Paper tune overrated for whitetail hunting?

[ethanbillingsley]

Not that I am a subject expert by any means and seeing as there are so many on here I was just curious to see what the thoughts on paper tuning were. Growing up my dad bow hunted my entire childhood and he just shot tennis balls off the roof with his compound bow for practice and that was good enough for him to harvest more than enough deer. Most of the archery hunting in my area, S.C., wouldn't result in me feeling comfortable shooting past 35ish yards at a deer. Most of that is inexperience for me but still I am curious as to if this is something that is make or break.

 

[Mighty Mouse]

I would say paper tuning does tend to be overrated, but that's not an indictment of tuning in general.

Paper tuning is just a starting point toward the ultimate goal (for a hunter) of getting broadheads to land alongside field points. A well-tuned bow allows you to switch between practice mode (field points) and game mode (broadheads) without adjusting your sight, confirms that your arrow is flying straight right off the bow, confirms that you have sufficient fletching to steer your broadheads, and minimizes the effects of less-than-perfect shot execution during the moment of truth.

Paper tuning is a good starting point to get in the ballpark and can be done at close range indoors. Bareshaft tuning is a good intermediate step to confirm/refine your tune at distance and saves wear on your target because you're not shooting broadheads. But those two methods are both optional and can be skipped with no harm done. Broadhead tuning (shooting BH alongside FP at distance then adjusting your bow until they group together) is the ultimate test.

While its true that the closer your shots are, the less being out-of-tune will hurt you, hunters should still treat broadhead tuning as mandatory IMO.