Hard-earned experience is all-important to remaining calm on trophy animals. The best way to quickly gain that experience and the confidence it breeds is to shoot more game.

Back in camp my swaggering client's taken on all comers in impromptu shooting contests during hot midday downtime. He's been taking their money, one dollar at a time, a dollar per shot. While exhausted guides catnap or pack morning meat, a cadre of archers gathers behind the lodge to shoot under scrutiny by those who've wisely conceded defeat, good shots and bad eliciting raucous cheering and jeering. I return from a stand hanging errand to find them backed well out into the graveled drive. Ninety yards distant, showing between parked trucks and lodge buildings, sits a standard-issue 3-D deer target. My guy's at full draw.

His chartreuse fletchings arch high, dropping gorgeously into the 10-ring. Spirited oaths escape gaping mouths. Thank God, I think, I finally get one who can shoot…

The Real Test
Now three calf-towing cow elk and the 350-inch bull are strung along the long finger of scrubby pines flanking the canyon header, making toward open ground. It's our chance. We hastily don stalking slippers, sneak into the bottom and run beneath its concealing crest, catching our breath before inching over the lip to have a look. Tan flashes and churning chocolate legs show through gaps and we regard one another with knowing grins.

Stealing ahead with wind curling back our eyelashes we wait beside a stunted cedar. And it's just that simple. After days of fruitless stalks, a shot is as certain as death and taxes. I spend the minutes carefully popping laser readings from rocks and boughs with the rangefinder I've slipped from my client's hip pouch. I thoroughly commit the area to memory--most 35 to 40 yards.

I'm already forming meat evacuation plans in my head….

Perhaps the wait proves too long. Something happens to my steely-nerved charge in those five or 10 minutes, because when that bull clears cover at 38 yards, after I've delivered the whispered news straight into his ear, after he's aimed steadily seeming minutes, his arrow buzzes over that bull's back and into another zip code. The cows jerk their heads and spin to face different directions. The bull freezes as if he's discovered a coiled and dangerous snake in his path.

"Hold your 40-yard pin in his armpit!" I hiss, in case there's been some misunderstanding regarding range.

His second arrow follows the first. This time the small herd flows gracefully into waiting pines without pause or fanfare. My guy is visibly vibrating, looking me over as if I've just kissed his sister. I've been guiding long enough to know what's on his mind and hand over the rangefinder so he can confirm what I already know.

I've seen it too many times. The 3-D champs, the guy who can dot the "I's" in camp, falls apart at moment of truth. And we've all been there. During back-yard practice it seems impossible to miss, but the next morning you do just that on a broadside buck at 18 yards.