Most owners of archery equipment realize the importance of thoroughly inspecting their bows and crossbows before the hunting season starts.  Your personal safety and hunting success depends on it.  For those who do not know how to inspect and service your archery equipment, bring it to your local archery shop and ask for an inspection and tune up.

Unfortunately, many archery hunters neglect a mid-season check of archery equipment which is just as important as the pre-season check.

A case-in-point for a mid-season inspection occurred with both me and our Bring Me Outdoors field contributor Jason.

I was finishing up an evening whitetail deer hunt in late October when I fumbled while putting my crossbow bolt in the quiver.  The bolt hit the string and fell on the ground.  I examined the string and saw that the broadhead had sliced through a couple of the strands of the string.  It only appeard as minor string abbrasion.  Unfortunately, I did not anticipate the severity of the abbrasion.  I cocked the crossbow and loaded a target tipped bolt and fired it at my target.  After that shot, over 75% of the string's strands snapped.  I immediately removed the string and replaced it with my backup.  I don't have to describe how badly things may have gone if the string had actually snapped.

As for Jason, while out on a whitetail deer hunt in mid November, he sighted in a deer with his crossbow at 30 yards and fired.  The buck looked around and walked away.  He found his bolt, with no blood or hair on it.  It was a complete miss for Jason.  He also noticed that the crossbow had a lot of vibration and a much louder noise than normal.  Basically the same thing happened the next morning, except this time he lost his bolt (and broadhead).  Jason immediately brought out the target to sight it in again, and noticed that it was shooting much lower than it was sighted for, before the hunting season started.  On the next hunting day for Jason, another deer came in and he missed (and lost his bolt again).  The shots were low again.  We figured out that his string was several years old and it lost it's integrity.  He replaced the string, and tightened the bolts that hold the recurve limbs to the frame of the crossbow.  Target shots were now flying right through the target, dead on.  The vibration and noise were gone too.  The next day I was out on a hunt with Jason and he harvested a nice sized doe.

The lesson?  Be sure to inspect the strings, limb attachments, cams for compound bows before every use.  Do a thorough inspection of all your archery equipment and do some target shooting to re-sight your shots half way through the season for occasional hunters (more frequently for avid hunters) to keep you safe and avoid missing (or injuring) your game.

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