Practice makes perfect

Archery season in Eastern North Carolina is often overlooked, but a bow could be the ticket to filling your tags. Here are the keys.

With North Carolina’s 2012-13 deer season set to begin when the statewide archery season opens Sept. 8, bowhunters from Manteo to Murphy will be in the woods.

Hopefully, most of them will have practiced enough to be able to make accurate shots, but outside conditions and hunter success or failure will vary greatly, depending upon weather, food sources, stand locations and dozens of other variables.

Location will likely be the key factor in how much time huntters spend in the woods. September is too early for pre-rut conditions, even in the east where the first mating begins before spreading to the Piedmont and western mountains.

September bowhunting means, in essence, hunting food sources such as soybean and corn — especially in the eastern part of the state, which has a surfeit of big farms and large fields.

Robbie Hall of Swansboro is one of the most-dedicated bow hunters in Eastern North Carolina. When he’s not operating his saltwater fishing guide service (Hall ’Em In Charters), he’s often in a tree stand or ground blind, hoping a big buck will walk into bow range.

Hall, 31, said he lost the urge to hunt behind dogs a long time ago, and then he gave up firearms hunting altogether.

“I started out as a boy hunting with dogs, like everybody else,” he said. “It got to be not much fun because the deer usually are moving fast, and you don’t have a lot of time to decide if you want to take a particular buck or not. It’s hard to see what he has on his head.”

In 1992, Hall switched to still-hunting with a bow during archery season, then with a muzzleloader and rifle during the 2 ½-month-long gun season.

“But I killed this nice 8-pointer at 150 yards with a rifle and didn’t get excited at all,” he said. “That was about five years ago. So I switched over totally to bowhunting, which is all I hunt with now.”

Hall said getting close to his quarry provides the excitement he remembered as a youngster.

“It really gets a rise out of me,” he said. “I’d rather shoot a doe at 15 yards with a bow than a buck at 200 yards with a rifle.

“When I hunt, I look for something that gives me a rush, and bowhunting is the ultimate for me.”

Hall said his uncle, James Hall (who lives at the Eastern Shore of Maryland), initiated him into hunting deer with bow and arrow.

“He’s killed some monsters with a bow, and he’s an awesome bowhunter,” Hall said, “but he lives in a dynamite spot.”

Maryland is known for its large bucks, “probably because of all the corn they plant there,” Hall said. “The deer have plenty to eat.”

Hall said one of the keys to being a successful bowhunter he learned from his uncle is dedication to practice. He believes target-shooting a dozen or so arrows a day — twice a week before August, then daily until hunting season begins — is crucial to accuracy, which is basic to killing deer. After all, Major League baseball teams take batting practice before every game.

“I shoot my bow at least twice a week, every week of the year,” he said. “You just don’t want to start out in the woods with a bow you haven’t practiced with. You gotta shoot some arrows, and I mean with the broadheads on them if you use fixed broadheads.

“Nobody really can get good at something, especially shooting a bow and arrow, unless they practice. You’ll make bad shots, and I’ve done it, no matter how much you practice. But practice is the key to all of it.”

When August arrives, Hall shoots every day and continues through the end of archery season in mid-October.

With many bean fields and corn fields available in the east, Hall starts scouting early, usually in July and August. He usually drives to a field in the evening, sits in his truck and watches deer filter out of the woods.

“You can get a good idea how many deer and what bucks are coming into the fields,” Hall said. “You also can get good ideas where to place stands.”

Soybeans, he said, can be unbelievable for early-season bowhunters.

“I ride around in the evening after I get done fishing,” he said. “My daughter really loves to look for deer with me. She’s always looking to see one with antlers.”

Some days in August, deer also feed on beans in the middle of the day.

“The latter part of the season, they’ll move into the woods and stay there pretty much,” said Hall, who also uses trail cameras that help detect bucks in thick cover or woods settings. “I’ve shot deer I never knew were there before I saw them on a trail camera. Usually it’s near thick cover.

“I’d go in there, and they’d come in about the time the cameras took their pictures.”

After he decides which fields he wants to hunt and where deer are leaving the woods, he hangs his stands in early August. He takes them down at the end of the season because of the likelihood of hurricanes and strong storms that may level trees.

