However, they are compromising arrow flight, by just adding a bunch of mass out front and now they're underspined.  We could get you to high FOC that way, but you'll be underspined. The excessive arrow flexing is going to hurt your arrow's penetration. What it does help you with is stability. It gives you a longer lever arm to your vanes. It'll help fixed blades fly better. It may help you with traditional archery as well.  The one thing I want to touch on is don't try to hit a certain FOC number.  The amount that it's going to penetrate is really your retained momentum, mass times velocity, and it's a vector quantity. It's in that straight line, there's no FOC in that calculation. It's Newton's Second Law of Motion. You can't argue that. That's what it comes down to. The most mass times velocity (M x V) in a straight line at impact.  Now increasing FOC 5% might only change that center of mass a half inch forward. The physics wouldn't say that that's gonna have a 30% increase in penetration. It just wouldn't.  What do I recommend for FOC? I think 12% to 16% is a great range for good stability. You can go higher than that, but your trajectory really starts dropping off typically. There's kind of diminishing returns there.  Going lower than that, you might be okay, you'd have to go test it, but I think nobody recommends going really below 10%.  I believe, for the western big game hunter, where you're also trying to get 50 to 60 yard shots, assuming you've practiced and are effective at that distance, extreme FOC is very hard to do without dropping your trajectory way off. It's more difficult to get your bow to tune and everything else when you've got a lot of mass out front that you're trying to launch off your bow.    DO VANES ADD STABILITY?  The next thing you need is good stability. Add a fixed blade broadhead on the front and the arrow's different in flight. I don't think this is talked about enough out there. When you have a fixed blade on the front, you need more vane on the back for stability. This is critical to get great arrow flight.  If you think about the center of mass, that's the pivot point on the arrow. Say the arrow is a little bit off course. It's not flying perfectly straight. but let's say the tip is tipped up a little bit, now as you get that airflow across the fixed blades those blades have some surface area that's going to drive it off course. Right?      At the back end of the arrow, you have the vanes that are also getting that airflow across them. That's putting it back on course, having stability means that the vanes win. If something goes off course, it'll steer back.  Being unstable means if it starts off course, it just keeps going off course because you don't have enough force at the rear to help.  The height, or the surface area, of the vanes gives you that restoring force, but it's also that lever arm between your center mass and the vanes. So increasing your FOC is basically moving your center mass forward. That gives you a longer steering arm for your vanes to correct, and a shorter steering arm for your broadheads to steer you off.  People ask how much vane are we talking about there? What I find is most efficient, and by efficient, I mean, the job of a vane to me is you don't want to add any more drag or weight than you need to at the back, but you want to have good stability if it starts tipping off.  You want to have a lot of restoring force that puts it back on track. So the most efficient to me is like three higher profile vanes. Two inches or a little bit longer and about 0.5 inches high. I find they seem to kind of work similarly.  I think three vanes at 2.5 to 3 degrees of helical work well. It's probably the most efficient for restoring trajectory. Some people like to go with four vanes and I don't think that's a bad setup either. It's just adding a little more mass and drag and it does give good stability. I find that height is a bit more effective than length. The reason for that is that there's kind of this boundary layer effect over the arrow shaft. The velocity of the air right near the shaft isn't at full velocity. It isn't at 280 ft/s. It's much lower than that.  A long but low profile vane isn't as effective as a taller, shorter vane.  Once you're up over a quarter inch, closer to half inch, now you've got the full velocity there. That's giving you more restoring force, more stabilizing force.  That's my experience. More length does give you some benefit, but not as much as height. I believe height's more effective than length. I don't like going below a 1/2 inch high vane for a fixed blade head on the front.   Vanes and Rotation Matt: What has your engineering background and testing experience taught you about vanes and rotation? Bill: I like two and a half to three degrees of helical or offset. It's kind of a sweet spot. I feel it helps to get the right amount of rotation and averages out any asymmetry. It can help make fixed blade heads fly better.  The thing you don't want is straight vanes. And I think that's really all you can get for a factory fletched arrow, a zero or one degree. And to me, that's not really enough to get the rotation you want.  The reason you want rotation is not actually for stability. It's to average out any asymmetries. Say your arrow's not straight, it has a little curvature to it. Your insert isn't straight and your broadhead isn't perfect. If the point is off a little bit to one side of your trajectory that's just going to cause your arrow to kind of drift off that direction. If you're not rotating, it's just going to keep going further off that direction. As you get down range, if it's rotating, it's gonna open up your groups, but it's gonna stay on the average. The shot is going to be, at least, on center or on that center line.  So if you can picture rotating around that force kind of pushing the arrow, as it's rotating, that force is also rotating with it. So it's kind of pushing it around in a circle as it goes down range, but it's not just going straight off in one direction.   Components & Maximizing Momentum Downrange Matt: What's the next thing an arrow builder should be considering?  Bill: Next is durability of components. I think a lot of people are finding out aluminum components, especially aluminum halfouts or outserts, can't take that impact force and they bend very easily.  For example, If you're just touching the leg bone. you're just kind of hitting the edge of that leg bone. If you've got weak components, it can bend right over and stop penetration right there. Stay away from aluminum. Hardened steel is really the best, or grade five titanium for ferrules or components.  Having very strong material is critical. So, to me, the ideal front end setup is a durable fixed blade. It's got to be very sharp and have the ability to retain that edge through the animal, to keep the force low.  If you have a hard impact or side impact, it keeps that force driving straight through and doesn't bend over and take out all your energy and stop you right there. You want something that has good alignment to the arrow because it's important that that broadhead spin true.  Everybody should get one of those little arrow spinners. Put your broadheads on your arrows, spin them and make sure the points are staying on center and not wobbling around.  The problem with wobbling is it could be caused by arrow straightness, the components or the broadhead. Any of those things can add to the wobble. It's one of the reasons I don't really like halfouts or outserts.  You're mounting the broadhead an inch out in front of the arrow and you're adding some tolerances to it. It's harder to get the arrow to spin true. My favorite system there is the HIT system. The broadhead and shank align directly to the head of the arrow. We make a reinforced HIT system where we put an impact collar over that to reinforce the arrow. It helps well for those side impacts. Having good alignment, your broadhead to your arrow, so it spins true, is really important.   Engineering Tolerances Matt: Share with the reader a little bit of the problem with engineering tolerances. I think there's a lot of folks out there that believe if they buy a package of 125 grain broadheads, every broadhead will weigh exactly the same. The reality is, depending on the manufacturer, you might get 125 gr, 129 gr or 121 gr broadheads. More importantly, let's talk about the extras on the front of the arrow, you know, collars and inserts and things like that. Take the reader through why they should minimize what's on the front of their arrow because of tolerances. Does it really make a difference on arrow performance?  Bill: A simple system on the front of the arrow may help to minimize engineering tolerance variations. Does that make sense?  There's mass tolerances and then there's dimensional tolerances. If all your arrows are within a few grains of each other, I think you're good there. A lot of pros have said they don't see a difference with less than 10 grains variation.  