My ear­li­est mem­o­ries of child­hood are filled with sun­ny days out­side, al­ways outside.

     Warm hu­mid nights upon the wa­ter.......al­ways on the wa­ter.

     Fee­ble at­tempts at sleep on the floor of an old Army tent with my sun­burned body en­cased in a moth tat­tered sleep­ing bag. I can still smell the musty aro­ma of moldy can­vas that over­pow­ered all else. It was in­tox­i­cat­ing, it was heav­en.
When sleep would fi­nal­ly tri­umph over my an­tic­i­pa­tion of the up­com­ing day, I
would dream of the gi­ant bass du­ti­ful­ly guard­ing her bed. For in my dreams she would at­tack my every of­fer­ing and tug heav­i­ly on my line once we both were com­mitted to bat­tle. Leap­ing into the air amidst a con­stel­la­tion of wa­ter, she’d ever so slow­ly give way while I re­cov­ered the old dry rot­ted monofil­a­ment. Glid­ing into my grasp, mouth agape, I'd heave her mass into the air and loud cheers would rise from the crowd......it's a dream peo­ple, there's al­ways a cheer­ing crowd.

     In con­trast, the re­al­i­ty was a sub­tle bite on the first cast into her nest, an awk­ward hook set, one jump and the be­tray­al of the afore­men­tioned dry rot­ted monofil­a­ment. Days of tor­ment fol­lowed as the old bass snubbed my every at­tempt with such a degree of in­dif­fer­ence that I ques­tioned whether the first bite was a dream it­self.

     They say that lessons learned from fail­ure are those that res­onate the loud­est in
the hu­man brain. For me, those lessons trans­lat­ed quick­ly into an un­der­stand­ing of a cause and ef­fect. While so­lu­tions came into fo­cus more nat­u­ral­ly for me than most, those so­lu­tions still only of­fered mod­est suc­cess afield. Only with repet­i­tive fail­ure did the evo­lu­tion of sound strate­gies emerge.

     What I took away from my par­lay with the gi­ant bass (prob­a­bly only 3 pounds
upon re­flec­tion) that sum­mer are two things;

- One, your first chance is al­ways your best chance and you bet­ter make it
count.
- Two, your tack­le is the con­nec­tion be­tween you and the game and it must
be in per­fect work­ing or­der.

     Sound fa­mil­iar? It should, as it trans­lates to all pur­suits of game whether by flood or field.

     A hy­per fo­cus on these two points is the dif­fer­ence be­tween a con­sis­tent­ly success­ful out­doors­man and some­one with a lot of “the one that got away” sto­ries.

     As it re­lates to archery hunt­ing, there’s a rea­son the same ten per­cent of hunters
fill nine­ty per­cent of the tags......de­tails. Those who are ob­ses­sive with their archery
tack­le un­der­stand the con­cept of “chips make a pile.” Those will­ing to in­vest the time or en­er­gy to make one per­cent im­prove­ments to their gear will re­al­ize sub­stan­tial gains in the col­lec­tive of those small de­tails. If you im­prove twen­ty things one per­cent, it’s a net gain of twen­ty per­cent im­prove­ment.

     To that end, not all ad­just­ments yield only a one per­cent gain, some may be worth more as it per­tains to suc­cess. For ex­am­ple, see the fol­low­ing break­down.

- If your drop away rest has a 1% chance of fail­ure.
- If your me­chan­i­cal broad­head has a 5% chance of fail­ure.
- If bare shaft tun­ing in­creas­es your chances of a pass through by 10% due to
per­fect ar­row flight.
- If re­duc­ing the draw weight im­proves your ac­cu­ra­cy by 5%.
- If light­ed nocks have a 1% chance of fail­ure.

I could go on and on but you get the con­cept, chips make a pile.

     The time to make im­prove­ments to your gear is now, in the off sea­son. That
doesn’t mean set­ting up your bow dif­fer­ent­ly from how you’re go­ing to hunt with it
just for 3D events this sum­mer. It should be set up ex­act­ly how it will be tak­en afield
and prac­ticed with as much as pos­si­ble. That way, if there’s a po­ten­tial fail­ure point
you’ll have plen­ty of time to dis­cov­er it and im­ple­ment a rem­e­dy.

     How do you de­ter­mine what’s sus­pect and ripe for im­prove­ment and what’s not?
If you shoot your bow of­ten and with a lot of reps those po­ten­tial fail­ure points will reveal them­selves. I as­sure you of this, you won’t find the info on You­Tube...go shoot your bow.

     Hope­ful­ly this is help­ful info and will mo­ti­vate some to be­gin their prepa­ra­tion
now in­stead of wait­ing un­til the last minute. Re­mem­ber, chips make a pile so if you
can spend the next few months mak­ing in­cre­men­tal im­prove­ments you’ll reap the
ben­e­fits in the Fall.

     As al­ways, thank you so much for your con­tin­ued sup­port of this small, fam­i­ly run com­pa­ny. We are tru­ly blessed and will con­tin­ue to strive for im­prove­ment dai­ly.