“But you don’t want to wait until a week before the season opens to go in, and hang stands and cut out shooting lanes,” he said. “That’s too much disturbance and likely will push deer away from that field. I use hand pruners to cut out shooting lanes.”

He likes to hunt tree stands around soybean field edges early in the season.

“I like to put them at trails coming into a bean field,” Hall said. “You watch and see deer are on a routine, and you pretty much know where and when they’re going to come into a field.”

Hall said hunting food sources in September isn’t as likely to produce a big buck as the rut, “but when deer get on a feeding pattern and haven’t been messed with all year long, it’s the best time to cash in on a buck.

Early in October, Hall likes hunting around standing corn.

“Standing corn is a bowhunter’s best friend,” Hall said, “but they don’t start coming to standing corn until October.”

Because of their versatility and ease of placement, portable lock-on style stands are Hall’s choice.

“For both field edges and woods, I like lock-on stands and try to pick out trees where the prevailing wind won’t be blowing into the woods where deer will be coming to the fields,” he said. “When I hang woods stands, I do it with wind direction in mind.

“The wind will blow mostly from the west to southwest, but not always. Sometimes, I’ll put three or four stands around a particular woods spot so I can go to the best one.”

He likes to put stands at least 15 feet off the ground.

“I use strap-on ladder steps and safety harnesses,” he said. “My friend, Sean Stokes, won’t get in a lock-on because one time he fell out of a ladder stand. But I use safety harnesses. I can take a ladder and a lock-on and put up a stand in 20 to 25 minutes.”

When choosing a woods spot for a stand, Hall likes trails that lead to pin oaks, which drop the prevalent acorn in eastern North Carolina.

Background cover also is important. Hall doesn’t place a stand in a lone tree along a field edge or in woods without something solid behind him.

“You don’t want to be sky-lined,” he said, “so cover behind you in a tree is very important, something that breaks up your silhouette and gives you the opportunity to draw your bow.”

Because it’s legal to hunt deer over bait in North Carolina, many archers take advantage of the opportunity, including Hall. But he does something different than most.

“I start putting corn out at the end of July and continue into August,” he said. “Last year I had to cut down on my corn piles (because of the high price of shelled corn). I used to have six or seven, but now I only have three or four.”

In July and August, to get deer acclimated to coming to stands in woods, he scatters half of a 5-gallon bucket of shelled corn on the ground in the woods where he’s already put stands. He continues baiting later into the season, especially in the woods, to keep deer coming to those stands.

When it comes to equipment, Hall uses a Bear Mauler compound bow and Beman ICS Hunter arrows fitted with G5 T3 mechanical-expansion broadheads. The all-steel G5s, he said, almost always punch completely through a deer and leave three 1 ½-inch-wide tracks for wide entrance and exit wounds and a good blood trail.

Hall used fixed-blade broadheads until three years ago when he lost a big buck. He discovered the G5 T3, which debuted in 2010, and felt it offered a more-lethal combination of wound size and blood trails.

“It’s not all the broadhead, though,” he said. “Patience is the key, and practice helps.”

Hall said bowhunters need patience to wait for the right shot and angle before releasing an arrow. He had a “quartering-on” angle at the big buck and believes his mistake was in not waiting for a broadside or quartering-away shot.

“I tracked that deer for a mile and lost the blood trail eventually,” Hall said. “It still makes me sick to think about it. But at least I know the problem — a bad shot angle. Maybe a G5 broadhead would have made a difference, so I switched to them.”

Since then, Hall said he’d nailed several whitetails with his new broadheads.

“If you get a double-lung shot, the most any deer I’ve shot has gone is 50 yards before (it) piled up,” he said.

In September, Hall likes to wait at least an hour after he arrows a deer before beginning to trail.

“You don’t want to wait much longer because it’s usually warm, and you need to find a deer in that heat,” he said.

A whitetail that’s been struck by a killing shot in the heart/lung area will run differently than any other injured animal, Hall said.

“When they tuck their heads and put their tail down and take off running hard in a straight line, that’s when you know you’ve hit a deer good,” he said. “You rarely see one go a few steps and drop.”

A double-lung shot means a deer might run a maximum of 50 yards, he said.

But it’s still important to listen.

“Even with a hard-hit deer, it’s important to listen to him as long as you can,” Hall said. “Sometimes a deer can make a big loop, and you won’t know it if you’re not paying attention.”