Florida archery season opens July 26. If you're reading this in May or June, you have six to eight weeks. That's enough time to be ready, or enough time to repeat last year's mistakes. The difference is whether you treat the next two months as a ramp or as an afterthought.
I'm Robert Gilbert. I'm USA Archery Level 3 NTS certified, I own Archery Sarasota, and I've watched a lot of hunters walk in the second week of season wishing they'd done this checklist in June. Some of them brought a bow that hadn't been touched since last December. Some had broadheads they'd never shot. Almost all of them had a sight tape that no longer matched their arrow speed.
This post is eight weeks, eight things. Each step takes between 30 minutes and a couple hours. Do them in order. By opening day you'll know your setup is right because you verified it, not because you hope it is. If you want a coach in the loop, book an in-person session or read about our hunting tune service. Otherwise, work the list.
8 Weeks Out. Bow Physical Check
Put the bow on a bench at home. Not at the range, not in the truck. A flat surface, good light, and 30 quiet minutes. You're looking for the things that get worse in storage and reveal themselves the first time you draw under pressure.
Start with the limbs. Hold them up to a window and look for hairline cracks, delamination, or any milky cloudiness in the laminate. A limb that's failing is the one mechanical failure that will hurt you. If anything looks wrong, stop and bring it in.
Move to the cams. Rotate them by hand. They should roll smoothly with no grit, no chip on the cam track, no string riding off the groove. Then the strings and cables. Look for fuzz, fraying, peep separation, and serving wear at the cam ends. Strings stretch in storage even when the bow is hanging on a wall.
Finish with the grip, the arrow rest, and the d-loop. A slipped grip changes your torque. A drop-away with weak cord tension misses shots. A frayed d-loop fails at the worst possible moment.
If anything looks off, book the tune now. Waiting until July 20 means everyone else is too, and you'll get squeezed into a slot that doesn't leave you time to verify the work.
7 Weeks Out. Arrow Spine, Weight, FOC
Arrow choice matters more than most hunters think. The spine (stiffness) of your shaft has to match your draw weight and draw length, or the arrow will fishtail off the rest and never group with a broadhead. A 70-pound bow at 29 inches of draw needs a different spine than a 60-pound bow at 27. Pull up the Easton or Black Eagle spine chart for the arrow you're shooting and confirm you're inside the recommended window. If you're on the edge, you'll see it later in the broadhead test.
Total arrow weight is the second variable. Florida deer aren't elk. You don't need 600-grain hammers. A 420 to 480 grain hunting arrow with a fixed broadhead is plenty for a 200-pound hog or a 140-pound buck inside 40 yards. Lighter than that and penetration suffers on a quartering shot. Heavier than that and your sight tape changes a lot.
FOC, front-of-center, is the third. For hunting, aim for 12 to 15 percent FOC. Target shooters run 9 to 11. The higher FOC stabilizes the arrow when a fixed broadhead is up front catching air. You can measure FOC at home in five minutes. Find the balance point of the arrow on a knife edge, measure from the throat of the nock to the balance point, then divide that by the total arrow length and subtract 50. Multiply by 100. That's your FOC percentage.
If you're shooting whatever's been in the quiver since last December, this is the year to verify. Carbon arrows don't lose spine sitting on a wall, but cracked nocks, worn fletching, and bent inserts absolutely degrade flight. Spin-test every shaft on a flat surface. If it wobbles, it's done. Custom hunting arrows are what we build most often this time of year, and we can match spine, weight, and FOC to your bow in a single appointment.
6 Weeks Out. Broadhead Verification Day
This is the day a lot of hunters skip. The argument goes like this: my field points group great, my broadheads weigh the same, why bother. The reasoning is wrong, and the cost of the assumption shows up at 40 yards with a deer standing broadside.
The dynamic spine of an arrow reacts to a broadhead's aerodynamics differently than to a field point. A fixed three-blade Magnus or G5 catches wind. A mechanical Rage opens at impact but flies more like a field point in the air. Either way, the impact point shifts. The shift scales with distance. At 20 yards you won't notice. At 30 you might. At 40 you definitely will, and that's the range where most Florida shots actually happen on a still hunt or out of a treestand.
How to run the verification. Pick a calm morning, no wind, soft target backstop, and a clean rangefinder reading. Shoot three field points at 20, 30, and 40 yards. Mark the group center at each distance with a piece of tape. Then shoot three broadheads at the same three distances. Don't pull anything until you've shot all six groups.
The gap between the field point group center and the broadhead group center IS your tuning task. If the gap at 40 is under two inches, you're effectively tuned and you can move on. Two to four inches, expect to adjust your rest a hair or twist a yoke. More than four inches at 40 yards is a real problem and you should not chase it with sight adjustments. That's what's covered in broadheads and field points not matching. The fix is mechanical, not optical.
If you don't want to fight a bare-shaft tune in your garage, this is the single service hunters book most often. Our hunting tune is built around exactly this problem and includes a verified broadhead group before you leave.
5 Weeks Out. Sight Tape Rework
The sight tape on your bow is doing math. It's predicting arrow drop at every yardage based on your arrow's velocity coming out of the bow. The math is only right if the velocity is right, and arrow velocity drifts. Humidity changes string behavior. Temperature changes cam timing slightly. String wear adds creep. A tape that printed perfect last September will be off by July.
The cleanest way to verify is with a chronograph. If you own a Labradar or have access to one, shoot ten arrows through it and average the velocity. Plug that number, plus your peep height and sight axis distance, into your sight tape software (Archer's Advantage, OnTarget2, or the calculator that came with your sight). Print a fresh tape. Stick it on. Done in 30 minutes. There's a full walkthrough in the Labradar guide if you've never used one.
