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Saddle Practice

B

Bratch

Member
SH Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2022
Messages
41
I am planning to move to a saddle next year for my hunting.

The question I have is how is everyone practicing shooting from the saddle? After the first shot are you recocking in the saddle, climbing down, working with a friend and lowering it for them to cock?
 
Bratch said:
I am planning to move to a saddle next year for my hunting.

The question I have is how is everyone practicing shooting from the saddle? After the first shot are you recocking in the saddle, climbing down, working with a friend and lowering it for them to cock?
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I got two shoots at a doe from my saddle this season. Saddle missed both. Mostly user error. But with a big enough platform I could put my foot into the front loop and re cock it. Oh, being on the back side of the tree helped.
 
I go to the gamelands to take practice shots and bring my son along with me. I lower my quiver and he refills it and moves my target.

I think you are on the right track. Introduce saddles to a buddy and you guys can take turns filling quivers and re-cocking for each other.
 
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Bratch said:
I am planning to move to a saddle next year for my hunting.

The question I have is how is everyone practicing shooting from the saddle? After the first shot are you recocking in the saddle, climbing down, working with a friend and lowering it for them to cock?
Click to expand...
How much practice do you really want? If you want to get good at shooting from saddle AND using the saddle, I would give that linesman belt a workout and retrieve my own arrows, load my own damn quiver lol. There is no better practice than doing it, and my personal opinion is you should do the whole process by yourself. That’s what I do when I practice from saddle. If I’m too lazy, I at least simulate the height by parking my truck at top of a hill and putting target at the 20-30yd marks downhill, then standing in my truck bed. I can rotate to simulate various shot angles from saddle as well.
 
Practice how you hunt. How are you going to recock while you are hunting? When you run out of arrows practice how you will get down at the end of your hunt. Then do it all over again.
 
Thanks for the ideas guys.

DelaWhere_Arrow said:
How much practice do you really want? If you want to get good at shooting from saddle AND using the saddle, I would give that linesman belt a workout and retrieve my own arrows, load my own damn quiver lol. There is no better practice than doing it, and my personal opinion is you should do the whole process by yourself. That’s what I do when I practice from saddle. If I’m too lazy, I at least simulate the height by parking my truck at top of a hill and putting target at the 20-30yd marks downhill, then standing in my truck bed. I can rotate to simulate various shot angles from saddle as well.
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Enough to get competent and comfortable, I have no idea how much that will be. I’ve done almost all of my shooting and hunting from the ground so the elevation will be a new experience for me. I’d like to verify all of my yardage holds and rangefinder readings from height.

Loopwing said:
Practice how you hunt. How are you going to recock while you are hunting? When you run out of arrows practice how you will get down at the end of your hunt. Then do it all over again.
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The last deer I shot from the tree stand I sat there with an uncocked bow until I climbed down to track her.
 
We are allowed 2 a day in VA. As long as I see the first one fall or have a really good feeling about the shot, I am reloading for the next one coming through. It is either sex our full archery season in VA.
 
Loopwing said:
We are allowed 2 a day in VA. As long as I see the first one fall or have a really good feeling about the shot, I am reloading for the next one coming through. It is either sex our full archery season in VA.
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Man after I shoot that first one all I can think about is having to drag that one out. I’m certainly not looking to perforate a second one to drag out!
 
2Sloe said:
Man after I shoot that first one all I can think about is having to drag that one out. I’m certainly not looking to perforate a second one to drag out!
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Funny you say that, last Saturday night I had eight does come in to 20 yards. Shot the biggest one, six of them ran away and one stood 30 yards away and I shot that one. Halfway through dragging the first one out I wanted to quit, let alone the second one.
 
Loopwing said:
Funny you say that, last Saturday night I had eight does come in to 20 yards. Shot the biggest one, six of them ran away and one stood 30 yards away and I shot that one. Halfway through dragging the first one out I wanted to quit, let alone the second one.
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The further I get from the truck, the bigger the deer has to be. That has saved quite a few younger bucks. I generally shoot a doe early to get on the board for the hunting contest, but generally I won’t even shoot a doe unless she’s jumping up and down in the middle of the road screaming “Shoot ME!, Shoot ME!” Lol. Your mindset changes with age for sure.
 
