Everyone has at some point asked this question. What is the best way to handle the Moment of Truth, the moment we should be preparing to take the most high-percentage shot? To handle it right takes training, learning and self-control. That’s why it is the best idea to takes does or small bucks early in your bowhunting career. Being able to think “been there, done that” is a welcome and necessary factor when a game animal you really want strolls past your stand.
You need to be fully aware that a direct look in the wild animal world is a look of dominance and/or predation, or a close examination of something worrisome. Prey species look directly at something bothering them, to check it out. Cats and wolves … and us, as predator species, look directly and intently at the individual selected as the next intended meal. A direct look in the wild animal world involves a threat of some sort—actual or imagined.
Even the eyes of predator and prey are positioned according to this instinct. Prey species’ eyes are on the sides of their heads for widest viewing (a lot rearward, completely to the side, and a lot forward) and the most safety. Predator species’ eyes are on the front of their head for best depth perception and zeroed-in focus on their prey. Perhaps you have read of small animals being frozen in terror by the stare of a snake, with some of those soon-to-be-prey individuals keeling over in terror, killed by sheer hypnotic fright.