If you don't have a chronograph, you can do this empirically and it's almost as good. Shoot six arrows at 20 yards. Find the group center. That's your 20-yard pin. Move to 30, then 40, then 50. Six arrows each. Find the group center, adjust the tape until point of impact matches point of aim, and lock it in.
Two things to watch for. First, don't trust a single arrow at any distance. Group of six. Wind moves a single arrow more than you'd think, and you'll chase a phantom adjustment. Second, do this at the temperature you'll hunt in. A tape verified at 95 degrees in June is fine for a 90-degree October Florida morning. A tape verified at 50 degrees indoors and used outdoors will be off.
The hunters who blame their sight for missed deer almost always blamed the wrong thing. The sight isn't lying. The tape is.
4 Weeks Out. Gear Shakedown Day
Take everything you'll wear and carry into the woods and use it on the range. All of it. Camo top and bottom (Sitka, KUIU, First Lite, whatever you run). Boots. Pack. Release. Rangefinder. Safety harness. The thermacell. The grunt call. Especially the release. Shooting with a cold-weather glove versus a bare hand changes your anchor point and your hand position on the bow.
What you're looking for is the friction. The release that catches on your jacket sleeve. The pack strap that crosses your bow arm at full draw. The rangefinder battery that flickers and dies. The boot that fits at home but bunches with a thick sock and gives you a hot spot after an hour. The harness whose strap labels show a manufacture date five years back (most have a five-year shelf life, and the polyester degrades whether you wore it or not).
Four weeks out is when you find these problems and have time to fix them. The store is open. Amazon is two days. Replace what needs replacing now. The hunter who discovers a dead rangefinder at 5 a.m. on opening morning is the hunter who didn't do this step.
If you hunt out west also, this is the same drill that western hunt prep uses, just with different gear loads.
3 Weeks Out. Treestand or Blind Inspection
If you're hanging a new stand this season, get it up now. Three weeks gives you time to let your scent dissipate, sight in from the actual height, and adjust if the angle isn't what you pictured.
If you're reusing last year's stand, inspect it like your life depends on it, because it does. Strap rot is the leading cause of treestand fatalities in the southeast. Florida sun and humidity destroy ratchet straps faster than anywhere else in the country. Look for UV chalking on the webbing, any sign of fraying near the buckle, and stretch in the strap itself. If the strap doesn't snap back when you tug it, it's done. Replace every strap that shows wear. They cost ten dollars. A new strap is the cheapest insurance you own.
Wash the blind if you hunt one. Use a scent-free detergent, hang it in the sun, and re-treat with a UV killer or scent-control spray. The same goes for your saddle setup if you saddle-hunt.
Then climb up and shoot. The shot angle from 18 feet is not the shot angle from ground level. Your effective range changes. Your anchor stays the same but your form will want to break at the waist if you don't bend instead. Practice from the height you'll hunt. Three or four sessions in the stand before opening day is the right number.
2 Weeks Out. The 30-Yard Drill
Two weeks out, you stop practicing for distance and start practicing for the shot you'll actually take. For most Florida bowhunters that's 18 to 35 yards. Inside a thick palmetto stand it's closer. From a food plot edge it might stretch to 40. Either way, your repetition needs to match your reality.
The drill is simple and it works. Set a target at 30 yards. Shoot one arrow. Walk down. Pull the arrow. Walk back. Shoot one arrow. Repeat ten times. No groups. No scores. No second shots to dial in the first. The point is to shoot one arrow at a time with full focus and a full mental routine, the way you will when a buck steps into range and you have one opportunity.
Run the drill three times a week for the last two weeks. Thirty arrows total per week. That's nothing in volume terms and everything in mental rep terms. You're not building strength at this point. You're building the routine that fires automatically under pressure.
The hunters who whiff opening-day shots almost never whiff because their bow was off. They whiff because their routine collapsed. They rushed the draw. They didn't anchor. They punched the trigger. The drill above is the cure, and it costs you 20 minutes a session.
If you want a coach watching the drill and calling out what your form is doing under fatigue, that's exactly what bowhunting coaching is built for.
Opening Week. The Morning Check
Day before opener. Take three shots at 20 yards with the broadhead you'll hunt with. Just three. Confirm grouping. If anything is off, you have a few hours to fix it instead of finding out at first light. Pull the broadhead off, replace it with a field point, store the bow case in the truck.
Pack the truck the night before. Bow case, quiver, release on a wrist strap (not in a pocket), rangefinder with a fresh battery, harness on or in the seat next to you, license printed and signed. Snacks, water, thermacell with a full fuel cell, headlamp, knife. Backup release if you have one.
Wake up with 90 minutes of buffer before legal shooting time. That's enough time to re-knock arrows that came loose in transit, double-check your release, walk to the stand without a flashlight bobbing in front of you, and settle in for 15 minutes before legal light. Hunters who race to the stand are the hunters who bump deer they never saw.
If you did the other seven weeks, this morning is easy. If you didn't, this morning is where you find out.
For hunters who want a deeper diagnostic before opening day, the readiness check walks through the same areas with more detail on each subsystem.
Want a Pro to Run Steps 1, 3, and 4?
Three of the eight steps above benefit from a second set of eyes and a press. Bow physical check, broadhead verification, and sight tape rework. We package all three into a single $150 hunting tune that takes about 90 minutes. You leave with a verified broadhead group and a fresh tape on the bow. Book it at our hunting tune page or call (941) 322-7146 to grab a slot before the July rush fills the schedule. You can also book online at the booking page.
