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What do you consider an acceptable 40yard group to feel confident on an animal.

I like the softball -10 rule, and If I’m honest with myself, that’s 30 right now, so I’m keeping within 20 in 2022. I see the minus 10 as really important, as you’re covering deer movement, broadheads vs. field point, wierd stance/Adrenalin, quite a bit.
 
I'm not criticizing anyone with this, but it would be good to know if you can make these same groups from a tree saddle from all the weird angles this can present. If you can then great. Standing flat footed on a range is different than in a saddle or stand with your target buck coming in fast from a direction you didn't think he would come from. You may be dialed in at 40 all day long at home. What about weak side out of a saddle at 20 feet, etc? My guess is form goes out the window. Mine does, lol. I shoot my bow all year long, 3 to 4 times a week, and on a good day I am a competent 25 yard shot on deer size game under real world hunting conditions. Try it out. A good pre season climb for practice would do anyone good.
 
I practice a lot and go to a 3D shoot, nearly every weekend. I don't have a problem shooting 3" groups at 40 yards. :)
However, that's called archery. Bowhunting is another issue.
I don't like taking shots on deer, past 25 yards and have only done so 3x in 40+ years of bowhunting. My furthest shot was 32 yards.
 
Lcoop said:
I know it will vary per situation and person, but for you is it baseball sized groups, softball, paper plate? what is considered a "good" group at 40?
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You’re really asking two questions:

1) What’s a good group at 40? If you can shoot a one inch group at 10 yards, two inches at 20, three inches at 30, 4 inches at 40 and so on; that’s a good group. Especially if you can do it every time, not most of the time.

2) What’s good enough to consider yourself in the game at 40 yards on a deer? There are too many variables in play to answer this without a dissertation. I’ve killed big game at more than twice that distance from the ground but passed a shot on a doe from the saddle at 25 yards last November.

Every situation is different, if you’re looking for advice: practice as much as you can and only take shots that you know will result in a clean kill.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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Softball size with a slow draw and relatively quick aim and release. Occasionally, the long deliberate hold is also a good litmus for hunting scenarios.
 
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I regularly practice 80 yards outback on my home range. I feel very confident hitting inside an 6" circle at that distance. That said my furthest whitetail was around 35-40 ish,squirrel at 76 lol. The woods I hunt its almost impossible to shoot any further then that anyway. Learning animal behavior and "when to shoot" is as important as anything else. Every situation is different so their is no hard set rule for me. I've had cracked out deer jump the bow at 12 yards and have killed deer at 30 that never moved. If my bow is tuned well and broadheads are flying true I won't limit myself to a set 40 and in rule but the scenario has to be perfect. Follow up shots are different and an arrow will fly anywhere on the sight wheel.
 
raisins said:
you only avoid the suffering of humans when it comes to sentient beings?
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I just do different math.

“Minimize suffering of sentient beings” is a marathon, covering a lot of moral landscapes.

I try to think about this with the right abstraction. I’m going to kill tens of thousands of animals and eat them in my lifetime. Directly or indirectly. If I shot at every deer that came within 50 yards for my entire hunting career, I might be able to wound 20.

I could signal to everyone on the interwebs that I’m ethical because I only shoot deer inside 30. That’s not why I do it. I do it because I don’t like tracking deer I don’t make a good shot on. I’m lazy and too good if a hunter to waste that time.

I’d rather clean up my act in ways that improve the lives of hundreds or thousands of critters. And sleep at night if I decide to take a long shot.

I don’t offer my advice to shoot 30 or less from moral high ground. It’s from knowing most bow hunters are terrible shots. And many of them take their ethics and morals into consideration. I’m just helping with their math.
 
kyler1945 said:
I just do different math.

“Minimize suffering of sentient beings” is a marathon, covering a lot of moral landscapes.

I try to think about this with the right abstraction. I’m going to kill tens of thousands of animals and eat them in my lifetime. Directly or indirectly. If I shot at every deer that came within 50 yards for my entire hunting career, I might be able to wound 20.