I'm fine if there's a couple grain tolerance. You just don't want big tolerance variations. So it's good to weigh your arrows when you're done building.  Dimensional tolerance is a bigger concern. So if you have bigger tolerances, things are cheaper to make, right? They're easier to make, they're cheaper to make.  A lot of the components you get free with arrows can be worth what you paid for them. They're produced as low cost as possible. They're often low grade aluminum. Manufacturers don't want to add any cost that not everybody needs.  A lot of these components are just for target archery and you're not gonna have any hard impacts. You're shooting into a bag or foam or whatever. Why add a bunch of costs? Why have to increase the price for everybody just to take care of the 5% of hunters that really care about having the best possible setup?  I've heard that exactly from arrow manufacturers. And I don't blame them for it. I understand. People need to know that. It's the reason why on most half outs there are multiple significant tolerances that will affect the run-out of your broadhead. They're only holding things to maybe three thousandths of an inch on many of the dimensions.  You should consider arrow diameter size, shank diameter going into the shaft, shank concentricity to the bore that the broadhead goes into. Then you have a clearance between your broadhead shaft and that diameter. The diameters on the insert have a tolerance. Add these up and it's pretty easy for that point to be off 10 thousandths to the side.  You'll see it if you spin your arrow and it's 10 thousandths off. It might not sound like a lot, but that looks like a lot. That's quite a bit and that will affect your down range flight. That's why I say tolerances matter. The other negative is that it adds a lever arm if you get a side impact. You have force on the side of your broadhead. It's like a breaker bar. It's much easier to bend or break when the broadhead is mounted an inch out in front, compared to if it's mounted right into the arrow. If you want to have just the most robust set up to pass through scapulas, you have to know how to avoid the problem. Matt: The thing that I'm worried about is people falling victim to the thinking "my target set up is gonna do me well in the field. What's good for the average archer is also good for me." No, because of all the things that you just reviewed.  Bill: I think a lot of people, especially new archers, assume that the arrow and components they get for free are going to work best in the field. Why wouldn't it? They also might buy some broadheads at a big box store and think these are gonna be sharp. Why wouldn't wouldn't they be sharp? Right. I thought the same thing.   Broadhead Penetration Bill: I've studied a lot of broadheads. I had a broadhead fail to penetrate an elk shoulder blade in 2004. It was pretty devastating. I had moved to Colorado in '99 and hunted elk for four years. Finally, I got a shot on a nice bull and it hit the back edge of the shoulder blade and just stopped. I spent many years really applying my mechanical engineering knowledge to become a better bowhunter. It involved studying the physics behind all parts of bowhunting.Then I studied a bunch of different broadheads, did a bunch of testing and really found that getting that force to penetrate low is important.  The lowest force to penetrate is with a durable, very sharp, cut on contact type head like a two blade or two blade with bleeder. That will reduce the force the most and get you the most penetration. The next level from that would be a durable, sharp, 3-blade fixed head.  If your broadhead is not able to shave hair or cut through paper without tearing it, fix that first. A dull broadhead will increase the force to cut  through that hide and that animal tremendously. That's really important.  Like we said, whatever momentum you have down range is equal to force times time. If the force to penetrate is two or three times more, you're gonna get a third of the penetration you would have compared to a broadhead that's sharp and has lower force to penetrate.  Part of it is sharpness. For others it's geometry. Three blades versus a two blade just takes more force to get through. Especially if you hit scapula and you're trying to split even a thin bone. You're trying to maybe split out three directions with a bit more of a wedging effect than a two blade or two blade with bleeders.  I'm not saying you can't be effective with a three blade. I'm just saying it's gonna take more force to penetrate. If you want more margin, you can get that with a really sharp cut on contact, say two blade or two blade with bleeders. Then you jump up to mechanical and that's like 10 X the force to go through compared to a sharp fixed blade.   Key Components to Focus On Matt: What are the key components a target archer, who really wants to be a western big game hunter, should stay focused on?    Bill: Arrow flight's number one. Don't do anything that compromises it. Don't try to add too much mass at the front if you're going to be underspined. For instance, have a properly spined arrow for your bow, with the appropriate mass up front and enough vane at the back to stabilize the broadhead up front. Be sure to have some rotation.  Next, I would say durability is really important. If you're trying to maximize your momentum and maximize your penetration, grade five titanium and steel (hardened steel) are the best options. I like to build the strength into the arrow instead of building it out front. Personally, I choose mass over speed. It will give you continuous improvement in down range momentum.  The trade off there is trajectory. So you've gotta balance that out. I think that 450 to 550 grain weight range is great for most people. If you're shooting an 80 pound bow and 32 inch draw, it's probably more like 600 grains. If you're going over 290 ft/s, add some mass. It's going to help you. You are still plenty fast at 285 ft/s, really 265 ft/s to 285 ft/s is great.  Choose mass over speed to improve penetration. Keep the force to penetrate low. Very sharp broadheads are important. A two blade or two blade with bleeders is probably the lowest force to penetrate and will get you the most distance through. Three blades, make sure they're sharp, can be very effective as well.  Penetration really depends on your setup, how much energy you have and what you hit, really. Weight up front is good as long as you're properly spined for it. It gives you a little more front of center (FOC) weight, helping with stability. Stability is not a bad thing to have. There's no need to go extreme on it.   Arrow Shot / Penetration Matt: The most important factor in penetration is shot placement. Let's talk about the importance of shop placement real quickly.  Bill: Really the goal of every bowhunter should be a very quick kill. Make it as humane as possible. If you're not hitting vitals, it is not going to die. If you're not hitting in the heart/lung area, it's not gonna die quickly. That's why I like shooting up kind of in that vital V area, the crease, or even a little bit in front where you're shooting for the top of the heart & lung area. If you hit there the animal's gonna be dead in seconds. That really should be the goal. If you aim back to avoid the shoulder, you are more likely to hit the liver or guts.  Shot placement is the most important. Practice. Know your setup and have good arrow flight with your broadheads. Be able to have good shot placement. That's #1!   About Bill Vanderheyden: Bill is a mechanical engineer and an adjunct instructor of mechanical engineering. He grew up bowhunting whitetails in Wisconsin before moving to Colorado in 1999 and then became obsessed with bowhunting elk. In 2004 he had a broadhead fail on an elk shoulder blade and that started a 10 year process of testing other broadheads and then developing one to be as reliable as science allows.   Bill co-founded Iron Will Outfitters in 2016 and is currently the owner and lead engineer. He hunts throughout the year to test and continuously improve his products to help bowhunters be more successful.   Mon, 25 Jul 2022 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/9849/An-Interview-with-Bill-VanderHeyden-on-Arrow-Building-for-Hunting http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/5350/Rocky-Mountain-Archery-s-Stewart-King blog Trevon: Welcome Stewart, how are you? Stewart King: Good, yourself? Trevon: I'm doing great. Will you please introduce yourself and how you're involved in the archery community. Stewart King: My name's Stewart King. I graduated from CSU in '92 with an engineering degree. I worked in different fields here in Fort Collins, moved away for about a year and a half, and realized that was a horrible mistake.  