Adjusting your maximum effective range

When I started bowhunting some 35 years ago, it was touted as a close-quarters game. You’d sit quietly in a tree stand and have a bird’s eye view of the deer woods. And, if you were lucky, you’d have a deer slip in close enough to hear it chew its cud. Back then, getting close was not just a matter of pride. It was a necessity, based primarily on the archer’s ability and the limitations of our equipment. A typical compound bow in those days was much heavier, with far less let-off and inherent accu­racy. Typically, they came with three sight pins, commonly set at 20, 30, and 40 yards. Trigger releases were unheard of. Early commercial hunting crossbows also used pin sights and were sometimes prone to bouts of inexplicable inaccuracy — right up until Excalibur came along. In short, consistent accuracy was a short-range affair for most of us. Most bowhunters I knew, and most magazine articles I read at the time, professed that the goal of a bowhunter was to get to within 20 yards of the deer you wanted to shoot —and 30 yards was considered a long and even risky shot unless you were hunting out west, where game was more skittish and cover scarcer. That 40-yard pin on our compounds was something we played around with at the archery range, but never seriously con­sidered using in the field. Things, of course, are different now. Technology has made modern archery equipment easier to handle and more inherently accurate at longer ranges. Now we have crossbows and compound bows that, set up correctly, are capable of incred­ible precision, sometimes even from as far as 100 yards. For most capable bowhunters, 30 yards is now almost a chip shot, especially if you use a crossbow. So, it’s not surprising that a growing number of bowhunters are extending their range in the field. It’s no longer rare to hear bowhunters speak of 40-yard shots as a viable option. Heck, a quick YouTube search will show you that some do not hesitate to attempt to arrow deer beyond that. But just because you can consistently hit a target the size of a deer’s vitals at 40 yards and beyond doesn’t mean you should try that on a real deer. Here’s why. Arrow groups and shaft angles I’m sure every bowhunter agrees that accurate shot placement is the most important