I could signal to everyone on the interwebs that I’m ethical because I only shoot deer inside 30. That’s not why I do it. I do it because I don’t like tracking deer I don’t make a good shot on. I’m lazy and too good if a hunter to waste that time.

I’d rather clean up my act in ways that improve the lives of hundreds or thousands of critters. And sleep at night if I decide to take a long shot.

I don’t offer my advice to shoot 30 or less from moral high ground. It’s from knowing most bow hunters are terrible shots. And many of them take their ethics and morals into consideration. I’m just helping with their math.
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I can fall into this category if I could shoot animals as well as I could shoot foam. I’d air them out to 60. I’m comfortable to hit a 12 ring at 60 but bring a living breathing organism into it and that confidence flies out the window. I personally need to limit myself because of my horrible buck fever or count to a hundred or something. Each person will have their own thoughts or process or opinions of there ability. I also set my hunting locations up to my main shooting lanes are 20 yards but they don’t follow the script
 
kyler1945 said:
I just do different math.

“Minimize suffering of sentient beings” is a marathon, covering a lot of moral landscapes.

I try to think about this with the right abstraction. I’m going to kill tens of thousands of animals and eat them in my lifetime. Directly or indirectly. If I shot at every deer that came within 50 yards for my entire hunting career, I might be able to wound 20.

I could signal to everyone on the interwebs that I’m ethical because I only shoot deer inside 30. That’s not why I do it. I do it because I don’t like tracking deer I don’t make a good shot on. I’m lazy and too good if a hunter to waste that time.

I’d rather clean up my act in ways that improve the lives of hundreds or thousands of critters. And sleep at night if I decide to take a long shot.

I don’t offer my advice to shoot 30 or less from moral high ground. It’s from knowing most bow hunters are terrible shots. And many of them take their ethics and morals into consideration. I’m just helping with their math.
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Are you saying this because, as you've said before, rarely you are in a spot that offers 50yds of shooting?

Or is this a function of what you think about your accuracy.

I'd wound hundreds at least.
 
Plebe said:
Are you saying this because, as you've said before, rarely you are in a spot that offers 50yds of shooting?

Or is this a function of what you think about your accuracy.

I'd wound hundreds at least.
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Mostly a function of where I hunt. I will see or hear deer at longer distances. But there’s not a lot of shot opportunities for a bow at those distances due to cover and terrain.

Just some blurry memories of this past season where I hunted more than I ever have, in more different places than I ever have. I can recall 3 chances to shoot a deer past 30 yards. In dozens of encounters. And in those cases I was very confident those deer would close the distance(and did). One I shot at 40 with the HC mini and hit exactly where I intended. I wouldn’t have taken that shot with my compound because the deer would’ve seen me draw.

Call it 40 years of bowhunting from start to finish. I’ll never hunt that much again, but let’s be conservative and call it 2 shots a year at 30+. I feel good I’m killing those deer 50% of the time. That leaves 1 deer per year(40). My guess is I’ll miss half the time, and wound a deer half the time. 20 deer get my unethical externalities…

I might be off by a fraction, but not an order of magnitude.

To be clear, what defines a shot opportunity at 50 yards for me is different than at 10. I’ll shoot a deer trotting at 10 yards or facing straight on or looking at me or any number of scenarios. A moment frozen in time of a deer standing broadside at 45 yards is not a shot opportunity. What I view as an opportunity for a shot at long distance is a calm, unalert, still deer. Preferably one traveling with others, so that a noise won’t be as spooky to it.

This is a rare occurrence in my world. Deer are usually alone, usually quite alert, and usually moving through at a steady pace.


Edit - I was able to review my season results thread and see how crappy my memory is. I let 3 arrows go beyond 30 yards. Two resulted in dead deer, one cut hair but drew no blood. One of those did not hit where I was aiming even though it killed the deer.

I feel good about the memory of deer I passed on at distance. And those results are probably a good indicator of how things would split over time: a miss, a connection that didn’t hit where I was aiming(call it a wounding if we remove my good luck), and a good hit.
 