Got back as fast as I could to this community. Been shooting since I was 15 and worked with Jim Widmier at Arrow Dynamics when he was being coached by the Olympic team out of his facility. When I found out that he was retiring and moving on to greener pastures, I thought, "This is an opportunity." So I decided I was going to switch hats, change careers, and built Rocky Mountain Archery, and here we are.... 10 years ago we opened up. Trevon: I remember when you opened. It really did fit a hole that we had in the northern part of the state. Jim Widmier, as you mentioned, played a vital role in my growth as a bowhunter. He's the one that finally grabbed me by the ear and said, "Trevon, you're left eye dominant. Why don't you shoot a bow left-handed?" I remember the first time in his shop shooting a left-handed bow, the hardest part was learning how to put an arrow on the string left-handed. But after that, my accuracy went through the roof. It was just so much easier. Stewart King: Sure. Right. HOW DID YOU GET STARTED? Trevon: So when did you start bow hunting? Stewart King: I started bow hunting in 1985 back in Missouri looking for whitetail. To be honest with you, I was self-taught. When I started off before the internet, I would look through outdoor life magazines, and if I felt like an article was relevant, I would cut it out, staple it together and reread it. I had a collection of all these articles. When we made tree stands, they were homemade wooden platforms that were not OSHA approved and we gave it our best. So I probably bowhunted back there for three years unsuccessfully. Because the success ratio is pretty low when you are learning, but I tried awful hard, and then I came out here, and I killed my first deer... Boy, what year was that? Like 1989, something like that. Trevon: I was graduating high school. Stewart King: I graduated in 1985, but after I graduated and ended up out of here on my wife's family ranch. Got a nice velvet muley down in the bottom lands with an old Hoyt Raider. Aluminum arrows, 2315s with five-inch feathers that I got from Jim Widmier. LET'S TALK MENTORS Trevon: Did you have somebody that was your mentor? I guess maybe it was Jim that got you into bowhunting or was it just your curiosity to desire to hunt with a stick and a string, and try and kill an animal. Stewart King: To be honest with you, my "AH HA" moment was an article I read by Chuck Adams. It just made sense. I read it and for some reason and something clicked. I thought, "This is what I'm going to be doing for a long time." and I told Chuck that at one of the ATA shows. I said, "If this screws up, it's your fault. You influenced me." My parents shot recreationally, but very little. So as far as a mentor goes, yeah, it really was Jim giving me the advice to get to the next step and all the information I needed to be dangerous. In the beginning, I mostly self-taught. Since then, I've gone through a ton of training. I am a US archery level four coach. There has also been a lot of other training in order to coach other archers, but mostly it's self-taught, with some influence from Jim. Trevon: I know for a fact that you really do have a soft spot for getting kids involved in archery. You've worked with my daughter numerous times, and there's something about somebody else stepping into that role as teacher or coach versus her dad. Stewart King: Right. Trevon: She takes input from you better, possibly because you're not her dad, but possibly because you speak that language. You do such a great job. I've seen it firsthand. My nephews, we were at the shop just the other day. You speak to that beginner archer in a way that is understandable. And so that's something I appreciate from you from the shop, from the resources that you bring with Rocky Mountain Archery. Stewart King: With kids it's important, when I'm working with the little kiddos, I get down on my knees on the ground, so that I'm looking at them eye-to-eye. I'm not the big towering, giant intimidating adult that they have to look up to. I want to be on their level instead and explain things instead of just downloading data. It's important to put archery into kid terms that they can understand. While doing it correct and safely have a little fun at the same time. Trevon: Right. And I think you hit the nail on the head is that you make sure it's fun. So that's something I appreciate. Let's get into a little more bow hunting. Stewart King: Okay. LET'S TALK BIG GAME Trevon: I want to ask what's your favorite big game to bowhunt? Stewart King: Mule deer. Easy. For some reason mule deer, because you can't normally call them in, and you can't pattern them like a whitetail. Hunting is mainly spot and stalk and it's super challenging. It's probably because I've paid so much attention to their behavior that I can read mule deer. If he looks like he's going that way, but I know he's going to go that way and then turn left, then I can go around and ambush him. I just have the best luck with mule deer and I just enjoy hunting those guys. Trevon: And you've killed some good ones! Stewart King: Yeah, I've got one record book buck that we've roughed scored. I haven't had professionally scored yet. Because like yourself, I'm out there for the fun and the joy of the hunt. Not trying to kill the biggest thing on the mountain. I just want to be successful, put a little meat in the freezer. Horns are nice, but they're hard, you can't eat them with ketchup. Trevon: Do you have a favorite story of a bowhunting experience, it can be successful or unsuccessful, that maybe you want to share? Stewart King: Probably the one that I share the most is about a lesson learned. I shot a big six by seven elk, maybe eight years ago, and I hit exactly where I aimed, but the elk was quartering a little more than I thought he was. It taught me some things about the mechanics of an elk's body. Basically, I hit a rib with a cut on contact broadhead, which pushed the rib in, and the rib just deflected and pushed the arrow right back out. I opted to try to let him go, not disturb him, and let him go lay down. He didn't, he just kept walking and walking and walking. I tracked that bull for nine miles and 1500 vertical feet during a horrible, horizontal snow blizzard. It was a challenge. But I knew if I wounded him it was my responsibility to get on him. What I learned from that too, is that if you know you've got one arrow in them, you keep shooting until they're down. So, it's not necessarily a successful story, but a lesson learned. I feel like my job here at Rocky Mountain Archery is to pass along the knowledge I gained by doing it the hard way and screwing up. If I can pass along that information and help someone finish the harvest, then that ends up making my hunt a successful story. FAVORITE HUNTING STORY Trevon: What's your favorite successful story? Stewart King: Probably the big buck I shot with my daughter. It was several years ago and we were just driving around a hunting area, found a giant buck which I ended up harvesting, but he was not on the property we had access to. He was close, but not quite on our property. So that evening I went back to the house, and did a little e-research and found out that the piece of private property that we had permission to be on had an adjoining property on the other side of the fence. They were connected. I didn't realize that it had the same owner and we actually had permission to hunt there. Before the next light, my daughter and I went out the very next morning on the property we had permission to be on. We were as close as we could be to where we had spotted that buck and lo and behold, overnight, he had crossed the fence.  I can remember I made a really good shot with a good follow through. I just held my bow solid and hit exactly where my pin was. All the other deer scattered. Samantha was standing right behind me and I looked back up at her and I said, "Did I hit him?" and she stated, "Oh, he's dead. He's done." That was fun that we were able to share that moment together. Trevon: That's pretty special, and what's neat about Rocky Mountain Archery is it's a family affair. You have a few other people that work there, but mainly family. It's not uncommon for me to pop in there and have Sam work on my bow or if Derek's off of his day job, he might be there and help me. And then of course Colton... Stewart King: Right, Colton works there full time. COMPETITIVE ARCHERY Trevon: The love and passion for archery goes through your whole family. So it's a special place. Let's talk a little bit about competitive archery. That's something that you do in the wintertime in the shop. You have winter indoor 3Ds, but you also do paper target competitions. How does competition archery lead itself to successful bowhunting? Stewart King: I think it really comes down to shots under pressure. If you're shooting paper in a very controlled environment and you're two points down, you still have to be aware of your surroundings. A lot of people, even though you're not supposed to, will look over at their competitors' target