As far back as I can remember, hunting has been a way of life for me. After a couple of short years right after college working for the government, I built my professional life around communicating about the outdoors. There was not, and still is not, much money in it for most who choose this path, but since the late 1970s it has let me spend more than half of every year in the woods and on the water. The memories have been priceless.
My fascination with hunting began when, as a towheaded boy growing up behind Dad’s fire station, I was allowed to enter that man’s world only when I needed a haircut. Then, if I didn’t make a fuss while Dad gave me a buzz cut, I was allowed to open the rickety old fridge, toss a dime in a battered cigar box, take out a real Coke in a glass bottle, and go sit in the corner and read the dog-eared copies of the sporting magazines that lay on the table. I could stay as long as I had some Coke left and didn’t make any noise.
I loved the adventure stories of hunting wild, faraway places. Even though we didn’t have much money, I remember thinking, Why can’t I do this, too?
And so, I have. But that philosophy was sorely tested in 2025. I’ve suffered some serious hunting-related injuries over the years — thanks to a fall off a mountain in Alaska that required a helicopter evac, horseback rodeos, skiffs sinking, airplane wrecks, early Baker treestand disasters, and on and on — but last year tested me to the core.
Wear and Tear
It all began during fall 2024, when I noticed some serious soreness in my right shoulder. By spring 2025 it hurt so badly I had to quit shooting my compounds, give up sports, and start a lengthy and often frustrating journey through the medical system. Finally, in July, I was able to see a sports medicine orthopedist, who informed me that the MRI showed, along with some tendon damage, that the advanced osteoarthritis could be repaired only via arthroplasty. In laymen’s terms, the shoulder joint was worn out, and I needed a new one. The surgery was performed mid-October.
It’s the result of a lifetime of competitive sports and shooting high-powered firearms, but a big part of it is the result of shooting all those arrows through high-poundage compound bows. I’ve always believed that to be an effective and ethical bowhunter, you need to practice your bow shooting on a regular basis. After all, archery is an athletic activity that requires proper and consistent practice to both develop and maintain the skill. Taking the life of any animal is very serious business. To ethically shoot at one, you must be prepared — and that means proper practice.
An old coach once told me that practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes permanent. I always practiced with compounds several times a week, shooting a few dozen arrows each time over an hour-long session. This helped me stay mentally focused and to shoot with minimal physical fatigue.
Even during hunting trips I’d shoot a few arrows pretty much every day. I’d pack a 12x12x3-inch foam square in a bush plane so I could shoot every day on remote hunts in Alaska. On hunts where I wasn’t afield dawn to dark, I would shoot arrows in camp every day at lunchtime. It was not unheard of to shoot a couple of practice shots in the headlights of a truck before daylight in camp, then a judo-tipped arrow out of a treestand before climbing down at the end of the day.
The surgery got me thinking: How many practice arrows have I shot over the decades through high-poundage compounds? I never kept a logbook, so I’m not really sure. Many months I shot every day, some only a few days a week. Some sessions were 50+ arrows, some half that, and during hunting season maybe only a couple of shots a day. Many days I shot both morning and evening sessions. So, I did some quick calculations and came up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 350,000 arrows since the mid-1980s. I loved it so much, I never thought of it as work.
Sadly, that’s over for me now. At 74 years old, the risk/reward ratio of shooting the volume required to keep me dialed in to be an ethical bowhunter isn’t there. Going forward, to hunt archery-only seasons I’ll have to use a crossbow.
