Overcoming a Missed Shot

It was 7:15 AM and I saw him a couple minutes before he entered my shooting lane. A nice racked buck stood on the other side of the road contemplating his crossing. I was on the opposite side of the road about 40 yards in. He was heading from his feeding area towards his bedding area and I was waiting for him. Earlier, I had ranged the tree where I knew the buck would pass by and I was all set for a slam-dunk 22 yard shot. I was prepared.
I was already at full draw as he entered my shooting lane. I let out a little bleat to stop him and he came to a halt broadside right where I wanted him to. I settled behind my peep sight and began lowering my pins from above him to drop them into the kill zone. I was confident.
And then suddenly, it all went horribly wrong.
As I pulled down on the buck and the top of his back came into view throughmy peep sight, the “connections” between my eyes, my trigger finger, and my brain all seemed to abruptly disconnect. Without conscious thought, my finger tightened on the trigger and the arrow was sent on its way. I watched in horror as the arrow sailed harmlessly over the top of the bucks back (in perfect vertical alignment with the kill zone I might add). He came unglued and bounded further into the woods, now hurrying a little faster than he had planned to. If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I shoot indoor archery leagues and indoor archery tournaments. I’d be willing to bet that I shoot between 8000 and 10,000 arrows each year at targets that are at a fixed distance of 20 yards. So it’s not like I don’t know what to do when I come to full draw. Let’s just call it a form of buck fever or target panic (Ah…another topic) and leave it at that.
What I want to talk about is what to do after a miss. In archery, we have the luxury of not spooking the deer too badly on a missed shot. There are many instances of a deer being missed with an arrow, only to bound a few yards, stop, and give the archer another chance. When something like this happens, our mind does not have a chance to go over what happened with the miss. Our bodies go into action in an attempt to notch another arrow and try it all over again. But usually, as was the case with my buck, when we miss, the deer will not present itself with another shot. Now our bodies have nothing to do and our mind takes over. We all react differently over a missed shot. For me, the adrenaline rush is quickly overpowered by disappointment. But we must get over a missed shot and get over it quickly because another opportunity could be just down the trail. Getting over it does NOT mean we should just forget what happened. If something in our mechanics, concentration, or thought process went haywire, we have to analyze that and make mental adjustments while we’re there in the tree stand. We should mentally go over the sequence of events that led up to our miss beginning with the deer’s approach and ending with the missed shot. Identify what went wrong and make the adjustment in your head to do what you’ve been practicing in the backyard for the past several months. The same concept holds true if we are shooting paper targets in a league or tournament, 3D animals on a club course, or bag targets in our back yard. Don’t dwell on the miss. Rather, analyze it and make the necessary mental corrections.
As I tried to stop my right leg from shaking violently from the excitement, I had to sit back down in my stand for fear of falling out. I had to concentrate on calming myself down to try to get my body to resume its normal heart rate and breathing. As the heart rate and breathing slowly came back to safe levels, I went over my miss on that buck. I knew what I had done. I’d done it many times on paper targets. My pin was not on the spot I wanted to hit when I triggered my release. I had failed to pick out a spot on the deer and wait for my pin to settle on that spot. I was focused on the deer as a WHOLE rather than the SPOT I wanted to hit.
Ten minutes later, a nice doe came into another shooting lane and I forced myself to let the pin settle behind her front shoulder. I picked out a tiny spot and smoothly trigged my release. She ran 40 yards before expiring to a heart/lung shot.
Mentally recovering after a missed shot is one of the hardest things I think there is to do in archery and it’s something that you must overcome in the backyard as you practice on paper targets. You won’t experience the intense adrenaline rush like you do when you miss a deer during archery season but you’ll have an idea on how to make your mind and body overcome that miss so you’re ready for the next shot.