EEMER's Hunting Journal

[eemer]

Feb. 18, 2006
Received my New (Used) Left handed Bow from Tim H. I have a torn rotator cuff in my right shoulder that makes it very hard to pull my Right Handed Bow back. I am Left Handed and shoot all of my guns Lefty and only learned to shoot my bow Right Handed because I received my first bos as a Christmas Present and it was Right Handed. Well, long story short - my doctor wouldn't sign my crossbow permit application. Instead I was sent to Physical Therapy to strengthen my shoulder. It worked and I can pull my RH Bow back, but am very afraid of injuring my shoulder more. Tim said he had a LH Bow, so I got it and it is a SWEET PSE Beast #60 to #70 Pull with 70% Let-Off!

Feb. 20, 2006
Got to shoot my New Bow.
Here's the first ever group shooting Left Handed at 25 Yards:

Not too shabby for my first ever Left Handed Shots. I wasn't too ackward, either. The only thing that felt funny was nocking up the arrows with the other hand. Since I'm Left Eye Dominent, it always felt weird aiming my bow Right Handed, so aiming felt more comfortable from the Left Hand side. I shot about a dozen more times and brought in the group to about 6", but the muscles are a little sore now, so I have to practice more and build them up a bit.

Did I mention, this Bow is SWEET!!
Quiet, no vibration and it really Zips the arrows. They penetrated teh 2" Foam target a good 8 to 10 Inches with Field Points, so I think it'll kill a deer with NO Problem!!

[steve rodoski]

need some practice for the deer kill .keep up the practice and ya get descent.

[eemer]

Feb. 20, 2006

Here's some pictures of my patterning experiment before I got froze out at the range.

First here's the setup:

Mossberg 500 Pump Shotgun, 28" Barrel, 3" Chamber.

First with the Tru-Glo Gobble Stopper X-Treme Turkey Choke (.665)

All at 30 Yards

First with my old stand by Winchester XX #6 Copper Plated 1-3/4 Oz.



Next with Remington Nitro #5 Heavy Shot 1-7/8 Oz.



Next with Federal Premium Mag Shok Flitecontrol # 6 Copper Plated Buffered 2 Oz.



Now I changed the choke tube to the Tru-Glo Strut Stopper X-Treme (.643)

I only had time for 1 shot, so I used the Remington Nitro #5 Heavy Shot 1-7/8 Oz.


All in all, it looks to me like they are all pretty close, but it also looke like the pattern is rather low. I will have to experiment more and maybe get myself a red-dot and really tune this bad boy in.

I think I'll try Sloppy's Big Sheet of Cardboard trick to see where the center of the pattern is.

[eemer]

Mar. 1, 2006

Got my father's Horton "Team Realtree, Explorer TR-175" Crossbow assembled and took a couple of shots with it. It is a nice crossbow and it really zips those 20" carbon bolts out there rather fast. It is spec.'d to have a speed of 305 fps. and I believe it. Penetration is excellent, it burried the bolt through my square foam target 1/2 way through the vanes at 20 yards. Gotta be careful with that, so I don't ruin the fletchings.
It took a couple of cockings to get used to it, but I won't have a problem with it - but my father will! I will have to look into a cocking device for him.

Here's a couple pictures of the crossbow:






I also have gotten some carbon arrows for my new PSE Beast Bow and instead of penetrating the foam target 8 to 10", it burried them to within 1" of the fletchings, so I will be buying a new "Block" target sometime along. It seems quite a bit faster with the carbons as well.

When the weather warms up a little, I'll get both bows sighted in a little better. I think I will need a kisser button on my bow so I'll use the same sight picture each time, I'm kinda erratic on the target right now as far as left to right, elevation is good.

For now, I need to get my Turkey gun setup and get my patterns a little (actually a LOT tighter). Gotta help my tem win the 2006 Spring Turkey Contest, ya know!

[eemer]

Mar. 4, 2006
Well, I decided that I needed to add some sort of sights to my turkey gun. The local K-Mart had side-mount scope mounts for the Mossberg 500 on clearance for $8.00 and I thought it was a good deal and bought one. I was thinking along the lines of getting one of those "Red-Dot" scopes, but a co-worker and a Flock member both said that it was difficult to get the dot "centerd" on the shot pattern and that they were a little iffy at sun up for clarity. I recently bought a new scope for my .270 and took the old Tasco 3-9 x 40 that I had gotten with that rifle off. Well, I decided, what the heck! I already have this scope lying around collecting dust and I need one for the Turkey gun - well DUH!!! put this one oen the Old Mossberg!! Well, I did and here is how it looks:







I even left the flip-open scope covers on it, which if this year goes like all of the others before there will be rain most of the month of May and they'll come in very handy.

Next stop will be the range to "center" the shot pattern with the cross-hairs on the scope and then re-do my patterning experment to determine the "Best" shot/choke combination for this gun.

[eemer]

March 17, 2006
Got over to the range after work and sighted in the scope and patterned the gun some more. The gun really likes the Remington #5 Nitro shells and doesn't really like the Federals - so it's teh Remington's I'll stick with.

Here are some of the targets with the Remington #5 Nitro shells with the Tru-Glo Strut-Stopper X-treme choke (0.643)

30 yards


40 yards


45 yards


Looks like I'd better count on 40 - 42 yards as being my limit, ot looks like 45 is the absolute max!