and know that they just shot a nine instead of a 10. So now it's on them, it's added pressure. As an archer you have to make that perfect shot to take first place. If I've got a lot of crosswind, I've got to hold steady and wait for the wind to die down. I'll take the shot at the exact moment that the animal provides the best shot angle or make sure there's not another animal blocking the shot. If you can train yourself to perform well under pressure here on the range, you are more likely to do that in a hunting scenario as well. So I think that's the key thing. Of course the archery rigs are typically different as far as bowhunting versus competition, but at the end of the day, the style and the mental game, which is huge, is going to be very similar. THE FUTURE Trevon: How, in your opinion, can we get more people involved in bowhunting, kids specifically? Stewart King: It's really tricky... I mean, the CBA is on top of it. I've talked to several of the guys from there, and they've got the right philosophy. The mentor program is so essential. I can't tell you how many kids 11 to 16 years of age that come in and talk to me about archery and say, "I really want to do this. This looks so amazing. I've got no one to teach me." This is where I came from too. I had no one to teach me. In that situation, you have to put that guy or that kiddo alongside someone who's made mistakes, like I talked about earlier, someone that can share that knowledge and shorten the learning curve. I did a lot of Scouts with my kids growing up. I was both of my boys' Cub Scout leader. If you can get maybe a small group, girls or boys, that want to learn to bowhunt with a couple of adult mentors, instead of just a one-on-one, I think maybe a program like that might be a little bit more beneficial. Trevon: That's good, and I think that's how we're going to turn the tide. I think that's how we're going to increase recruitment. Kids nowadays, it seems their attention span seems to be getting shorter. However, I do believe that if you get a kid out in an experiential outdoors activity, they're much more in tune with it. ONE THING YOU WON'T LEAVE BEHIND Trevon: Alright, next question... Besides your bow, arrow, broadheads, and release, what's the one thing you won't leave behind when you head out to bow hunt? Stewart King: The one thing I won't leave behind is my bino pack. The way I run that is a little bit different. So in my bino pack on my chest are my binoculars, my range finder, a knife, a sharpener, my license, a pen, and I actually carry a little bottle of water purification tablets, and a little bitty foldable bladder. If I get on a critter, I'm a very mobile hunter. I get after him. I try to get ahead of him all the time, but I'll dump my main pack, set a waypoint so I can come back to it, and then I'm just gone. I might be gone until after dark with just my bino pack. So that's sort of my day pack, a survivalists type of thing that I've got everything that I need right there so I can harvest the animal and field dress it. Then I can get the license on the animal and do whatever I've got to do and then get back to my main pack. So that bino pack, the way I have it put together is a critical piece of equipment. MISTAKES MADE BY NEW BOWHUNTERS Trevon: That's great. What's the one mistake that new bowhunters most often make? Stewart King: Not practicing range estimation on 3D animals. If I'm hunting deer versus elk, because of the very different size of their body, they quite often misjudge the distance. They think that elk's a lot closer because he's so big. In the heat of the moment they miss the shot because they misjudged the distance. I'm not very good at judging distances, so I use my range finder almost religiously. That helps me avoid making poor shots, so yeah, I think misjudging distance by lack of practice. 3 TIPS FOR BOWHUNTERS Trevon: That's great. Can you give me three tips to help someone be a better bowhunter when it comes to, first of all, stalking an animal, reading the wind, and then just being comfortable while hunting.  Stewart King: From a stalking standpoint, it's being very conscious where each one of your footsteps land. If you're paying attention to what's going on straight ahead of you and not what's below you, you're going to step on a stick, some dry leaves, it crunches and you are busted. You're in their house and if you aren't being super careful they're going to hear you and they're gone. So you've got to be very conscious of that foot placement. Reading the wind is tough because most of the places that we hunt, thermals are going to change during the day. They're going to swirl on you just when you think you got it perfect, but you're wrong. One of the things I learned on my trip to South Africa was my guide there, he went through two bottles of the little smoke stuff, in the seven days I was there.My advice on being comfortable while hunting is don't buy brand new high-end expensive gear and put it on the day before you go hunting. It most likely won't fit right, and your boots will not be broken in. You need to get those clothes well broken in and well worn. Use scouting trips, 3D practice, and camping trips to test your gear. Wear that stuff and get it to where you are comfortable with it. WHY DO YOU BOWHUNT? Trevon: Good. That's great. I've got a few questions left and the main one is why do you bowhunt? Stewart King: I don't know that I have an answer for that. I guess I appreciate the challenge. I appreciate the up close and personal. I feel like I need to earn it in order to get within 30 or 40 yards of an animal and then execute a shot with a stick and a string. So I appreciate the challenge.  Trevon: Why would you encourage anyone to join the CBA? Stewart King: That's going to be mainly that united we stand. We need to be together as a group so that our voice is a little bit louder than a bunch of individual people. I feel that the CBA is going to give us a legislative voice. I know we're working on potentially getting rid of the 80% maximum law let off. So there's things like that. We got the lighted knock several years ago. That whole thing developed as a misunderstanding between bowhunters and legislation. The CBA was able to clear that up. So I think the biggest thing is, we have to stick together. Trevon: Well, Stewart, thank you so much for taking this time out of your busy day. I know you got people about to bust down your doors there at the shop. So I just want to say thanks, and I appreciate it. And we appreciate you and what you're doing for the sport of archery and for the heritage of bowhunting. Stewart King: Thank you and we intend to keep moving forward as long as we can.   Mon, 22 Feb 2021 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/5350/Rocky-Mountain-Archery-s-Stewart-King http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/5351/Colorado-Big-9-Award-Winner--Andrew-Munsell blog Trevon: Welcome Andrew, introduce yourself and tell the folks who you are and where you come from. Andrew Munsell: Thanks for having me. I feel pretty honored to share my experiences. I'm a bowhunter in Colorado and I just love the sport. Currently, I work at Hamskea Archery Solutions. I'm co-owner there, and I moonlight at Ball Aerospace during the daytime. Don't ask me which one I'd prefer to do, they're both great to have, and contribute to. They both stimulate me mentally and one bridges over to the other. You might see some of that technology in the Hamskea products that we bring to market. I'm a family man, my daughter goes to CSU. I'm rich in family, rich in bowhunting and that's kind of who we are and what I am. Trevon: Let's jump right in. So first, tell me when did you start bowhunting? Andrew Munsell: So I was a kid in Illinois, probably about 13 years old. The neighbor kid I hung out with, he had a Pearson Bow. I can't remember the name of it, but he got it for Christmas, and I was so jealous. So I saved some money and bought one. That's when I started killing my first deer...when I was about 13 years old. Trevon: Who would you attribute got you into bowhunting? Was it seeing your friend or did somebody come along and mentor you? Andrew Munsell: My dad was a big game hunter. Actually, part of my life growing up was here in Fort Collins and he would rifle hunt elk and deer in Colorado. But he gave it up when we moved back East. He said it just wasn't the same after you've been out West hunting. It was just my love of the outdoors. My dad didn't whitetail hunt but he took me hunting. He taught me how to hunt. He passed on the tradition. Hunting and outdoors was in me. I trapped and fished. I did all those things before and after school. Archery was something when I did it, I started getting my motivation back for the most part. So I was pretty excited about that. I just remember going to Walmart back in the day and pining over the archery stuff on the wall and conspiring what I was going to buy. For some reason, archery stuck with me. I don't know actually how it transpired but I found myself in a tree stand. I knelt in a tree on a neighbor's cornfield, trying to kill a deer. FAVORITE BIG GAME TO HUNT Trevon: So if you could just pick one, what would you say is your favorite big game to hunt? Andrew Munsell: Oh, man. Looking around my room, I got the stuff hanging on the walls. I think they all have a very unique and distinct style and some of those things crossover. I love it all, quite frankly. They're all a little bit different. They're all really, really challenging to me, to this day. My favorite is anything that gets me outdoors in the mountains.  