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Youth Hunting - How To Get Them Started

For many centuries bow hunting has been a great form of bonding between father and son. But, in order to keep your youth safe you should properly train them in the art of bow hunting. There are many different options for youth archery training:

* After school archery programs

* An adult skilled at archery

* Archery clubs

* Professional archery trainers

* Scout programs

There is not a specific age at which to begin training your youth to bow hunt. You, the parent, will know when your child is ready to accept the responsibility and discipline. If your child shows interest in learning to bow hunt, then you can begin to seek options for their training or oversee their training yourself. But always remember that youth should be supervised at all times.

When choosing a bow for your youth you will need to determine their 'draw weight' and 'draw length'. In general, a child of 70-100 pounds will be comfortable with a 'draw weight' of 15 - 25 pounds, children 100 - 130 pounds may be comfortable with 25 - 35 pounds, and an athletic older child may be capable of pulling 35- 45 pounds. Very small children, 55 - 70 pounds, might be comfortable with 10 - 15 pounds of pull. These are not exact weights for your youth, they are just estimates. You will need to try several different bows in order to find the 'draw weight' that best fits your individual youth.

When calculating the 'draw length' of your youth, you should follow this simple process. Take a yard stick and place it directly in the center of the chest bone. The youth should then reach out on it equally with the fingertips of BOTH hands. The inches mark where the fingertips touch will be their ultimate potential 'draw length'. It is important to remember that both the 'draw weight' and the 'draw length' will change as your child grows; and you will need to change bows accordingly.

You will also need to take into consideration your youth's eye dominance. This will tell you whether your youth is a right-handed shooter, or a left-handed shooter. To determine eye dominance, have your youth hold their hands out at arms length with both eyes open, and look through the hole formed in the hands at a distant object. Keeping the object in sight, have your youth slowly move their hands towards their face until the hands touch their face. The hole formed by their hands should be over one of their eyes, this is their dominant eye and will control their aiming. If it is the right eye, they are right-handed shooter, and vice versa for the left.

Now, the question you may be asking yourself is what do I need in order to begin training my youth for bow hunting? The basic necessities you will need are a bow, arrows, and a target. Other products you may want to invest in, as safety precautions, are a quiver to hold the arrows, an armguard to protect against string slap to the arm, and hand or finger protection to cushion against the bow string. Another safety precaution, if your youth is on the younger side, is to try suction cup arrows instead of the standard metal tip. This gives your youth the chance to really become comfortable with aiming, and shooting, their bow, before moving on to a sharper arrow.

Bow hunting for youth can be a great experience, and a lot of fun for all involved. Just remember to always make sure your youth has been properly trained, and their bow is fitted to them, before taking them on their first hunt. If you follow the guidelines above, you and your youth should have many great experiences with bow hunting together.

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What archery equipment do I need for my bow?

I'm a beginning archer. I was told to buy the KAP prostyle riser and limbs. I was told it needs to be at least 30# and 68''. My question is, what sights do I need for that riser, do I need a stabilizer, what kind, and can that riser be equiped with one. Also, what strings and do I need any special equipment to equip the strings. I already have a quiver belt, 1816 arrows..because my DL is 31'' and armguard and etc.

Do not buy the prostyle at that poundage, I've seen many of those break at the higher poundages. We have quite a few of these at the range, since they're really cheap. The riser is ok, a bit on the heavy side for beginner equipment, but the limbs are very bad. They're foam limbs with fiberglass laminate. You can't beat the price of the prostyle, but in the long run, buying an ILF bow might make more sense if you know you're going to stick with the sport. By ILF, I'm talking about the Olympic style bows with ILF limb pockets (International Limb Fitting). Something like the Winstar II, it's quite a bit pricier, but a much better, much much better made bows than the prostyles.

The other complain I have with the prostyle is the limb pocket...they move...so if you don't watch them all of a sudden your group will shift to the left or to the right, cause your limbs are moving around side to side.

The prostyle is capable of accepting a stabilizer, I'd suggest getting the Win & Win HMC from altservices.biz, they used to have those for sale for around $50, they're world class stabilizers. Should you decide to get stabilizers, first shoot without the weight on it. Let your shoulder acclimate to the setup first. After a month or two, put some weight on.

At 31" I think the 1816 will be quite a bit weak if you do decide to get a pair of 30# limbs. I'm assuming you're going to buy limbs marked at 30# here. You see 30# limbs drawn to 31" will end up giving you 36# on the finger. At that kind of weight and length, you'll need something around a 2016 rather than 1816, 1816 will go all over the place for you. If you want to draw 30# on the finger, then you need to get limbs that are marked at about 24#, and you'd want 1916's

Get a stringer, I love the Easton stringer, as far as the string, get some 8125 string. You also need rest and plunger. Arrow rest you can go with the Hoyt Super Rest. Plunger, go for a Shibuya DX.

Sights...sights you can go cheap and go with Cartel, as long as you can tolerate the rattling they're ok. Because that's what they do, they rattle loose on you every few shots. Unfortunately the only other alternative cost quite a bit more, the next step up from the Cartels is the Shibuya Dual Click, and it cost about $120 more than the Cartel. Should you decide to go with the Cartel, be sure to get the model that has teeth on the side of the elevation bar.

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