Bow season's creepin' up on us, and you can always tell when it's gettin' close around deer camp. Ain't got nothin' to do with the weather, and it sure ain't because anybody around here suddenly got organized. You know bow season is close because grown men start draggin' bows, arrows, targets, broadheads, releases, Allen wrenches, bow wax, rangefinders, and every other piece of archery equipment they own out into the yard like they're fixin' to invade a small country. Then they spend the next three weeks discoverin' everything that's wrong with stuff they should've checked six months ago.
Me and Earl learned a long time back that the smartest thing you can do this time of year is get your own bow ready early, make sure your arrows are flyin' right, then find yourself somewhere comfortable to sit and watch everybody else fall apart. Earl had his chair leaned back against the side of the cabin with a cup of coffee in his hand, and I was sittin' beside him when the first arrow went sailin' clean over the target and disappeared somewhere between camp and Georgia.
Earl never even looked up from his coffee.
He just said, "That one sounded expensive."
About thirty yards out, Ol' Red was standin' there holdin' his bow and starin' into the woods like the arrow might get embarrassed and come back on its own. Red swore up and down he'd been dead-center ten minutes earlier, but now he was shootin' like somebody had bent his sights with a pair of pliers. Naturally, it couldn't possibly be Red. According to Red, it was the bow, the arrow, the wind, the sunlight, the target, and possibly some kind of gravitational disturbance nobody else had noticed.
I told him I figured the problem was located somewhere between the bowstring and the ground.
He didn't appreciate that.
Then Bubba showed up with a brand-new pack of broadheads and immediately started screwin' 'em onto arrows he hadn't shot since last season. Now Bubba is the kind of fella who'll spend forty-five minutes readin' reviews about which broadhead leaves the biggest blood trail, then won't spend five minutes makin' sure the thing actually flies out of his bow. First shot with one of those broadheads and that arrow took a hard left like it remembered it had somewhere else to be. Missed the target completely, went through some palmettos, bounced off somethin' we never identified, and disappeared.
Bubba stood there lookin' confused.
Earl took another sip of coffee.
"That's two."
I asked him what he was countin'.
"Money flyin' into the woods."
By then everybody was offerin' advice, which is always when things really start goin' downhill. One man's tellin' Bubba his broadheads ain't tuned, another one says his rest is off, somebody else thinks his arrows are underspined, and Red is still wanderin' around in the brush lookin' for the first arrow he launched into another ZIP code.
Then Tommy pulled up.
Now this is Tommy's first year bowhuntin', and I'll give the boy credit because he is excited. Problem is, excitement and knowledge ain't necessarily related, and Tommy has enough enthusiasm for twelve bowhunters and enough archery sense for about half of one.
He opened the back of his truck and pulled out what I can only describe as an archaeological collection of arrows.
I looked at Earl.
Earl looked at me.
Neither one of us said anything because sometimes the Lord puts entertainment directly in front of you and it would be disrespectful not to enjoy it.
Tommy had six arrows.
Not six matching arrows.
Six arrows.
One was short. One was long. One looked like it might've belonged to his daddy. One had three-inch vanes, another had little short vanes, one had a field point, two had fixed-blade broadheads that weren't even the same kind, one had a mechanical broadhead, and I'm pretty sure one of 'em had been purchased sometime during the Reagan administration.
I asked Tommy what weight his arrows were.
He said, "I don't know."
I asked what spine they were.
He looked at me like I'd asked him for the square root of Alabama.
Then Earl made the mistake of asking whether all his broadheads weighed the same.
Tommy said, "They ought to. They're all broadheads."
Earl had to put his coffee down.
I knew right then we weren't gettin' anything productive done the rest of the morning.
Tommy stepped up to the line, hooked his release on the string, drew back, and that first arrow hit the target about a foot low and eight inches left. Honestly, for Tommy, that wasn't bad. Trouble started when he grabbed the second arrow, which was about two inches longer and apparently weighed somewhere close to a railroad spike. That one hit high right.
Third arrow missed everything.
We heard it hit leaves for about four seconds.
Tommy turned around and said, "I think my sight moved."
Earl looked over at me and whispered, "His sight ain't the thing movin'."
Fourth arrow clipped the edge of the target and vanished into the grass. Fifth one buried itself so deep in the dirt underneath the target that three grown men spent ten minutes lookin' for it. By the time Tommy got to arrow number six, he'd adjusted his sight so many times there wasn't enough adjustment left in it to fix anything.
That sixth arrow had a different broadhead than all the others.
I finally asked him, "Tommy, where exactly did you get all these arrows?"
He said, "Couple came with the bow, one's Brandon's, Bubba gave me two, and I found that one in my garage."
Earl slid down in his chair and started laughin' so hard I thought we were gonna have to get him oxygen.
Tommy looked offended.
"What?"
I told him, "Son, you ain't got a set of arrows. You got a lost-and-found box."
He still didn't understand why everybody was laughin'.
Now, I ain't pickin' on Tommy too bad because everybody starts somewhere, and anybody who's bowhunted long enough has made some foolish mistakes. Bowhuntin' has a way of humblin' a man quicker than just about anything. A rifle will forgive you for bein' a little sloppy. A bow remembers everything. Bad grip, bad anchor, jerkin' the trigger, wrong arrow, loose sight, broadhead that ain't tuned, bent vane, bad release, all of it shows up somewhere downrange.
And that's why you work this mess out now instead of the evening before opening morning.
You don't want to discover your broadheads hit six inches different from your field points when there's a buck standin' twenty yards away. You don't want to find out your release is worn out when you're fifteen feet up a tree. You sure don't want to be wonderin' which one of Tommy's six mystery arrows you just nocked when the biggest deer you've ever seen steps into the shooting lane.
Get your bow out. Check your string. Check your rest. Shoot your arrows. Make sure they match. Shoot your broadheads and make sure they're hittin' where they're supposed to hit. And for goodness' sake, shoot enough that the first arrow of the morning ain't also the first arrow you've shot since last November.
Because when bow season opens, that deer ain't gonna stand there while you make three sight adjustments and ask Earl whether he thinks your arrow spine is wrong.
By lunchtime, Red finally found his arrow. Bubba never found his. Tommy had lost two of his six and somehow bent another one. He was down to three arrows, none of which matched, and he was still foolin' with his sight.
Earl and I were exactly where we started, sittin' against the cabin drinkin' coffee.
Tommy walked past us headed toward the target again with those three mismatched arrows in his hand.
Earl watched him go and shook his head.
"He's got nowhere to go and all day to get there."
I told Earl to pour me another cup.
Bow season ain't even started yet, and we're already losin' arrows, blamin' equipment, adjustin' sights that weren't broke, and watchin' Tommy prove that a man can own six arrows without technically ownin' a single set.
But that's deer camp.
And come opening morning, somehow every one of these fools will be sittin' in a tree convinced he's ready.
Well... almost every one.
Tommy still couldn't hit water if he was standin' in a boat.
— Waylon Dixon
The woods don't mind teachin' ya, but the lessons ain't cheap.