Bow hunting season is less than one and a half months away. Now is the time to make sure all your equipment is ready and you should feel confident that you have located the deer you are after.

Getting your bow tuned is probably the most important thing to do besides practicing. If you don’t know how to tune your bow take it to a reputable bow dealer and they will be glad to help you.

The next thing is to practice, practice, practice, and more practice. You should practice every day if possible. Shoot at least 10-20 arrows but don’t shoot if your arms get tired this will create bad shooting habits. This will get you to feel comfortable with your bow, and sighting in your bow so you can have confidence in your ability to place a good clean killing shot in the animal. Make sure to maintain your bow while practicing as well by waxing the string and keeping the bow clean and working smoothly with no squeaks or unwanted noises.

Throughout the year you should be doing ongoing scouting. Winter and spring are two of the best times to start scouting. It allows you to see great distances into the woods and fallow trails back to bedding areas so you can leave them alone for months before the season begins. But locating the deer in the late summer is one of the keys to success every fall. Especially early in the season when the bucks are in bachelor groups and working feeding areas. Scouting this time of year is important so you can find the preferred food source. Once you find the preferred food source and use the information collected from the winter scouting on their bedding areas you can set up your stand placements to cut them off.

Another great way to scout without being in the woods and monitoring game activity is with motion sensor game cameras such as the Camtracker or Deer Cam. This allows you to monitor trails and feeding locations without getting your scent in the woods as much. You must take precautions not to allow your scent to be on the camera though. You can set your cameras to put a date and time stamp on the pictures as well so you know exactly when they are coming through.

Now is also a good time to hang your stand if you have enough scouting information. I usually try to get my stands up at least one month before the season to allow my scent to be gone before the season starts. Place enough stands you can utilize the wind in your favor. I also use a lot of climbing tree stands which are very comfortable and allow you to carry them into and out of the woods leaving less scent in the woods and allowing you to reposition yourself to use the wind in your favor everytime.

So get out there and tune your bow, practice, and do your scouting and it will pay big dividends come opening weekend.