Sight problems... again.

Well, as many of you know, my daughter recently had some issues with her sight on her compound bow. Getting to a competition and opening the case to find it broken…and dad had to make it work.

Round Two: This weekend was the Youth Deer Season here in Michigan. My daughter decided that she wanted to hunt with a crossbow for this two day only season. Great, I picked up a crossbow for her to use and she jump right in on practicing. Practice, practice, practice she did… While practicing, I found out the hard way that the foot stirrup was in upside down and the locking screws were only holding it in by pressure. Not enough pressure to prevent the crossbow from slamming me in the gut when I was cocking the string (lucky me my gut was there to stop it on it’s way to my jaw!). I then started a system of checking all the screws and bolts regularly. We had some issues with the scope not staying locked in as well. So we checked it each time we shot. 20 yards was dialed in and since her stand was set up in a 20 maximum zone, she was ready to go!

The first day of Youth Season left us with seeing zero deer and a zillion squirrels but we did hear a few deer and kick one up on the way out. The second day found us in the stand again when my daughter whispered…..”Dad, there’s something wrong with my scope…” She handed it up and to my dismay the locking nut on the rear ring was gone! The ring was also loose on the scope!

Well, I had to pull a MacGyver and I used the lanyard from my range finder to get the scope tied down until I could get it replaced. Luckily, the scope ring was a fixed side and a clamp side, so I was able to tie it with enough pressure to one side to lock up the fixed side and get the scope correctly aligned.


We finished up her hunt without see anything but a hoard of chipmunks taking over where the squirrels left off….

When we got home I found that all the scope screws were loose and the whole thing was basically being held in place by my jury rigged tie down! Yikes! I had checked all the screws before we went out! Well, I had an extra set of Millet rings so I swapped the whole thing out for them (I just need to paint them black to match up) and they lock up a lot better than the original ones.

One important lesson that I learned with crossbows… they have a completely different shock/vibration oscillation than guns and compound bows… treat them accordingly. You need to add a little dab of loctite to all the connecting bolts and screws!

I certainly don’t want to see disappointment on her face…..