BowCast Blog

It is often said that 10% of the people take 90% of the game. While I don't know if that statistic is correct, I do know that some hunters are consistently successful. So it leads us to the question, what are they doing differently than the rest of us? Do they go to church more often? Did they sell there soul to the devil? What do they have in common that leads them to be more successful ?

One of the things that I think these hunters do is that they are always self -evaluating and pushing themselves to be better hunters. Not only during the month leading up to there hunts but they are doing it all year. They are committed.

Bowhunters are like everybody else, we don't like change. We get stuck in ruts and we stay there. We go out and shoot our 25 arrows three times a week because that is what we have done for years. We sit in the same old non-productive tree stands year after year because we haven't done our homework and we haven't found a better spot.

I am guilty of it, this year I sat a spring that had a lot of deer activity during the summer but it shut down during the hunting season. Why did I sit so long? I am not sure, maybe I thought the deer would show up for me or maybe I felt that I had invested a ton of time in the area and I became too committed to the stand. I was having a rough hunt until I was "forced" to admit that I needed to make something happen and change stands. Once I changed locations I was covered up by deer and I was able to kill a nice buck.

Being Committed to Change:

Humans don't like change and we will often take the path of least resistance but this never leads to us overcoming our faults or inadequacies. People need to have a "Come to Jesus Moment"; that is the moment where you understand the problem and realize that you need to change your behaviors to make things better.

There is a saying, "The Hog and the Chicken both contribute to making breakfast; the chicken is just involved but the Hog is committed". i.e. the chicken donated an egg but the hog gave his ass.

Are you committed to change or are you just involved?

So where is all this leading? I know that we have talked about "Goals and Goals Setting" on the forums but we have never talked about our weaknesses and what we plan to do to strengthen them. We are going to solve that with a contest.

THE CONTEST

What I would like you to do is list your biggest weakness then come up with a plan on how you are going to improve it. It can be anything from being a poor shot, to not scouting enough, to not finding a quality area to hunt. All I ask is that we be honest with ourselves. I have started a thread in the forums called "Contest - Being Committed to Change". Post what you consider to be your biggest weakness, then in the same entry post a small plan to improve that weakness. Aneal and I will look at the responses and select a winner. The goal of this contest is get us to identify what we are doing wrong and to come up with a plan to strengthen our weakness.

THE PRIZE

We will be giving away a two FMP DVDs, 360 and the Ride, to the winner.... If you already have the videos don't worry I am sure that we can work something out. I can't find my DVDs and I have a ton of NIP crap in my home bowshop that we trade. :)

I know that this is going to be hard but change is NEVER easy.

Good Luck....

J-

An example of what we are looking for:

My weaknesses:

My biggest weakness is my fitness level, I often find areas either on a map or from glassing that I would love to check out but I am concerned that if I were to knock something down in that area I would have a very difficult time getting it out. My hunting buddy, Tommy says, "don't worry about it until you get something on the ground" but I guess it is just my nature to worry about things like that. I also think that when it comes to elk and turkey hunting half of the game is covering country and finding an animal to work.

My Solution:

Well, this is the hard part and it is okay to ask for help to bust thru your weakness. In my case, I reached out to several people to help me develop a plan to increase my overall fitness level. I will admit that it is really easy to do this on paper but it really takes commitment to follow thru with the plan. For me, my basic plan( I will get more detailed in later blogs) is to work on my core or functional strength on Tuesdays and Thursdays and work on my cardio on M-W-F.