BOWHUNTING PREPARATION Trevon: How do you prepare yourself for bowhunting? Andrew Munsell: It's age dependent. When I was younger, I'd just grab stuff and go. As I get older, I'm training year round. I don't go crazy or anything, but I'll lift three times a week and I'll do some form of cardio two times a week. So the older you get, for me anyway, the more work it takes to be competitive in the mountains and it takes energy. So I'm committed to that and like anything else you do, if you want to be successful...preparation meets opportunity...we call that luck. I want to make sure I'm as prepared for luck and opportunity as I can get so I don't go crazy. I'm not a gym rat or anything. I got some stuff in the garage. I got my pack with a sandbag in it, and I just do what I do. Trevon: What are you doing now archery wise to prepare yourself for the bowhunting? Andrew Munsell: I think we all can appreciate life responsibilities tug on you. As much as you would like to do or more, that time can get minimized. So first and foremost, I always make sure my gear is tuned totally up to snuff. There is a lot of time spent getting my bow dialed in. Then I leave it, I don't tinker anymore. I might spend four to six, seven weeks dialing in my hunting bow about this time of year. Spring is a great time to revisit tuning. Then I just shoot it and monitor the performance of the bow. I'll make small tweaks as I practice throughout the summer. Practice ramps up as the opener comes up, whether it's antelope or elk or whatever. I shoot broadheads all year round. That's another thing. My field points are broadheads. They fly in the same spot. That's what I mean by tuning it. So I can shoot either one, but I will just shoot broadheads all year. It helps me to be very comfortable with my equipment and my shot execution. LET'S TALK HUNTING METHOD Trevon: Do you have a favorite method to bowhunt, like calling versus spot and stalk versus an ambush? Andrew Munsell: I'm a spot and stalk guy. I know calling can get you excited. I have called in deer and elk and whatnot. But being sneaky in their own living room, wherever they live, and outsmarting them, outwitting them, being quiet, that's what I enjoy the most. I just feel really accomplished when I do that. Trevon: I'm going to mention real quickly The Colorado Big Nine. In 2017, you achieved the award for the Colorado Big Nine. It includes whitetail deer, mule deer, elk, antelope, mountain goat, mountain lion, moose, bighorn sheep and black bear. So I'm going to give you the species and you tell me where that was. Don't tell us the drainage, but in the general vicinity, eastern Colorado or northwest Colorado. Let's start with your whitetail deer. That's what you grew up doing. So your whitetail deer in Colorado. WHITETAIL Andrew Munsell: Okay, the whitetail is the significant one because it gave me the eight and the nine. It was the last one I shot. So I wrote that article for the CBA to share my experience. I had shot the shiras moose and I had eight of the 10 species, and I said, "Hey, do I qualify?"They said, "No, I know you have eight of the 10. But you don't have the base eight. So you don't have eight." I was like, "You're kidding." The last one was whitetail. I had always been putting in for mule deer and hunted mule deer, and I thought, "Gosh, I got to go shoot the whitetail deer where I started to get this thing." So that's what's super memorable about that, is it actually checked the box for the eight and the nine with one species. That's how that ended up. Trevon: Okay, mule deer. I know you've killed various mule deer. But do you remember the first one you killed in Colorado? Andrew Munsell: I was living in Arizona and we were down in southern Colorado hunting public land. If you ever see a spike and you're like, "I'm just going to draw back and practice." You know what happens then. That was the first mule deer I ever killed in Colorado, tasted great by the way. That was one of the best tasting deer. So like you said, I've shot several since then, but that was the first one I killed in Colorado. I guess I filled my tag. I was elk hunting, so it's okay. MOST MEMORABLE HUNT - ELK Trevon: Elk, let's talk about your most memorable elk that you killed in Colorado. Andrew Munsell: So, I've got a couple, but the one I would say that's most memorable is when I got invited by my good friend, Jeremy, to go to his spot. So, we went to the spot and he had been hunting with another partner. I felt like the third wheel. "I'll just hang back and see how it goes and not say we should be over there or there." We did that for a few days and during that time, we would hear these elk. We'd come up to this rim and we'd be like, "Wow, look at all those elk down there. We were four and a half miles in and I'm like, "Yeah, I don't want to shoot one down there because... I ain't doing that. We don't want to have llamas, goats, or horses." So, we had a few excursions trying to chase them. Those guys had to leave, and I said, "I don't know if I'm going to hunt this spot again or get invited." So I decided to stay. I was out there by myself. I'm like, "I'm going to hunt to the end. Even if I kill it on Sunday, I'll take Monday off. I'll pack it out. That's kind of what happened. I spot and stalked this bull, snuck up on him,and shot him. I was pretty excited. Field dressing it, I sliced my finger open really bad. I had to tape it up. I had to hang the bull, quarter it, and debone it with, basically holding the gauze on my finger. So from where he was the truck was six miles away. I took a load to the truck, got on the truck, drove to Steamboat Springs to get medical attention. Then I went back in to get the rest. It was pretty memorable! Don't do that. Don't chop your finger off when you're in the woods. ANTELOPE Trevon: So how about Antelope? Andrew Munsell: Ah, so south central Colorado. Didn't know what I was doing. This is a perseverance story. I'm by myself for seven days. If you've ever hunted by yourself for seven days and never talked to anybody, you kind of wonder if you can still speak to another human being. So last day, I saw a couple shooters. I had the trailer loaded and was leaving the next morning. This is my last shot, I'm thinking "Man, I don't know." One of my favorite sayings to myself is, "You just don't know until you go."  So I do the belly crawl and sneak and whatnot. I finally got my opportunity. I shot that antelope and I could have checked up and turned my truck around and went back to camp. But I decided, "No, I'm going to hunt every day, every opportunity I have", and that's one reason why it's very memorable for me. MOUNTAIN GOAT Trevon: Wow. Mountain goat. Now that's one of the ones that...I consider mountain goat, moose, and sheep as...You kind of got to be a little lucky just to be in the hunt. Andrew Munsell: Oh totally. So about the mountain goat hunt, it makes me remember a good friend of ours, Kurt Geist, who's since passed away, God rest his soul. He had hunted that unit before. We were chatting up and I told him, I said, "Man, I might draw this year. I'm kind of getting to that point." I draw the tag. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, "Man, I got to start training." I mean if there's a hunt to train for, unless you draw a sheep tag and some of those units, mountain goat will definitely test you. So Kurt showed me a few spots, where to camp, how to hunt the area, etc. I ended up killing a nanny. I wasn't going to be very picky. I don't know when I'm going to get this tag again. That was a pretty proud moment for me as a bowhunter. I wasn't sure it was going to happen for a long time. I think I killed it on the fourth day, which seems short now that I say it. Base camp was at 12,600. I hunted that solo, as well, and then hiked up to the pass at 13,200 every day and hunted. So very demanding, very memorable. They're like little cotton balls running around. That was a really cool, cool hunt. MOUNTAIN LION Trevon: Mountain Lion. A lot of people don't think much about that. But the fact of the matter is, when you're mountain lion hunting, most of the time you're using dogs. For me, the kill part is not as climactic as a mountain goat or something that you have to persevere if you're hunting with dogs. However, the wonder that I found in mountain lion hunting was watching those dogs work. To me, it was mind blowing. How'd you do it? Andrew Munsell: Well it was kind of interesting. So I moved here and I just want to hunt. I can't wait to hunt Colorado, right? Then I meet this guy at Archery in the Wild through the tournaments. You may have heard of him. His name's Shawn Greathouse. We strike up a conversation and Shawn's like, "Yeah, I'm going for my big eight." I'm like, "Big eight? Conference? like Nebraska?" I was literally wondering, "What do you do?" I had no clue. So, he proceeds to tell me and I'm thinking, "Wow, that's that's pretty cool." I wondered if I could do it, I'm 36 years old, maybe I can do it. That's how it happened for me.  