ORIGINAL: Arthur P
I bet you everybody on here learned to shoot by group shooting at first. And if they say they didn't, they are telling a fib.
No I didn't. I learned basically by what we nowadays call stump shooting (just out playing Indians to a small boy though, while under grampa's watchful eye), and by killing small varmints and stuff around the barn, chicken coop and garden. Every time I missed, I learned to do it better. I'd killed truckloads of game by the time I ever shot my first arrow at a genuine target in an archery class in college.
The style I used up until that college class was like the Comanches and Apaches shot, and radically different from white man archery. I didn't have an anchor. Instead, I drew back almost to the point of my chin and eyeballed down the arrow shaft to aim. (Whoever said Indians only shot instinctive doesn't know diddly.) I held the bow nearly horizontal. My arrows had a raised knob for a nock which I pinched between my thumb and middle knuckle on my forefinger to draw the bow. Didn't even use a nockset.
And that's no fib.
I got into target archery after that, so I've shot plenty of groups. I've got plenty of very good reasons to prefer stump shooting over group shooting now. After 52 years of shooting bows and arrows, all different kinds of bows and with very different shooting styles, I'm not too worried about my shooting form. I'm more into enjoyment at this point of my archery career.
HAVING FUN shooting arrows is a good thing. However you find that fun is good because you will be shooting arrows. You learn to improve by shooting arrows and benefitting from your mistakes. Some things can best be learned from shooting groups. But learning how to shoot in the woods can only be done by shooting in the woods.
Point is, you need BOTH types of practice to be well rounded.
Well, everyone on here played around when kids like that. I am talking serious archery. I knowI had plenty of those kids bow's too, shootin birds and whatever moved. But thats kids play. Thats what kids do. I learned to hone that stuff later. My whole child hood playing around with bows, didn't add up to diddly on what i learned with serious archery later.
To each his own.
I am just curious Arthur, not knocking you,as I hear this constantly in this world. Why do people bring up indians all the time. One could argue, they were far from top archers in history. Lots of other cultures killed lot more than they did on 2 legsand four.
I was in a bow shop yesterday and a guy told me he knew what he was talkin about cause an indian friend told him so. I kinda looked at him like "oh yea".