The rangefinder was in my pack. I knew it was in my pack. I’d put it in the little side pocket the night before and told myself that if a buck walked out, I’d have plenty of time to fish it out, range him, and settle in. That was the whole plan. Rangefinder in, calm head on, dead buck.
Then a buck walked out at first light, bigger than anything I’d seen in three seasons, and I did not reach for the rangefinder. I looked at him once and thought, that’s thirty yards. Maybe thirty-five. Close enough.
It was not close enough. It was not even close.
Guessing Is Not A Skill I Have
This was on public ground in the Missouri river breaks, the kind of thick cedar and oak edge where the deer materialize out of the gray like a thought you didn’t ask for. He came in from my left, quartering just enough that I had to pick an angle. My pin was on him before I decided to shoot. That’s the problem right there. The decision happened after the pin was already floating on hair.
I guessed thirty-five yards. I held dead on the crease behind his shoulder. I released, and the arrow went under him by a foot and a half. Maybe two. He didn’t even register what happened. He just jumped once, looked around, and walked off into the cedars like I’d thrown a rock at the ground. The broadhead buried itself in a rotten log and I sat there in the stand for a long time making a list of every reason it wasn’t my fault.
He was more like forty-five yards, by the way. I found that out with the rangefinder after he was gone, standing exactly where he’d been standing, because that’s the kind of man I am. I’ll measure the empty spot where the buck was and write it down in my head like it matters. It doesn’t. You don’t get to range the ghost.
Why My Guesses Are All Wrong
I used to think I was a decent judge of distance. I could look across a field and say “two hundred yards” and be in the ballpark. What I did not understand, and what cost me that buck, is that flat open ground ruins you. There’s nothing for your eye to hang a scale on. A deer standing in broken timber at first light is a shape against a wall of other shapes, and your brain reaches for the nearest number it’s comfortable with, which is always going to be shorter than the truth.
Here’s the ugly list of what actually messes up range guessing, in order of how often it got me:
- Low light. At dawn and dusk everything looks bigger and closer because the edges are soft. Your eye can’t resolve detail, so it calls the thing near and moves on.
- Broken ground. Rolling terrain and brush shorten the visual gap. You’re not seeing the actual yards, you’re seeing the gaps between trees, and there are too many of them.
- Excitement. A buck you want makes the world go flat. Adrenaline squeezes the distance down. Every honest bowhunter will tell you this and every one of us has done it anyway.
- Pride. You guess, and you’re sure, because admitting you don’t know feels like a failure before you’ve even shot. So you shoot.
The common thread is that I never once practiced judging distance in the actual conditions where I’d need to do it. I practiced shooting paper at known ranges off a rangefinder, and then I walked into the woods and expected the skill to just show up. It did not.
How I Stopped Guessing (Mostly)
I didn’t run out and buy more gear. I had the gear. The fix was smaller and dumber and a lot more boring, which is why it took me this long to do it.
First, I started carrying a cheap range estimation trick everywhere: I count fence posts. A quarter section is a half mile on a side and usually fenced in forty-rod chunks, and every post I can count between me and the deer is a known distance I don’t have to make up. On ground without fences I use my own boots and my own steps to build a library of what twenty, thirty, and forty yards actually look like on uneven dirt. I walked out a few hundred yards through the exact terrain I hunt and stopped every ten yards to really stare at a stump or a cedar and burn the look of it into my head. It sounds like nothing. It works better than I want to admit.
Second, I made the rangefinder a hand thing, not a pack thing. It lives in a chest pocket now, on a lanyard, and I ran through the motion of pulling it, ranging, and dropping it so many times on the back porch that my hands do it without my brain getting a say. When a deer shows up, my hands just go, the way they go for the safety, and the number is in my head before I’ve finished deciding the deer is legal. That’s the whole point. The tool only works if getting to it is automatic, because the moment a big buck steps out is the exact moment your training either holds or it doesn’t, and it never holds if you have to think about it.
Third, and this is the one that stings, I put a hard rule on myself: if I can’t get a real number, I don’t shoot. Not “I think it’s thirty.” A real number off the rangefinder, or a number I earned by walking that exact ground. Inside twenty-five yards I’ll still trust myself, because that’s close enough that my pins are flat and my error is small. Past that, no number means no arrow. The buck I missed was probably the best one I’ll ever see on that ridge, and I passed on shooting him a second time because I couldn’t get a number, and you know what? It was the right call and it still makes me a little sick. Both things can be true.
The Boring Truth
Nobody makes a YouTube video about a guy counting fence posts and staring at stumps. The gear companies sell you rangefinders and angle-compensating this and ballistic that, and all of it is real and useful and none of it matters if you leave it in your pack because you’re sure you know thirty-five when you don’t.
The shot I missed wasn’t lost because my bow was off or my broadhead was dull or the rangefinder failed. It was lost because I guessed, and I guessed because I was too proud to admit I didn’t know. The arrow is still in that rotten log somewhere, and if I’m honest, I hope it rots there forever. It’s a better teacher than I am.