So, getting back to the mountain lion, I'm thinking "I've got like five of these. I'm kind of thinking about maybe just going for it." Mountain lion, I would say most bowhunters, it's just not something you're like, "I'm going to go mountain lion hunting every year," unless you're a houndsman. You have your own hounds, because that's what you love. I found a good houndsman through some contacts I have in the industry here in Colorado. After I contacted him, my hunt was pretty short. It was bittersweet. The first day, there wasn't much action. The next day it snowed. The snow was light powder and we went back out. We quickly cut a fresh track. This was a pretty decent track! We let the dogs out, and they treed it right away. We closed in to look at it and I'm like, "Well I guess I'll shoot it." So that's how I got my mountain lion. I didn't get to experience what many have told me about mountain lion hunting. I've heard how hard it really can be. So I think I was extremely fortunate to have the one and out kind of thing. It was possible to extend the trip to shoot something bigger, but I'm not a trophy guy. The mountain lion was one of the best eating, tasting animals. I don't know who's reading this but you might not think that. I'm here to tell you that was really good. MOOSE Trevon: I'm pretty familiar with your moose hunt because I edited the video. Shawn Greathouse did a phenomenal job of capturing it on video. I was able to utilize it and we put a pretty fun film together on that. But tell us a little about the moose hunt. Andrew Munsell: Again, it's one of those things... Maybe I should start putting in for moose because that seems pretty cool and novel, even before I knew about the Colorado Big Eight. When I found out I drew the tag, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Shawn was so mad because he had been putting in for decades with no success. I had to lock my windows and get remote start on my car. I think I drew with three and five or something and he was not happy with me. I can tell you that. The hunt was extremely memorable just because of the comradery, save the hunt. That year my father passed away. If you remember the video, you're like, "Those guys are tearing up on a moose hunt. What's the deal?" My father had passed away a couple months before that. It was very emotional for me to do that because of what he taught me as an outdoorsman. So, all that said, what I really found enjoyable about that hunt was Shawn being there keeping me mentally going. It was a bit of a grind. It was sure nice to be able to call my friends when it was pack out time. Knowing that those people are there in the bowhunting community that will drop everything is awesome. Two of the guys work together and they both got my text and they looked at each other. They were in a meeting. They're like, "Yeah, we got to go." They dropped everything and left to help me. It speaks volumes. In the bowhunting community and club, I don't care where you are or where you hunt, there is that tribal community where people just come and help you. That was fantastic. Trevon: Yeah, I've had a chance to experience a little bit of that myself. Andrew Munsell: Yeah, you got your moose last year. Congratulations. You're well on the path, right? Trevon: I am if I could ever get the next one we're going to talk about, which is a bighorn. I've got a mountain goat and my moose, now I need my bighorn. BIGHORN SHEEP Andrew Munsell: All right, yeah, you're right there. Bighorn, again, I'm just a guy that puts in. I don't do a lot of research. I have a network and talk to people and this was a unit that was on the decline. This is interesting, I go to scout it and I don't see anything. It's a pretty small area you can hunt. I don't see anything. Then one day, I saw a ram with a couple ewes and was able to get some video. I showed the ram to Shawn and he thought the ram was probably worth shooting. It was an interesting hunt. I went back and forth. I'd hunt three days, come home for two. Go up for three days just so the sheep would come in and out of that area. I finally found them. Long story short, they come onto the public, I got to the other side and above them. They come up after they get water and they're literally 15 yards below me. I'm on the side of the hill that's naked, just got gray rocks. I stood there and I was in that position for 46 minutes... the ram came up and bedded about 22 yards from me but he was behind a boulder. The ewes would come up and look at me. They'd look at me and go back to feeding around 20 to 40 yards below me. Finally, one got too close. She was about 12 yards away and ended up busting me. They blew out of there and I ran around the corner, ranged the ram at 40 and shot him. So that's how I got that, that was pretty exciting. BLACK BEAR Trevon: That's awesome. The last to complete your Colorado Big Nine is the black bear. Andrew Munsell: Yeah, I don't know about other people but black bear, they don't hang out in groups. They don't graze in the open. They're solitary animals. Over the years we hunted mule deer in this area and we'd see bears occasionally. So I had a couple opportunities. but this particular one, it was the year I killed my moose. I said, "I'm going to duck out of work early and bomb down there, do the multi hour drive because of the thermals and the way the drainage was, the bears come out of the hills and I have to get the thermals right. It's perfect. So I'm just going to jam down there.I threw my stuff on at the truck and started hunting my way up and I saw this bear. If you're a squirrel hunter, which I grew up squirrel hunting, you see the trees moving, the wind blowing in a pattern. You see one doing like this and other ones are doing that. You're like, "Oh, something's there." I saw this brown patch and I couldn't believe there was a bear in there.            It got to the point where I was behind this little bush and I thought, "I'm going to be shooting this thing at about, I don't know...feet." There was a little stream with water covering my sound as I worked up to him. Anyway, he pulls off and starts feeding and I shot him. I couldn't believe it. I had been hunting bear even in Arizona and just never could connect. For me, it's one of the harder species to connect on. So I was really proud of that. Trevon: What a cool set of memories. Andrew Munsell: Yeah, totally. BIGGEST MISS Trevon: I'm going to get a little bit off topic, not off topic. Let's change directions here. What would you say is your biggest miss, maybe your biggest disappointment in the woods bowhunting? Andrew Munsell: My biggest miss. I got to think about that one. I've missed a lot. There's so many to recall from. I know every bowhunter shoots one arrow a year and kills whatever they're aiming at. Well for the record, maybe off the record, I've never missed. But if I were to have missed, there's two that I would get back. There is one that I replay in my mind to this day. I was living in Arizona and shooting a single cam bow. Back then, every manufacturer made one, and I was new to hunting. I really didn't know what I was doing, still don't, quite frankly. But I'm in this area I find and it's in the evening. I glance up, it's probably just short of 110 inch Coues buck close to me. It is a tank! I'm like, "Holy cow." I go sneak up. Remember when I mentioned tuning your bow, getting comfortable with it, putting yourself in a shot situation so you know how the bow's going to fit you? Well, I decided it'd be really smart of me, Trev, on a single cam bow to stretch out my draw length just a little bit to get that extra speed. I got to have that speed because I'm hunting in Arizona. I've got a flat trajectory. This damn thing shows up at 30 yards and I'm shooting uphill, kind of steep. What happens when you shoot uphill, you kind of creep. You ever creep on a single cam bow? It is a bad day. I missed it by a foot. You could say, "Oh, are you sure you didn't twitch or flinch?" Yeah, maybe I did a little bit. but I'll never forget it. If you ever creep tune your bow on a single cam bow, you'll know how sensitive they were. They aren't around anymore but they're super sensitive to if you creep and shoot, they go out the top. That's the one