It’s summer, and bowhunting is on your mind… By Babe Winkelman The hunting bug. Yes, it’s all-consuming. I’ve got it. You’ve got it. And even when it’s the off-season it doesn’t go away. There is simply no cure. So what’s a person to do when they want to hunt but can’t? The answer is easy: become a better hunter. There are two sure-fire ways to improve your odds of scoring in the upcoming season. One is to improve your knowledge of the animals in your hunting grounds; and you can do this through scouting and observing, either on foot with binoculars or with cutting-edge digital scouting cameras. The second way to become a more accomplished predator is to hone your shooting skills during the off-season, to help ensure lethal arrow placement later. Your eyes in the woods Digital scouting cameras have forever changed the way we scout for whitetails.  In addition to showing you the exact animals you have working your property, they can also help you “pattern” the herd, as well as individual bucks. I talked to a bowhunter and fan recently at a sport & hunting show. He was eager to show me photos on his smartphone of a buck he harvested last year. It was a dandy! A mature 4 x 5 with amazing mass and big, palmated brow tines that looked like knife blades. He told me the story of how he took the impressive whitetail. He had one of his Cuddeback cameras on the edge of a tiny food plot he had planted in a small clearing in his woods. He retrieved his images once a week during mid-afternoon when he was least likely to spook anything. On several occasions, when there was a south wind, he had photographic evidence of the buck accessing the food plot at about 4:30 p.m. So this sharp guy waited for an afternoon when there was a perfect south wind and snuck into his stand near that food plot at about 2:00 p.m. Right around 4:20, that massive 9-pointer came sneaking in for an afternoon snack – just like clockwork. The hunter’s Rage broadhead from 30 yards blew through both lungs and made that young man a very happy bowhunter! This demonstrates an important point about using Cuddebacks. Instead of just looking at all the interesting pictures you capture, keep careful daily records of wind direction, temperature, lunar phase and general conditions so you can cross-reference the dates and times of photos. This will dramatically help you pattern deer movement and activity. During the summer months, scouting cameras can reveal a lot about what you can expect come fall. No, you can’t look at polished antlers. But you can monitor those bucks in velvet as they grow. One of my favorite summer Cuddeback tactics is to put the cameras near mineral lick sites, because deer visit those sites very predictably to get the nutrients they instinctively know they need for antler growth, milk production, etc. Shoot your best! Aside from scouting, the other critical off-season activity is to spend time at the range. If you have enough room where you live to take even 15-yard shots, set a goal for yourself to take at least 10 shots per day. And when you practice, try to mix things up a bit. Put your Block target behind narrow gaps between trees, so it becomes commonplace to snake arrows through small openings. Shoot standing, but also practice your shooting from sitting on a stool, kneeling and even sitting on the ground. If you hunt primarily from a treestand, put your Block target below an upstairs deck, or strap a ladder stand to a tree in your yard. Shooting from an elevated position, particularly down at severe angles, is far different than shooting on flat ground. Repeated practice sessions do more than improve your shooting form and accuracy. They also extend your range and the build the most important characteristic a bowhunter can have: Confidence! When you KNOW a buck is going down the moment you release that bowstring… well, that’s just the greatest feeling in the world.   Good Hunting!   Babe Winkelman