In my never ending search for knowledge (horsemuffins[8D]) I have been experimenting with the grip on my ChekMate recurve. I began brainstorming (always a dangerous undertaking) after shooting my old Wing with it's high wrist grip and having a great night of shooting last Thursday.

My ChekMatewas made withwhat I would call a low wrist grip while I use a neutral wrist position - meaing my wrist is straight. Neither high like Asbell, nor low/brokenlike one would use with a longbow. the CMnever has felt particularly comfortable. At first, I thought it was because the grip was a little thick, so I thinned it a bit. It didn't really help much.

So, since I didso well with the high wrist grip on the Wing, I decided to tryto modify theangle of the grip on the CM, but I didn't want to do anything permanent in case it didn't work out. I have a lot of leather scraps (thanks again, Chris), soI got out a piece of leather, folded it up, laid it over the lower part of the grip and wrapped it in place with another strip of leather. In effect, I built the grip up into a medium highwrist grip.

Took the bow out to the range to try it out. First thing I noticedwhen drawing the bow is how comfortable it felt. Good. Second, the grip forced my hand into exactly the same position each time. That's very good. Third, all the muscle tension I'd been feeling in my forearm was gone. Very, VERY good. Lastly, somehow, it made the draw weight seem a good 5 pounds lighter. I suppose it was because I felt more relaxed and wasn't having to concentrate so hard on keeping the grip balanced in my hand.

Then I started playing around with my stance.

Until about 5 years ago, I'd always shot with an extremely open stance, with my back foot actually placed behind the line from the target to my front foot. At that time, I'd decided I wanted to shoot wood arrows again, so I moved my back foot well forward of that imaginary lineto close my stance, trying to shorten my draw length. It seemed to work well for me, even though I began getting unexplainable misses to the left. Then my shoulders started going sour about two years ago, to the point I couldn't handle much draw weight and developed a serious problem with snap shooting before getting to anchor.

Today I took my old aluminums with me, cut 32 1/2". I decided to try my old stance again, and slid that back foot way back to where I'd always done before. I guess I shot 150 arrows all told. Everything just clicked. Didn't feel my shoulders at all. Nice clean anchor and release. That is just my natural alignment, I guess, putting all the pressure and tension from the bow in alignment with my shoulders and the target.

Both changes togetherreally helped mewith COMFORTABLY handling the draw weight.

So, I have come to a couple of conclusions. You need a grip made to fit your natural grip angle. I think that's likely the number one reason people get a bow that simply doesn't feel right or shoot well for them. Second, you need to play around with your stance in order to find your own natural shoulder alignment with the target. Third, when you find the right combination for you, DON'T MESS WITH IT!

Now I'm gonna try building up the grip on my longbow. One never knows...