that, boy, if I had that one back, I dream about having that one back. That's the one that sticks right here. THE ONE THING Trevon: Yes. All right, besides your bow, your arrows, your broadheads, your release, what's the one thing you won't leave behind when you head out bowhunting? Andrew Munsell: The one thing I never leave is my binoculars. There's the old adage, "You can't kill what you can't see." I don't care if you're whitetail hunting or glassing across the desert. If you are gllassing across a canyon, watching elk or whatever, by far, the most important piece to tackle is a good set of binoculars. I would rather go hunting without my range finder and good binoculars than the other way around. Trevon: That's good. What is the one mistake you think new bowhunters make? You've done a lot to help new bowhunters. So what do you think is the one mistake new bowhunters make? Andrew Munsell: I think the mistake they make is thinking, "I'm ready. I'm dialed in." Then they get out there and the conditions change, and how do you simulate those conditions? They think, "I'm proficient here." But that's what led me to 3D archery is how do you simulate, "I got to make this shot with people watching? How do I prepare myself." How does that prepare you for, "There's the bull standing there. This is my shot." I think people don't do enough of that. LAST THREE QUESTIONS Trevon: That's good. I am going to ask you three more questions and then we'll wrap it up. Andrew Munsell: Okay. Trevon: Why, and I think you might have even addressed this already, but why do you bowhunt? Andrew Munsell: There's a lot of reasons. I think bow hunting every year, it makes me appreciate what I have, the luxuries that we all have in modern society. If I'm hungry, I'm going to go swing by the 7 Eleven or whatever. The idea is that it brings me back to this primitive lifestyle. We have modern gear and Gore-Tex and all this fancy stuff these days. That aside, the idea that you have to pursue an animal, go through that process, and the idea of killing it is not the goal. It's the sense of satisfaction of accomplishment. That's why I'm not a trophy hunter. It's the accomplishment of pursuing, fair chase, putting an animal on the ground, and then appreciating the animal for what it does. That thing is out here 365 days a year and everything is trying to eat it. They don't have Gore-Tex and they can't go to the grocery store. It just gives me a huge sense of appreciation for the animal. This makes me feel a little more connected to this world we live in because what I see in a lot of people, they are so disconnected from what it takes to have fresh water. You got to go pump your water. What's the first thing you do, what's the second thing you do when you get to your campsite? You put up your shelter and then you go get water. So all of that stuff just grounds me. I don't know if it's because I'm sleeping on the ground to this day. But it just grounds me and what we should appreciate when we come back to our modern lifestyles and what we shouldn't take for granted every day. Trevon: That's a great answer. Why would you encourage anyone to join the CBA? Andrew Munsell: A couple of reasons. I'm a big advocate of CBA. What's great about organizations is there is a group of people, an organization that is working on your behalf. It's kind of like our military. They're working on our behalf to make sure we're safe. I'll admit all the stuff they do day to day, I might not want to know all the details. But I want to know that I'm safe and protected. So organizations, that's what they do. They have your best interest in mind. CBA, I admire the folks that continue to give their time to campaign, if you will, at the legislature on our behalf to bring our voice. What's important to us as a collective is what I appreciate about the CBA and what I recommend when I talk to others. The other thing is the Colorado Big Nine, the acknowledgments they have. The CBA banquet. The seminars, it's just a place to get educated for new bowhunters. It's a great place to network. No one's going to tell you, drop the pin for you, tell you exactly where to hunt. But, if you want to talk to people, understand things, get connected with a club, get recommendations for pro shops, there's no better place than to engage in a group that has the exact same interest that you do. the CBA is that organization. There's that comradery. I could be anywhere in the United States with that sticker on my truck. If you see another CBA member, they're probably going to pull over and chat you up, which is kind of cool. So you don't have to be accomplished. That's the membership that CBA represents. That's the people that are in it, pretty cool.  Trevon: That's awesome. Well, I really appreciate your time tonight Andrew. Andrew Munsell: You got it. I just want to give a shout out to everyone else, eight, nine, 10, one, two, three, four, bowhuntings with us. It's in us. It's who we are. So let's just keep it rolling.   Mon, 22 Feb 2021 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/5351/Colorado-Big-9-Award-Winner--Andrew-Munsell http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/5446/ATTENTION-MEMBERS- blog Members, It's THAT time of year!!! Elections for all Board of Director Positions will be held on Saturday December 3, 2022 at the board meeting in Denver. Several positions are currently or will be vacant, so we need your help and involvement. This is your opportunity to really make a difference. The CBA has spent the last year rebranding our organization to focus on growth. We will continue this & will be expanding programs, building value for the members, advancing technology and developing solid relationships with members, area reps and businesses. Come join us!  If you are interested in serving on the CBA Board of Directors, or if you would like more information, please the CBA at info@coloradobowhuntging.org ASAP. We would love to talk to you!   Wed, 14 Oct 2020 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/5446/ATTENTION-MEMBERS- http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/5407/May-2015-Meeting-Minutes blog May 2015 Meeting Minutes Tue, 16 Aug 2016 06:00:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/blog/5407/May-2015-Meeting-Minutes http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/3156/CBA-Jamboree events Wed, 14 Jan 2026 10:44:39 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/3156/CBA-Jamboree http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/3315/CBA-Kings-Canyon-3D-Shoot events Sat, 04 Apr 2026 11:12:48 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/3315/CBA-Kings-Canyon-3D-Shoot http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/3155/CBA-Banquet events Wed, 14 Jan 2026 10:45:12 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/3155/CBA-Banquet http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/3209/CPW-Commission-Meeting events Sun, 08 Feb 2026 05:14:57 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/3209/CPW-Commission-Meeting http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/2770/Rocky-Mountain-Bowmen-Archery-Club-3D-shoots events We are located off CR 23A just south of Leadville off of road to Airport. We will set up the two loops (14 3D's on each loop) and there will be kiddo friendly 3D's on the sight in range as well. Shoot all day Saturday and then we will take targets down about 2 or 3pm on Sunday. Please contact Aidan Fleming at 970-471-6390 with any questions Tue, 20 May 2025 08:59:21 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/2770/Rocky-Mountain-Bowmen-Archery-Club-3D-shoots http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/2769/Rocky-Mountain-Bowmen-Archery-Club-3D-shoots events We are located off CR 23A just south of Leadville off of road to Airport. We will set up the two loops (14 3D's on each loop) and there will be kiddo friendly 3D's on the sight in range as well. Shoot all day Saturday and then we will take targets down about 2 or 3pm on Sunday. Please contact Aidan Fleming at 970-471-6390 with any questions Tue, 20 May 2025 08:58:50 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/2769/Rocky-Mountain-Bowmen-Archery-Club-3D-shoots http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/2768/Rocky-Mountain-Bowmen-Archery-Club-3D-shoots events We are located off CR 23A just south of Leadville off of road to Airport. We will set up the two loops (14 3D's on each loop) and there will be kiddo friendly 3D's on the sight in range as well. Shoot all day Saturday and then we will take targets down about 2 or 3pm on Sunday. Please contact Aidan Fleming at 970-471-6390 with any questions Tue, 20 May 2025 08:59:04 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/2768/Rocky-Mountain-Bowmen-Archery-Club-3D-shoots http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/2771/West-Elk-Archers---Beaver-Creek-Classic events This is a fundraiser for our club, more details will be