The Art of Shooting Bees

The majority of your bowhunting year is spent practicing and/or training. This is the place to discuss it!
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jaydee2trad
Posts: 1173
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:28 pm

The Art of Shooting Bees

#1 Post by jaydee2trad »

First off, I was always very competitive at shooting anything. At 5 years old, mt dad had me shooting marbles off of fence posts with a 22 Ruger Bearcat. Then as a kid, every cent that I could muster up went to BBs and I shot the fool out of them. I would go down to my grandfathers' ponds to shoot dragonflies, the ones hoovering and this was with no sights. To me, being able to hit moving objects like a dragonfly or a flying bird with the BB gun was the big deal. Going to a 22 was no big deal, I never used the sights anyways and often just took them off. An uncle called me aliar twice, once when squirrel hunting. I had killed several when he showed up and my dog had one treed. He wanted to shoot it and so I handed hm my gun, I head shot everything so my grandfather couldn't get me to eat the brains. After 4 shots, the uncle couldn't hit the squirrel and wanted to know how I was using the sights. I told him that I never used sights so I didn't know where they were even sighted in, he called me a liar. I took the gun and threw it up and head shot the squirrel. I only began using sights to shoot muzzleloaders in competition in TX when I was 17. While in the service, I would shoot a brick or more of 22 every weekend plus the 357 that I loaded with my buddies. Three of them still contact me and they talk about my shooting abilities. I could easily shoot things thrown in the air with a 22 and shot a lot of mice and rats at a dump. So, I learned to focus on what I meant to shoot rather than worry with the sights. My first buck was with a 30 carbine at 229 yards, I just threw the gun up and dropped it with one shot. I shot a ton of pistols all of the time and got into fast draw for a while. But when I began shooting a stick and string, I was bowfish a lot and had problems with hits and misses. I would make an awesome shot then blow an easy one. I had to figure out how to get even better. So, at the time, there were a ton of bees on the clover in this field. So I began shooting with blunts at sitting bees from just a foot or two away. If you keep at it long enough, your brain will begin making adjustments as you begin to focus better. After a while, two foot shots were gimmies so then I slowly began backing up farther and farther. Then I began picking off hoovering bees the same way. The best that I could ever get was 8 hoovering bees in a row. It was then that I began teaching a couple of guys to shoot a bow. I had been using a 45 lb recurve and a longbow and got as they called me, wicked good on anything with my bows. This in turn made my bowfishing almost automatic as I shot whatever I could see. It is all a confidene thing, going from I think that I can make it to Oh yeah, easy shot! I would walk around the fields and pick off the various bugs from wasps and bumble bees to honey bees and flies. I quit the honey bees when the bee mites began to wipe them out. So to stay in focus, I began using things like pinto beans that I could scatter and walk around and shoot. I even glued them to fishing line to suspend as targets. The whole thing is that we have this awesome brain that when conditioned correctly, can do awesome thimgs. We see it now in these young people and their video games, hand to eye cordination is perfected by tons of practice. When you get used to shooting bees and beans, a squirrel becomes very easy and a deer like an elephant. An it is all about focus and lots of practice on tiny tiny things. One of my friends has told me a hundred times that he didn't care what I was shooting, he didn't want me taking a shot at him. Byrum Ferguson said that the center of anything is still very small no matter the size of the object. Focus, focus, focus! and a good clean release! My son and my son-n-law still talk about my bowfishing shots but they never put in the practice that I did.

jaydee2trad
Posts: 1173
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:28 pm

Re: The Art of Shooting Bees

#2 Post by jaydee2trad »

I once shut several guys with compounds as we walked around. they were making fun of my longbow, at least until I pointed out the moving lizard and shot. Then I shot the head off of a flower at about twenty yards, no more making fun of my bow. I have always felt that anyone can do it, just putting in the practice until you get pretty good at it. One guy that I taught how to shoot like this moved to Ohio years ago, a full fledged bowhunter. I assumed that most longbow shooters could shoot like that after watching Howard Hill shooting asprins out of the air. I knocked the fool out of a lot of critters with rubber tipped arrows, and killed a few of them as well. We made a lot of moving targets and practiced a lot on them, really helped on shooting moving fish and other critters. The brain is such an awesome tool that we have. Losing my eyesight in my left eye really bummed me out but now with the cornea transplant, I have hope to shoot decent again with lots of practice.

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