My opinion: start practicing in your saddle tethered in to the tree but with your feet in the ground, or set your platform like a foot off the ground. Get comfortable with the saddle there, then add the crossbow to the equation. Practice cocking and shooting and recocking from there, where it's simple to just unclip your bridge if you need to step away from the tree/fall risk is more of a pride than an injury thing. This let's you figure out your system for cocking your bow, then when you've got that figured out and feeling good, then repeat from height. This is basically the advice we give all new saddle hunters (taking the weapon out of the conversation) to get familiar with the saddle etc before getting elevated, and I believe it to be very good advice whether it's setting abstick or platform, transitioning to the platform, repelling etc. Really anything that has risk, practice on the ground.

End goal should be figuring out how to be comfortable in the tree. Do that and IMHO the crossbow cocking will be much easier to do. Any version of lowering doesn't seem like it's compatible with a follow-up shot to me as it will take too long or the motion will spook em if the first shot didn't.
 
I have five targets at different yardages. I climb the tree, shoot five arrows, climb down and I'm done. I use a climbing stand seat for a platform that is big enough to easily cock the mini.
 
I like it! If your first 5 cold shots are on. I would say you are good! Go do something else with your time.
 
I don't hunt with a crossbow but I encourage you to do just what you are doing but just do it from 2 ft. off the ground until you are comfortable. I consider myself deadly with my compound out to 30 yards but when I got my first saddle I tried to climb, hang and shoot from height right off and I couldn't hit my 3d target from 15 yards. I'm talking I missed the whole damn target. With a little more practice I got comfortable shooting backwards (facing the tree instead of facing away from the tree) and when I tried again from height I had no problems whatsoever. Good luck!
 
Before my first season in a saddle I practiced shooting from every position imaginable. I set my platform up about 2 feet off the ground so that I’d be more or less dealing with all the factors but could also get quickly in and out of the tree. After a lot of that I started shooting at hunting height - If I had a helper I’d shoot as much as I wanted, without a helper I’d shoot alot less. The goal is to get to the point where you only need to shoot a single quiver of arrows and have them all be spot on. It’s all about figuring out how to deal with the inevitable obstacles: the tether, branches leaning around the trunk, shooting from horribly awkward positions - they are all guaranteed to happen when a good buck walks in.
 
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Blacksmith said:
Pick up a cheap recurve. Garage Sale the crossbow. Take 2 doz. arrows up w/you and don't come back down for awhile....
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So he has a method he can effectively kill deer with and put meat in the freezer, BUT he should not do that. He should change to a method that is inherently more difficult and do that???? The whole idea of hunting is putting meat in the freezer, anything else is what you glamourize it to be.
Just go take a hike in the woods and stop by the butcher on the way home.

Reminds me I the shirt I saw. "What do you call a hunter that doesn't kill anything, a vegetarian"

Plus, if I don't come home with deer, my wife says I can't go hunting as much. She doesn't mind being a single parent during hunting season as long as I fill the freezer. Can't eat antlers.
 
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Loopwing said:
So he has a method he can effectively kill deer with and put meat in the freezer, BUT he should not do that. He should change to a method that is inherently more difficult and do that???? The whole idea of hunting is putting meat in the freezer, anything else is what you glamourize it to be.
Just go take a hike in the woods and stop by the butcher on the way home.

Reminds me I the shirt I saw. "What do you call a hunter that doesn't kill anything, a vegetarian"

Plus, if I don't come home with deer, my wife says I can't go hunting as much. She doesn't mind being a single parent during hunting season as long as I fill the freezer. Can't eat antlers.
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It was just a Joke.. Lighten Up
 
I am ok with jokes. Heck, I am one of the biggest smarta$$e$ you will meet. There are a lot of guys on here that make things exponentially harder on themselves and then new guys read it and think it is gospel.
 
Bratch said:
I am planning to move to a saddle next year for my hunting.

The question I have is how is everyone practicing shooting from the saddle? After the first shot are you recocking in the saddle, climbing down, working with a friend and lowering it for them to cock?
Click to expand...

It’s a struggle but you can cock a crossbow from the tree/saddle. I would practice w a crossbow by just getting into position for each shot. Shoot it every now and then but if the crossbow is on the rest depends on you being comfortable holding still in different positions.



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