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kyler1945 said:
Mostly a function of where I hunt. I will see or hear deer at longer distances. But there’s not a lot of shot opportunities for a bow at those distances due to cover and terrain.

Just some blurry memories of this past season where I hunted more than I ever have, in more different places than I ever have. I can recall 3 chances to shoot a deer past 30 yards. In dozens of encounters. And in those cases I was very confident those deer would close the distance(and did). One I shot at 40 with the HC mini and hit exactly where I intended. I wouldn’t have taken that shot with my compound because the deer would’ve seen me draw.

Call it 40 years of bowhunting from start to finish. I’ll never hunt that much again, but let’s be conservative and call it 2 shots a year at 30+. I feel good I’m killing those deer 50% of the time. That leaves 1 deer per year(40). My guess is I’ll miss half the time, and wound a deer half the time. 20 deer get my unethical externalities…

I might be off by a fraction, but not an order of magnitude.

To be clear, what defines a shot opportunity at 50 yards for me is different than at 10. I’ll shoot a deer trotting at 10 yards or facing straight on or looking at me or any number of scenarios. A moment frozen in time of a deer standing broadside at 45 yards is not a shot opportunity. What I view as an opportunity for a shot at long distance is a calm, unalert, still deer. Preferably one traveling with others, so that a noise won’t be as spooky to it.

This is a rare occurrence in my world. Deer are usually alone, usually quite alert, and usually moving through at a steady pace.


Edit - I was able to review my season results thread and see how crappy my memory is. I let 3 arrows go beyond 30 yards. Two resulted in dead deer, one cut hair but drew no blood. One of those did not hit where I was aiming even though it killed the deer.

I feel good about the memory of deer I passed on at distance. And those results are probably a good indicator of how things would split over time: a miss, a connection that didn’t hit where I was aiming(call it a wounding if we remove my good luck), and a good hit.
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Gotcha. It's an opportunity based math.

.........

Your tens of thousands killed and eaten (directly or indirectly), those were 100% killed, recovered, consumed resources.

I assume you could live an entire lifetime eating 100% killed and recovered resources; that you don't hunt because you need to for sustenance.

When I look at the math, every killed an unrecovered deer is completely avoidable by shopping at the local Aldi or Whole Foods or whatever. So that 20 isn't categorically the same (ethically or morally) as the other tens of thousands providing sustenance.

We can use this justification to conflate an anti-hunting argument.

Food waste is probably a better moral or ethical comparison to wounded and unrecovered.
 
Plebe said:
Gotcha. It's an opportunity based math.

.........

Your tens of thousands killed and eaten (directly or indirectly), those were 100% killed, recovered, consumed resources.

I assume you could live an entire lifetime eating 100% killed and recovered resources; that you don't hunt because you need to for sustenance.

When I look at the math, every killed an unrecovered deer is completely avoidable by shopping at the local Aldi or Whole Foods or whatever. So that 20 isn't categorically the same (ethically or morally) as the other tens of thousands providing sustenance.

We can use this justification to conflate an anti-hunting argument.

Food waste is probably a better moral or ethical comparison to wounded and unrecovered.
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This assessment ignores the suffering of animals you eat from industrial scale farming. The total amount of days of misery of one cow far outweighs the total days of suffering of every deer I might wound. And it’s not close.

Again, bigger math.

I’m not saying I can’t do better. I’m saying I start with a rational upper and lower bound. And then I bracket my behavior within that with reasonableness.

Suicide has a good argument here if you want to get to the turtle at the bottom. Then you could argue that by not killing yourself, you could take action to prevent more suffering than you caused by living. More turtles.
 
kyler1945 said:
This assessment ignores the suffering of animals you eat from industrial scale farming. The total amount of days of misery of one cow far outweighs the total days of suffering of every deer I might wound. And it’s not close.

Again, bigger math.

I’m not saying I can’t do better. I’m saying I start with a rational upper and lower bound. And then I bracket my behavior within that with reasonableness.

Suicide has a good argument here if you want to get to the turtle at the bottom. Then you could argue that by not killing yourself, you could take action to prevent more suffering than you caused by living. More turtles.
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A measure of misery wasn't part of your original mathematical justification.

