Americana Outdoors E-Magazine - August 2022

35 yards out. I wasn’t worried where he crossed or where he stopped since I was shooting the Garmin Xero A1i Pro bow sight. Once I’m drawn, the Xero will give me a precise range at the touch of a button to my target and then give me one single aiming point to focus on thanks to its laser range finding capabilities. This ensures there won’t be any guessing on which pin or how far the buck was, which helps an archer eliminate any doubts where to aim. I was shooting a Blackout NV32 bow with BlackOut MX6 Micro Diameter arrows tipped with Blackout Gator broadheads. According to my off-season chronograph work, my bow setup had those arrows traveling 292 feet per second. Now at full draw, I settled the single pin on the vitals at 32 yards and let the arrow fly! The result? A perfect pass through. The buck from where I sat ran straight away, hopping the barbed wire fence and out of sight. through my veins like it always does. At that moment I get nervous, chatty, goofy, and tend to babble much like I did when I shot my first deer some 40 plus years ago. I turn to Jeff in full babble telling him, “The shot just felt perfect to me. We will give him some time. But I’m thinking that deer’s already dead over there.” Jeff is now grinning ear to ear, always a good sign since he has a great ability to process it all behind that camera. He’s already saying that the deer should be dead right over there. “I saw blood spraying everywhere, that broadhead opened him up and you hit him perfect.” THE TRACKING BEGINS… We waited several more minutes and climbed down from the tree stand. I walked off to get the Yamaha Wolverine Side-By-Side that we had been using to carry all our gear and now hopefully a The words “SMOKED HIM” ring out in excitement as I exhale and the post-shot adrenaline courses

deer. With all that done, I walked over to the spot I had shot the deer. I reached down to pick up the blood-stained BlackOut MX6 Micro Diameter Arrow right where the deer was standing and examined the arrow from the broadhead to nock. No doubt about it – total pass-through.

Exactly what you want to see!

With confidence in what we had seen with all the blood, we slowly and easily, followed the blood trail. Sure enough, roughly eighty-five yards away, we find the buck piled up as the sun begins to set. Nothing is more fun and gratifying than making a good shot. That validates all the practice throughout the off-season. Bad things happen in bow hunting at times, no matter how much you practice. I have hit ’em in places that just amazed me how fast they died, and I’ve hit ’em in places where they didn’t. This one here was just a total pass-through and was running dead from the moment that arrow hit him. That to me, is just so gratifying.

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