Skip to main content

What do you do when the tree is too close?

Folks, I need some advice.

Dad put up a new tree seat in a new secret spot. Its fantastic. I climbed up there last weekend and sat for a few minutes. It's another pimped out seat with a bar that comes down over me like a ride at the fair. It's a little tighter of a fit than my other seat but it will work. Here is my concern: the open shooting lanes are on my right. I am right handed and right eye dominant. The tree is a little too close to my back and shoulder if I need to turn to the right to shoot. The last thing I want is for my gun to kick back and me not be able to go back with it. What should I do?

Comments

  1. I would down-size the cartridge, borrowing a smaller gun if needed. Many young or disabled people comfortably and effectively shoot 410 and 20 gauge slugs at big game. A small or short cartridge will allow you to fire from unusual positions. You can even buy a low recoil cartridge. Furthermore, do not get too cold because you will lose flexibility in your joints. I once had two swollen and bruised fingers from holding the forearm and firing during severe cold weather.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Awesome! Thanks for the suggestions. I don't know about getting a smaller gun at this point, but staying warm will be key this fall.

      Delete
  2. One thing that we ahve done in the past is rotate the stand to ensure a right handed shot can be made. Set the stand so that your left shoulder is closest to the tree when the shooting, that will help wiht your confidence, not worrying about that right shoulder being against the tree.

    Hope this helps.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree with Travis. I'd move the stand a bit so that you have room. You don't want to tense up while you're afraid of getting hurt and make a poor shot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. yup...rotate the stand. its a pain when looking for deer if you can't face your lane dead on, but far better to be comfy when it matters most...taking the shot.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Taking Turkeys to Texas

There are a few less turkeys in Maine to hunt this year. A few months ago, Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife in partnership with the National Wild Turkey Federation , captured and released more than 50 birds into East Texas with the hope of rebuilding their population.   “Eastern turkeys are where the restocking efforts originally began,” explained Shawn Roberts, Director of Field Operations for the National Wild Turkey Federation, “We tried in the 1920’s but it didn’t work.  We tried pen-raised birds and that didn’t work either. The only thing that was successful was to trap birds and relocate them to good habitat.” “We started this current effort in the early ‘80s and we had to begin looking outside the state to see if we could get them moved in. We didn’t want to violate The Lacey Act so we had to come up with a way to compensate the states that were giving up a resource either by trading other wildlife or paying them monetarily,” said Roberts. Texas is on the very edge o

Utilizing technology to make you more aware

Staci and I were roaming around the woods on a piece of property that she knew. It was snowing and we were chasing deer tracks to see if we could find some early sheds. It was a perfect day to be out in the woods and we were relaxed and not really paying attention to where we were going. We knew the border of the property and we knew that if we walked long enough we would hit roads or the bog and find our way back. We got to a point where we thought we knew where we were but we were not sure. Staci got out her compass to take a waypoint to make sure we were going in the right direction to get back to the truck. I took out my phone and turned on OnX. Within seconds we knew where we were, where the property borders were in relation to us and we could watch the dot (that represented us) on the map move as we walked out of the woods and got closer to the truck. In another adventure, my son and I headed out on a shed hunting mission.  When we got into the woods, I turned on the tracker

Where are the women?

This week, my interview with Steve at The Maine Outdoorsman went live. Steve said yesterday 200 people hit his site viewing over 500 pages. That is a lot of people reading about little ole me and hunting. Why? When I think of women who are in the general public's eye and hunt, I can think of 2 - Country singer Miranda Lambert and Sarah Palin. Why only two? Why is the female hunter such a fascinating thing? (I should probably note that I do not have cable so any and all female hunters on the hunting stations are lost to me. I'll keep it to the general public because that's what I am familiar with.) People/media were fascinated by the fact that they could get footage of Palin and her gun, shooting (and gutting) animals but I feel like the nostalgia would be lost if they had the same footage of McCain. Lambert and her hubby Blake Shelton tweet photos of their kills, and comment on what/where they are hunting. I only know this because I follow both. That's it.