Our place is great. But our old neighbors were brown and down rifle hunters and we finally were able to lease it out from under them. Now instead of 7 guys on 600 acres there are 3 and they're management minded bowhunters. And our buck quality and numbers are improving including age class. In 3 years we are already seeing improvement but hopefully in a couple more years it will really pay off.
Letting bucks like this get some age helps.

When this guy walked in with a doe, I knew it was time to grab the bow. His attitude and gray hair said he'd seen a few years. Not the greatest buck in the county, but the kind/age class of deer I wait to see each season.

Good looking buck, now lets see him on the ground

It took a few minutes. Time to push back the adrenaline rush and focus on my shot and sequence. But finally he squared up at about 14 yards and I dropped the string on my 45lb Primal Tech longbow.
I knew I hit him good. He jumped straight up and then bolted quickly out of sight. Leaving me shaking and wondering if it really was as good as it looked.
It ended up taking an hour for the other deer to clear the area, then I got down and started where he took the Sitka spruce tapered shaft right behind the shoulder. Nothing. So I followed his running prints in the sand until I found my broken shaft. Fletched end at about 40 yards, broadhead end about 50 yards.
Now I knew which of the dozen trails he was on.
Speck of blood on a grass stem here, little balled up in the sand spot there. Trails crossing and intersecting..
He'd already turned once, left south then turned west. But finally more blood, through a gap in some oak scrub
Then it started to get easier 90 yards out, blood was pouring out now. More and more each jump, each breath. Then there he was. Long dead, blood everywhere.
The relief, the second rush of adrenaline.
Not a monster but tge age makes me happier than the amount of bone.
What a weekend.

Nice work. Good looking buck.

Well done sir -- and with traditional tackle! This gets rarer and rarer with each passing season.

Great job. Thanks for taking us along.

True. But it's actually easier now to get competent with the equipment to hunt t. Just most don't have, or want to commit, the time it takes to get and stay consistent.
After 25 years of compound killing and competition it was like a breath of new life for me archery wise. Not that I was burned out, but opened up a whole new level of challenge, and adrenaline dump, I hadn't experienced in years.

This is the age of information. What took years of practice and selecting and reading the right stuff, now YouTube will get you halfway there on the information in a couple of weeks. The problem is your knowledge can exceed your experience, and bad advice can quickly spoil it for you.

That's why you still have to put in the work.

Nothing beats the work but informed in doing it right goes a long way in making it more productive time getting it. Lots of good info out there and some not so good, have to sift through the at times to get there.

You sure do but even with the BS it still comes faster if you want it. My while life I dreamed of hunting with a stick bow and shooting instinctive, learning the traditional way. But it seemed so impossible to me, and i had so little time. Used to watch Byron Ferguson and think man i could never come close. Well i still might never come close to that but I for sure have confidence enough to hunt with a trad bow. I might have put it off to retirement without the internet, who knows. Still haven’t killed with it yet, barely got out three times this year and only for a few hours at that.

Passthru you are a killing machine and an inspiration

Bryan, I appreciate that. I'm just a guy who made the mistake of waiting until my retirement because I knew guys who half-assed it, and I knew guys who were great at it. Those guys put in a lot of time. And although I shot my compound bows regularly, I worked far too many hours weekly to do it. I tried once or twice but like most, with no guidance or knowledge, it was not pretty. But getting out of debt was our goal and we did that. 20+ years ago.
TBH and some guys there made it easier. I'm having the time of my life but if I had started younger I promise I'd have won a few more buckles at shoots and had a lot more hero pics.
In tge end though it is about helping that next generation be more and better than we are.
Shoot more, and shoot more often.

Congrats!

Congrats

Great Job.