B-B-Buck Fever for Dummies
I was organizing our archery room this morning and ran across this bracelet I made a few years ago & thought I would share how I conquered my buck fever (the debilitating type at least) in hopes it could help someone else....
We all know bow hunting is extremely heart pounding and exciting, definitely on the top of the list of why we do it. When I first started I didn't know enough to get goofy but by a few years into it, I had accumulated a very bad case of buck fever. I would get so excited when a buck would appear & I couldn't get my heart to slow, I couldn't process thought, I would get so caught up in the moment that it effected my stability holding the bow. Trying to recount what had happened during the hunt was like a blur. I couldn't recall what the buck looked like, where my arrow went, hardly anything and it was very frustrating. I tried many different approaches to calming my nerves and focusing but nothing worked. I tried to make myself do math in my head, I tried to make myself remember words to a song in my head, I even came up with a mental list of things I needed to do once I saw the animal but once I had the visual of the animal, everything else slipped my mind.
Finally I realized the missing puzzle piece for me was the visual aspect. The visual of the buck was getting me all twitterfied, so maybe a visual on preparation would help me center.... So I took my mental list, wrote it down on a small piece of paper, covered that with clear heavy duty tape, taped to a rubber band. When I went hunting that next time I would slip the rubber band over my left hand & wear it as a bracelet over my clothes with the paper part facing towards my eyes on the inside of my wrist.
It read:
count points (count how many points the bucks antlers had)
character? (look for any identifying character within the antlers)
Browtines? (did he have brows? tall? short? missing?)
Swole neck? (was the bucks neck swollen? helped me generalize age)
*BREATHE*
Pins on Leg (place the pins of my sight on the bucks front leg)
Raise Up (raise my pin up the bucks front leg)
Heart Shot (stop at the heart and center my shot)
When I saw my first buck I would look at my wrist and start following the steps. The placement of the paper affixed to my wrist allowed me to hold my bow and didn't hinder me prepping for the shot- I could even see it while holding my bow. Even if it wasn't a shooter buck, I would at least follow the steps before breathe. Now I was even able to recognize shooter buck from a young buck (I had accidently shot a nice 3 year old the year before in all my madness). I would come back from hunts and could recount exactly which bucks I had seen. Due to trail camera photos I would know each buck now & thankfully, to the piece of paper, I had slowed down enough to figure out who the buck was now. I also had a habit of shooting high, so the putting the pins on the legs & raising up to the heart also helped me. If you have a different problem, like shooting under, you may want to change it to fit you.
Practice, practice, practice is also great & extremely helpful but sometimes you need something to help you in the heat of the moment. The target never made me retarded, a buck did
Some simple tasks to ease my mind out of the fog sure did the trick. Hope it can help you or a friend this season. 
We all know bow hunting is extremely heart pounding and exciting, definitely on the top of the list of why we do it. When I first started I didn't know enough to get goofy but by a few years into it, I had accumulated a very bad case of buck fever. I would get so excited when a buck would appear & I couldn't get my heart to slow, I couldn't process thought, I would get so caught up in the moment that it effected my stability holding the bow. Trying to recount what had happened during the hunt was like a blur. I couldn't recall what the buck looked like, where my arrow went, hardly anything and it was very frustrating. I tried many different approaches to calming my nerves and focusing but nothing worked. I tried to make myself do math in my head, I tried to make myself remember words to a song in my head, I even came up with a mental list of things I needed to do once I saw the animal but once I had the visual of the animal, everything else slipped my mind.
Finally I realized the missing puzzle piece for me was the visual aspect. The visual of the buck was getting me all twitterfied, so maybe a visual on preparation would help me center.... So I took my mental list, wrote it down on a small piece of paper, covered that with clear heavy duty tape, taped to a rubber band. When I went hunting that next time I would slip the rubber band over my left hand & wear it as a bracelet over my clothes with the paper part facing towards my eyes on the inside of my wrist.
It read:
count points (count how many points the bucks antlers had)
character? (look for any identifying character within the antlers)
Browtines? (did he have brows? tall? short? missing?)
Swole neck? (was the bucks neck swollen? helped me generalize age)
*BREATHE*
Pins on Leg (place the pins of my sight on the bucks front leg)
Raise Up (raise my pin up the bucks front leg)
Heart Shot (stop at the heart and center my shot)
When I saw my first buck I would look at my wrist and start following the steps. The placement of the paper affixed to my wrist allowed me to hold my bow and didn't hinder me prepping for the shot- I could even see it while holding my bow. Even if it wasn't a shooter buck, I would at least follow the steps before breathe. Now I was even able to recognize shooter buck from a young buck (I had accidently shot a nice 3 year old the year before in all my madness). I would come back from hunts and could recount exactly which bucks I had seen. Due to trail camera photos I would know each buck now & thankfully, to the piece of paper, I had slowed down enough to figure out who the buck was now. I also had a habit of shooting high, so the putting the pins on the legs & raising up to the heart also helped me. If you have a different problem, like shooting under, you may want to change it to fit you.
Practice, practice, practice is also great & extremely helpful but sometimes you need something to help you in the heat of the moment. The target never made me retarded, a buck did
Some simple tasks to ease my mind out of the fog sure did the trick. Hope it can help you or a friend this season.
Attached Files