You don't have to cause any suffering to animals by wounding them.

Your tens of thousands of killed and eaten already include substantially more animals that came to market than you personally killed in the wild. You could take to photographing big bucks instead of wounding them. Or, make those other life choices you made previous inference to, like stop supporting the indentured meat trade.

I'm not saying you should do either.

Your math highlights a proportionally small number of killed and wasted, contextualized by a large number of killed and used. This is, in a discussion of ethics, a poor comparison.

Then, lumping them altogether as just dead critters, mathematically, supports the bloodlust argument many anti-hunters lean on.

As for misery, I'm not sure how to assess that. I'm pretty sure the misery of a gut shot deer must be great. And with folks aiming at spots, I don't know how to weigh the value of a few wild months vs a few years of free range on the prairie, or if lucky beer and massage. Even if I did, that seems very situational.

I'd hate to be a chicken.
 
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Plebe said:
Nope, I Really don’t follow pro archery and was genuinely shocked by the statement that was put forth.
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i think he means what i said about very few of us hitting a softball everytime

it was just an opinion

like i said, shooting softball sized groups every time is much easier than hitting a softball every time because the former gets rid of between day and between round variation and only looks at within round variation
 
raisins said:
i think he means what i said about very few of us hitting a softball everytime

it was just an opinion

like i said, shooting softball sized groups every time is much easier than hitting a softball every time because the former gets rid of between day and between round variation and only looks at within round variation
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Lol. I’m sure you’re right. I don’t know much more than gearhead archers have won in Vegas with 24” ata bows.

I don’t have any idea of target size. I would expect they could shoot that well. I’m no pro and I shoot pretty well at 30 and figure tournament archers must be far better.
 
Plebe said:
A measure of misery wasn't part of your original mathematical justification.

You don't have to cause any suffering to animals by wounding them.

Your tens of thousands of killed and eaten already include substantially more animals that came to market than you personally killed in the wild. You could take to photographing big bucks instead of wounding them. Or, make those other life choices you made previous inference to, like stop supporting the indentured meat trade.

I'm not saying you should do either.

Your math highlights a proportionally small number of killed and wasted, contextualized by a large number of killed and used. This is, in a discussion of ethics, a poor comparison.

Then, lumping them altogether as just dead critters, mathematically, supports the bloodlust argument many anti-hunters lean on.

As for misery, I'm not sure how to assess that. I'm pretty sure the misery of a gut shot deer must be great. And with folks aiming at spots, I don't know how to weigh the value of a few wild months vs a few years of free range on the prairie, or if lucky beer and massage. Even if I did, that seems very situational.

I'd hate to be a chicken.
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I need nutrients inside of animals to survive and be healthy. You can argue whether that’s true or not, or if it will always be. But for my math, I believe it to currently be true, at least within reason.

I want to live.

My personal ethos is to do my best to reduce suffering of sentient beings within reason.

I look at all the ways that I induce suffering on sentient beings. I do my best, in the most abstract sense, to reduce that. I take a long view of it.

If you told me that you had a magic pill that would give me all the nutrition I need, and would never have to cut down another rain forest or shoot another animal to get it, and you could show me the externalities of generating that pill did not outweigh the suffering reduction of all those critters, I’d stop huntjng on the spot.

Not that I don’t enjoy it and my heritage and what not. But that’s me being intellectually honest. I might not like it, but the trade off would be worth it to me.


I’m not a “you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet” subscriber. I just take a realistic approach to our current reality. The universe is chaos and destruction and suffering. If I didn’t pay attention to my actions and their consequences, I would increase that destruction. Likely.

Some people believe a white haired fella in the sky is gonna whoop em with a belt for eternity if they don’t behave. That’s not so different from me thinking the universe will be whipping everything to a worse degree if I’m not doing my part to reduce the total scope of misery while I’m here.

Math that supports being lazy and not wanting to track poorly shot deer, and math that supports generally reducing suffering within the bounds of reasonableness, are not mutually exclusive.

Not sure where we’re crossing wires…
 
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