Outdoors: Adams' career choice is a bullseye

March 22, 2008 09:56 pm

— Chuck Adams admits with a smile that, yes, he probably is the black sheep of his family.
While the rest of the clan spends its hunting season toting rifles, Adams sneaks around the woods and fields with a bow.
And the thousands who have benefited from this veteran archer's advice would have to agree he made a wise choice.
Yes, the man with the ordinary surname has turned the love for this sport into an extraordinary career.
His instruction is seen on national television shows, videos, books and outdoors shows across the country, such as the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, where Adams has become a fixture in recent years.
"My family was the reason I got into hunting to begin with. Both my grandfathers and my father were serious gun hunters. I took up bowhunting because they taught me too well," he said with a grin after a recent seminar.
He said the spots in which they put him were so good that he was filling his deer tags too early.
"I wanted to hunt more and kill less, so I could enjoy the sport more, and that's why I took up bowhunting," said Adams, who began archery hunting at age 13 and took his first deer with a bow at 16.
But the native of northern California didn't plan a career as a television personality and author nor did he immediately pursue such a vocation.
First, he tried the real world.
Adams, who no longer shoots competitively, was a member of his college archery team at California State University in Chico and continued to compete in tournaments for a number of years and later became a college professor.
He taught English for a couple of years at his alma mater "until I decided I didn't like the fact that hunting season and college started at the same time, and then I went and did what I wanted to do."
What he wanted to do was hunt. And, as a self-employed writer and photographer for 34 years, that is what he has been able to do. In addition to his books, Adams also writes and does photo shoots for outdoor magazines.
"I shot tournaments in northern Califormian, but I loved hunting so much I decided many years ago that I was going to concentrate on that," he said. "I've got a closet full of trophies from the old tournament days, and that was fun, but I like hunting more, so that's what I concentrate on."
Adams lives in Wyoming, but he hunts in many parts of the country and Canada. In the last year, in addition to Wyoming, he hunted in Alaska, Montana and Alberta (Canada).
And he doesn't allow his work to infringe on his hunting. "I make a point of never doing shows past April. I don't want the shows to cut into my hunting time. I do shows between January and April and, although I could do them year-round, my writing takes the bulk of my time and I have to get ahead. In mid-August, I disappear and I'm hard to find until November, which is the end of the bow season."
He said he hasn't picked up a rifle in decades. "I love bowhunting and I never looked back. I'm still the only serious bowhunter in my whole family. Everybody else loves the guns and I just stay as far away from them as I can," he said.
Well, not entirely.
"I like hunting. I don't care what kind it is. I hunt with a shotgun. I still hunt birds a lot -- ducks and geese and pheasants -- but as far as big game hunting, archery is where it's at for me," he said.
He also hunts small game with a bow, mostly woodchucks, ground squirrels and rabbits, but also pheasants. "I have shot a few out of the air over the years. I think small game in late spring or early summer is the best way to warm up for big game season, Adams said. "Prairie dogs in Wyoming are one of my favorites because there are a lot of them and they're small targets; it forces me to be a good shot."
As you might expect Adams has plenty of advice for others who want to become good shots, or improve on their accuracy.
He suggests that the average bowhunter is better off with a compound bow that is at least 35 or 36 inches long "because, when you're cold or you're tired or very excited, you can make shooting mistakes, either small or large."
He said, "A (longer) bow will help to cancel out those mistakes. A very short bow is very touchy about making little errors when you shoot."
Such bows generally come standard with limb silencers -- flexible rubber that absorbs most of the vibration that runs through the bow wing when the holstering comes taut during the shot, he said.
He added that a stabilizer, preferably about eight ounces, will also help to quiet the bow by soaking up the vibration and running it out in front of the bow. "It is better to have a flexible than a solid one," he said.
"I always say you should shoot a quiet bow for whitetail deer and you shouldn't worry about arrow speed nearly as much as bow silence," he said, adding that is based on a study he did with video tape a few years ago of bowhunters shooting at a whitetail deer at an average distance of 20 yards.
"The average deer has heard the bow and gone into full jump mode about eight inches before the arrow arrived at a distance of 20 yards. I decided, based on the speed of the arrow, which I knew, that if you want to hit that deer, which was trying to crouch because it heard your bow, you don't want to be shooting an arrow over 600 feet per second," he said.
He said a whitetail deer usually flinches a bit when you shoot him with a quiet bow and drops an inch or two. "I always advise to aim at the heart of the deer because, if it doesn't crouch for whatever reason you're still going to kill it. If it does crouch, you're going to get a little higher than you're aiming and you're going to shoot it somewhere in the lung."
Adams said that when practicing or hunting from a tree stand, you must remember that the arrows always hit higher from an elevated position than they do from ground level.
In his seminar, he has a shooter aim at a four-by-four-inch block. Which he said teaches the archer to aim without an aiming spot because "deer never run around with a bulls eye on them and it forces you to shoot in the right spot."
Just like Adams found himself in the right spot when he left the world of academia for the great outdoors.

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