Thought you might enjoy a little update on my archery endeavor.  The Brigham Bowmen have disassembled the indoor range and moved their operation up to Mantua at the outdoor range facility.  I have not enjoyed that range as yet but will some day soon.  What I have been doing is going down to the farm and doing some long range shooting in preparation for this weekends Formal Invitation.  When I first started taking archery lessons back in January, my mentor, Lynn Hayes told me that even though the instructions being given cover the basics of archery, everyone is different and to experiment on my own to find what feels and works best for me.  I’ve been on hundreds of websites and seen 10’s of videos on shooting recurve and long bows.  Shooting instinctively.  Walking the string.  Gap shooting etc. etc. etc.

When it all boils down, it comes to form and consistency, along with practice that makes that arrow go where you want it to go (most of the time).

So, I’ve been experimenting, like Lynn said.

I set myself up a chart for Gap Shooting and have been keeping track of my “gaps” at 5 yard increments.  Beginning on March 20 and going up through April 4th, my average gaps were these:

Gap shooting is standing at a given distance and pointing the tip of the arrow at a single place each time as you shoot from different distances.

5 Yd. 9 inches, 10 yd. 17 inches, 15 yd. 19 inches, 20 yd. 18 inches, 25 yd. 15 inches and here is where it gets interesting; 30 yd. point on for all days until the 4th of April when it went to 35 yards for point on.  I don’t fully understand that change.  But you get the drift of gap shooting.  At close ranges the arrow climb slowly as you back away from the target and then the arc of the arrow brings it back down until at some point away from the target the arrow hits where you have been pointing the tip the whole time.

On April 5th I decided to change my stance a little.  I have been using a somewhat open stance where my feet are shoulder width apart, forward foot slightly pointing toward the target and the rear foot slightly ahead of the forward foot and square with the target.  This is how I began shooting.  My anchor was with the string hand under and to the back of my jaw.  I would rotate the bow to the point the string touched my nose and then elevate or lower to where I felt the arrow would hit the target and then release.  This worked well, but not too consistent.  I’m sure it is in my release form and need to work on this.  The other thing about this form was my inability to stop the bow from moving all over the place as I held the string back.  I felt like I needed something more to stop the bow from moving.

So, I moved my feet to be square with the target.  When I draw the string back, my string hand rests under my jaw, just like before but the string automatically finds my nose AND I can feel the string touching my boob.  The bow does not move all around and when I want to elevate, all contact points are maintained and I pivot from the hip.  This has helped with my long range shooting and keeps my arrows going relatively toward the center line of the target.  Ya, I still under and over shoot the target, but the arrows seem to be hitting the ground in front of the center of the target, or going over it centered on it as well.  More practice is needed.

Back to the Gap!

With my new stance and 3 point anchor system my gaps have changed!

5 yd. 12 inches,  10 yd. 22 inches, 15 yd. 29 inches, 20 yd. 32 inches, 25 yd. 28 inches, 30 yd. 21 inches,  35 yd. 10 inches and 40 yd. point on!

I’ll have to do some checking on my draw length, but it seems possible that I have increased my draw length by changing my feet and squaring up to the target.  That is the only explanation I can come up with for the gap distances to have increased the way they have and my point on distance to have increased by 10 yards.

On a negative note, when I draw to full draw, I can only see what is directly in front of the bow with peripheral vision to my right.  Very little to my left.  My right eye is looking straight down the arrow shaft.  Is this good?  Someone who has been shooting a whole lot longer than me will have to comment on that.

Now let’s look at my long range shooting.

You’ve read that my goal in long range shooting is to “hit the bunk”….not to mean, hit the rack….The bunk is bigger than the target by a bunch but so is 60 yards as compared to 20 at the indoor facility.  Toss in a bit of a breeze nearly every evening, some late day sun in the eyes and whatever else presents itself during the practice sessions.  I have to admit these numbers are not a very big sample, but they are numbers and have to mean something at this point in the game.

I set up at 60, 50 and then 40 yards and shoot 5 ends of 6 arrows per end.  A tally at the end of the sessions looked like this:

Day one:  60 yd.  9 hits,  50 yd.  20 hits,  40 yd. 25 hits

Day two:  60 yd. 9 hits,  50 yd.  17 hits,  40 yd.  22 hits

Day three was the day I anchored with my 3 place anchor….jaw, nose, boob….

60 yd. 5 hits,  50 yd.  17 hits,  40 yd. 16 hits

Last night was day four of my practice and I was running really late and only had about an hour to play before the sun set.  I spent most of my time on the gap shooting but did manage to get two ends in at 60 and 50 yards.  My mind was on time and not so much on what I was doing with my shooting.  The results were these:

60 yd. 4 + 4 hits,  50 yds. 3 + 3 and the last 3 at 50 was only shooting 5 arrows instead of 6….you can see from this my mind was not on what I was doing.  But, should those numbers continued I could expect to have had a 20 hit session at 60 yards and 15 at 50 yards.  I really think that between the practice in and of itself and the 3 point anchor I should increase my hits substantially.

Oh, another thing I threw into the mix were string silencers….puffy strands of yarn….I know they slow the string down, but they also take some of the shock out of the bow hand.  It’s all good!

Bears Butt

April 8, 2015