shared on our Facebook page. We welcome all archers and you can shoot just for fun. Scoring is ASA style, with a shootdown round for the top shooters, lunch is available. Tue, 20 May 2025 09:00:18 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/2771/West-Elk-Archers---Beaver-Creek-Classic http://coloradobowhunting.org/userfiles/2265/images/2023%20Triple%20Crown%203D%20Tournament%2Epng http://coloradobowhunting.org/ http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1297/2023-Air-Force-Academy-Triple-Crown-3D-Tournament---Leg-3-of-3 events Wed, 22 Mar 2023 09:34:27 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1297/2023-Air-Force-Academy-Triple-Crown-3D-Tournament---Leg-3-of-3 http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1289/Kings-Canyon-3D-Shoot events Kings Canyon 3D Shoot on June 9-11th, 2023. The northeast region of the Colorado Bowhunters Association is proud to announce that it will be once again having the annual Kings Canyon 3D Shoot on June 9-11th, 2023. It will be held in the same location, as always, on Village Bell Road (FR213) adjacent to Colorado highway 127, 17 miles north of Walden, CO. The range which features 40, 3D targets, opens on Friday the 11th at 7:30 a.m. and continues until Sunday at noon. There is free primitive camping on site with motels nearby in Walden. There is also some great fishing in the nearby North Park area. There will be door prizes and raffle items. This shoot has been very popular over the years and it takes place in a beautiful location. For more information, call Dan Leonhardt at (970) 484-5926 or Evan Peters at (970) 342-5447. If you have been to this shoot before, you know what a great event this is. If you have never attended this shoot please put this on your calendar and join us this year! Wed, 22 Mar 2023 08:23:00 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1289/Kings-Canyon-3D-Shoot http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1296/2023-Air-Force-Academy-Triple-Crown-3D-Tournament---Leg-2-of-3 events Wed, 22 Mar 2023 09:25:30 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1296/2023-Air-Force-Academy-Triple-Crown-3D-Tournament---Leg-2-of-3 http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1301/erika-test-event events Wed, 29 Mar 2023 12:53:42 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1301/erika-test-event http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1300/3D-Test-Calendar-Event events This is a test event to see if/how "groups" get added to our DB. The title of this event is called "3D Test Calendar Event" & other Groups such as have gotten created somehow from the calendar. Groups such as: 2023 Air Force Academy Triple Crown 3D Tournament 2023 Air Force Academy Triple Crown 3D Tournament - Leg 1 of 3 2023 Air Force Academy Triple Crown 3D Tournament - Leg 2 of 3 2023 Air Force Academy Triple Crown 3D Tournament - Leg 3 of 3 2023 Banquet Booth 2023 Banquet Corporate Table 2023 Banquet Family Table 2023 Banquet Single 2023 Ladies Banquet Lunch 2023 Triple Crown 3D Tournament CBA 2022 Awards Banquet CBA 2023 Awards Banquet CBA King's Canyon Shoot Kings Canyon 3D Shoot Jan 4, 2022 Blaze Orange Join Today Test A Jan 4, 2022 Blaze Orange Join Today Test B test Test Event Wed, 29 Mar 2023 12:27:18 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1300/3D-Test-Calendar-Event http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1299/3D-Test-Calendar-Event events This is a test event to see if/how "groups" get added to our DB. The title of this event is called "3D Test Calendar Event" & other Groups such as have gotten created somehow from the calendar. Groups such as: 2023 Air Force Academy Triple Crown 3D Tournament 2023 Air Force Academy Triple Crown 3D Tournament - Leg 1 of 3 2023 Air Force Academy Triple Crown 3D Tournament - Leg 2 of 3 2023 Air Force Academy Triple Crown 3D Tournament - Leg 3 of 3 2023 Banquet Booth 2023 Banquet Corporate Table 2023 Banquet Family Table 2023 Banquet Single 2023 Ladies Banquet Lunch 2023 Triple Crown 3D Tournament CBA 2022 Awards Banquet CBA 2023 Awards Banquet CBA King's Canyon Shoot Kings Canyon 3D Shoot Jan 4, 2022 Blaze Orange Join Today Test A Jan 4, 2022 Blaze Orange Join Today Test B test Test Event Wed, 29 Mar 2023 12:26:23 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1299/3D-Test-Calendar-Event http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1221/CBA-2022-Awards-Banquet events Sat, 04 Feb 2023 07:53:26 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1221/CBA-2022-Awards-Banquet http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1044/TestEvent-CBA-Board-Meeting events Testing features of website - This is not a real meeting. Thu, 20 Oct 2022 02:00:08 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1044/TestEvent-CBA-Board-Meeting http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1039/Archery-Range-Ribbon-Cutting events The newly expanded Archery Range in Windsor, CO will be having a ribbon- cutting ceremony on October 17th. Windsor Archery Range Monday, October 17th 5:30pm-6:30pm 465 Poudre Trail Drive, Windsor, CO 80550 For more details contact: Madeline Cheek Volunteer Coordinator Town of Windsor | Parks, Recreation & Culture 922 North 15th Street | Windsor, CO 80550 Off: 970-388-5199 mcheek@windsorgov.com Fri, 14 Oct 2022 10:44:35 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1039/Archery-Range-Ribbon-Cutting http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1033/CBA-Board-of-Directors-Meeting events Location: Bighorn Conference Room, 6060 Broadway, Denver CO 80216 & virtually via Zoom (reach out to BOD for meeting link) Thu, 06 Oct 2022 07:32:36 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/1033/CBA-Board-of-Directors-Meeting http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/826/2022-CBA-Jamboree events The 2022 Colordo Bowhunting Jamboree is scheduled for 7/15/22 - 7/17/22. More details to come! Wed, 19 Jan 2022 10:15:19 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/826/2022-CBA-Jamboree http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/770/Lon-Hagler-3D-Target-Shoot events Lon Hagler Archery Range - Loveland See Facebook for details Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:48:25 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/770/Lon-Hagler-3D-Target-Shoot http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/768/Denver-International-Sportsmen-s-Expo events Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:35:42 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/768/Denver-International-Sportsmen-s-Expo http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/769/Randy-Brabec-Benefit-Shoot events Red Rock Archery - Grand Junction, CO $20 registration See flyer for details Fri, 12 Nov 2021 04:45:15 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/769/Randy-Brabec-Benefit-Shoot http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/534/Muzzleloader-Pronghorn-Season-Closes events Muzzleloader Pronghorn Season Closes Mon, 22 Feb 2021 09:07:51 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/534/Muzzleloader-Pronghorn-Season-Closes http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/528/Muzzleloader-Deer-Elk-Bear-Season-Opens events Muzzleloader Deer/Elk/Bear Season Opens Mon, 22 Feb 2021 09:05:24 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/528/Muzzleloader-Deer-Elk-Bear-Season-Opens http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/571/Hike-to-Hunt-CO---Northwest-Region events Tue, 06 Apr 2021 01:58:36 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/571/Hike-to-Hunt-CO---Northwest-Region http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/493/Ramah-SWA-Cleanup-Day---East-Region events East Region: Ramah SWA Cleanup Day Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:36:21 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/493/Ramah-SWA-Cleanup-Day---East-Region http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/742/Jason-Roe-Benefit-Shoot events Golden High Country Archers Golden, Co May 23rd $35 Cash only - lunch included 8 am start time Wed, 19 May 2021 04:20:04 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/742/Jason-Roe-Benefit-Shoot http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/488/RMAA-2nd-3D-Event---Southeast-Region events Southeast Region: RMAA 2nd 3D Event Thu, 25 Mar 2021 09:34:52 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/488/RMAA-2nd-3D-Event---Southeast-Region http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/487/ASA-Qualifier-3D---Southwest-Region events Southwest Region: ASA Qualifier 3D Sun, 21 Feb 2021 08:49:59 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/487/ASA-Qualifier-3D---Southwest-Region http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/471/Primary-Draw-Applications-Open events Primary Draw Applications Open Sun, 21 Feb 2021 08:22:59 GMT http://coloradobowhunting.org/events/471/Primary-Draw-Applications-Open