those fixed broadheads may kill well, but are flat out dangerous, ended my buddy's archery hunt 1 year with sticthes to his index finger. another year I got a loose fletching 1/2 in/out of my index finger, but was able to pull it out, fix it up and finish the hunt. another reason to always check your gear when you get settled.
I suppose everybody will have a different take on what makes a hunt successful.
Being able to kill a deer does seem to make a hunt more successful, but just being able to go to the woods makes it a success in my book.
To some folks it's a year long project and to others hunting may only be 2 or 3 trips per season. I get a big kick out of just riding down in the woods and pulling the SD card out of a camera and wondering what's on it, if anything? Putting out mineral in the same site for years is a mark of success to me as you see a depression that gets deeper each year as it is visited by deer throughout the year. Sitting in a shooting house that has a notch cut on the window sill for every deer that we've given a ride home in the back of the truck, this is success, even if we never kill another one.
The proceeds of a successful hunt are many as we think of what we gain from the time in the woods by ourselves or with family and friends. If we are too successful, we have to spend time and/or money in processing our success into edible portions for our family and friends. One of our favorite sayings after a successful hunt where no one killed a deer is, "At least we don't have to clean one tonight!"
Treefarmer
Couldn't have been said better farmer... :saluting
Sometimes I think that I'm hunting in a zoo. This morning I stalked and as I eased though the woods I walked by a doe at about 10 yards and she never ran or even acted like she saw me. (as she staired me down as I passed by) Slipped in on a bunch of hogs and had 3 pigs about 60 lbs. less than 5 yards playing with each other as kids would do. And a boar that was aprox. 200 lbs. with cutters about 2" long. It isn't always about killing...
Here a successful week end. I saw a young buck 200 yards legal deer let it walk. (have 3 in freezer) Saw 3 pigs put one in the box. Stopped and BS-ed the rest of Saturday with other hunters.
The big successful part for trip was making it back to the boat ramp safe and in no rush with no time line early Sunday.
success has many variables. For instance, the last kill I had I actually considered it a major failure as I shot a 3pt that I had let go many times but he was grunting and chasing does hard back and forth along the plot and I thought he was much bigger and knew he wasn't the other 3pts I had been seeing recently.
I am highly competitive sometimes but there's no way I want to kill or clean more than 8 bucks per year and I bet I hunt 50 days easily per season. If I'm in the stand I am there to kill a decent buck mostly but when it's this time of year I'd rather go run my dogs and hear a good race and the fellas shooting at one and the excitement of the chase. There's celebration when the buck is down but on the other hand, the excitement is over for that race once the buck is dead. The races I tend to remember are the ones than span hours when it's non-stop action.
As my girlfriend says, I don't hunt, I walk armed through the woods.
