Nationally-Known Outdoorsman Mark Drury on Why He Bowhunts
Day 5: You Can Avoid Mistakes Bowhunters Make with Mark Drury
Editor’s Note:“The first bow I ever had was a PSE,” Mark Drury (www.druryoutdoors.com) explains. Today, Mark and his brother Terry are two of the industry leaders in TV production and video production. The Drurys have produced more than 200-feature-length videos in more than two decades. They’ve also produced 252-TV episodes that air on “Wildlife Obsession,” “Dream Season” and “Bow Madness” on the Outdoor Channel and “Natural Born Killers” on the Pursuit Channel.
 Question: Mark, what are you doing to keep your PSE Omen Pro and Dream Season EVO bows quiet?
Drury: I put String Leeches made by Sims Vibration Laboratory on the string. Other than that, I don’t do anything, because these two bows come quiet as a church mouse from the factory.
Question: What are some of the biggest mistakes bowhunters make when hunting with their bows?
Drury: I think they get too nervous. They think the deer is leaving them and will take a shot at the wrong angle to the deer’s body. Instead always make sure you wait for either a broadside or a quartering-away shot. I call this wrong-angle shooting, “taking dumb angles.” The reason dumb angles occur is because:
 * your adrenaline kicks-in when you see that monster buck, and that adrenaline causes you to get excited and want to shoot the buck quickly. You forget to shoot him accurately and at the right angle;
* you’re drawing back before you’re ready to take the shot. I almost never draw, unless I know I’m about to shoot. If a deer sees you draw, he’ll be gone before you can get-off the shot. The deer will always win a Mexican stand-off;
* most hunters believe they only can hunt days with the right weather. But I think what’s more important is not to hunt the wrong days. If the day’s a low-pressure cloudy day that will force your scent down to the ground, stay out of areas where you’re trying to take a big buck. Wait for the day when you feel certain the deer will move. Only hunt a really-big buck on the days that all conditions are right for hunting that big buck;
* you’ve got to be a slave to the wind. You cannot ignore wind direction. When you’ve decided to hunt a certain stand, don’t go to that stand until that wind condition is present. I wear ScentBlocker clothing from top to bottom in as many layers as possible. However, even so, I’m not going to hunt with the wrong wind. I continuously spray down with ScentBlocker’s Ti4 Titanium. I recharge my clothes every 2-3 days and keep them in a scent-proof environment. I’m religious about trying to eliminate or neutralize the scent on my body and equipment.
 Question: What clothing are you wearing when you’re in the tree stand that keeps you quiet when you draw?
Drury: I wear the ScentBlocker Dream Season and the Dream Season Cold Fusion clothing. ScentBlocker has the soft-shell technology that’s amazing at keeping me quiet.
Question: You’ve told us this week what all you do to take deer on the land that you own, but what do you do when you go on new property to find and take deer?
Drury: I don’t go on new property. I haven’t left my land in the last 4 years. I do hunt in Wyoming, but even there I’ve got certain places that I hunt every year. For years, my brother Terry who’s my partner in Drury Outdoors and I attempted to find the land that had better-sized bucks than we had hunted on the year before. We were running all over the country continuously searching for more-productive places to take bigger and better bucks.  Finally, we decided that instead of trying to find a better spot to hunt, we would make the places we had to hunt better.
Each and every year I try to improve the land where I’m hunting. I watch my deer all year long, and after the season I may go in and move stands and add stands or create additional food plots or new routes to some of my favorite tree stands. We’ve doing this for so long that we now have tree stands that we can hunt from with any wind direction and trails going to those tree stands cut, so that we won’t spook any deer either going to or away from the stands. I think you’ll save more money and be more successful every year taking older-age-class bucks, if you make the places you hunt better instead of hunting for better places to hunt.
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