moxie1884

Yesterday, while practicing out of one of my treestand, shooting carbon bolts with field tips. I had three 3D deer targets out, One at 10 yards, one at 12 yards, and one at 17 yards. I had use my Bushnell 450 range finder to be sure of the yardage. I took a shot at the 17 yard deer using my 20 yard crosshair line adn darn near missed the 3D. My bolt caught the top 1 to 2 inches of it. When I went back to the 10 yard line it was right on.

Has anyone else had this kind of experience? Do I consider anything out to 20 yards a 10 yard crosshair shot?

lemoyne

You do know that you measure your distances from the bottom of the tree and not the stand? Without going into the details of why you have to shoot the bottom leg of an up or down hill triangle to hit right on. Stand under the tree right under your stand and mark your distances and try it. Lee

awshucks

I've got two ladder stands up for bear. they are 12' tall, so w/ me standing up to shoot my bow is about 16' up. My bait is at 17 yds from the tree, and my 20 yd crosshair is dead on at the bait. I think the hifgher up you are the more diff it makes but am not sure.

moxie1884

I've not used my rangefinder from the base of the tree but will check it and see what the difference will be.

lemoyne

The easy way to picture it is with a 45 degree triangle like they do on that laser range finder commercial,only if I figurad what they said on that commercial right the stand has to be 90 ft high for it to work out.
Assuming your stand is on level ground the differance would be 2.4yards which will make a differance when shooting down at the side of a game animal because the closer they are the narrower the area of the kill zone.
For those reasons I try to set up my shots for at least 15 yards minimum and hopefully 25 max. LEE

Hedgie

This is a problem with any fixed-point sight (i.e.--crosshairs, pins,red dots). It's the old high-school physics problem,"If a squirrel was sitting x-feet up a tree,was looking at a gun's muzzle, and a hunter X-yards away shot a projectile moving at x-feet-per-second, would the squirrel be struck?" When I first went archery hunting several decades ago, I was taught to aimlower on the target otherwise I'd overshoot the animal. Knowing the range of the animal from me allowed me to pick a pin, but I still had to pick a lower point of aim than where I wanted the arrow to hit. The whole issue was nullified when I started to use a pendulum sight on a vertical bow. After being sighted in, the swinging sight compensated for the trajectory and distance. At a certain distance all bows will have this same problem. Having just starting to hunt with a scoped-crossbow last year, I had to remember the old rule. Unfortunately, the only way to know if you must aim lower, and how far, is to practice with the bow, and then remember to adjust appropriately when hunting. Incidentally, for a given mass of projectile there is a velocity at which height and distant are irrelevant. This is why you don't have to have a different point-of-aim with most guns fgrom an elevated stand. Since I haven't seen a pendulum sight made for a crossbow, practice at varying heights and distances is key. In your case aiming at a 17-yard target with a 20-yard pin from an elevated position put the bolt's point-of-impact too high. Converesely. aiming with a 10- yard pin at a 17-yard target {which would be the same as aiming low with the 20-yard pin} produced a kill. File that in your memory bank and practice and experiment some more. It's obvious that whomever said all you gotta do is point a sight and shoot did not spend much time target-shooting and hopefully isnot hunting either. Sorry for being so wordy, but sometimes I must remind myself of the basics no matter how sophisticated the equipment becomes.

mitchmtm1

great explaination Hedgie

This is the main reason that I usually dont' like to go too high in my climber, and why I am going with a vari-zone scope. I don't like to guestimate and hold over if I don't have to.

Mitch

smokepolehall

I just always aim at lower half of deers chest when i am up in tree stand. Two things happen, the higher you go the smaller the kill area becomes. The farther the deer is from you up high more kill area viewed. I try to stay 20 ft. and lower, only special conditions make me go higher and then i take longer shots![][:-]

Hedgie

Thanks Mitch. What's a vari-zone scope?
Hedgie

mitchmtm1

A vari-zone scope adjusts to the exact speed of your crossbow (even if you don't know your speed) and removes the need to hold over that you experience with most other scopes.

Example: when shooting my Horton (yes HORTON) with the stock lite-rite red dot scope I had the 20 yard dot dead, but the 30 yard dot was low. So I was using the 40 yard dot at thirty and holding just slightly low. At 40 it was holding over with the 40 yard dot.


http://www.excaliburcrossbow.com/demo/m/content/article.php?content_id=98

Mitch