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I think the most important thing is being comfortable as you're shooting. If you can shoot your shorter Mathews accurately and without nock pinch, go for it. Personally I'll stick with a release, but everyone is different. Maybe try both for a period of time and decide what you like best. Good luck.

PBB

Pick a hair.....or a caruncle!!

The highly vaunted accuracy advantage of releases over fingers is blown w-a-y out of proportion. Or not. The average bowhunter doesn't do much shooting between seasons any more, so the release probably is more accurate for those armchair bowhunters. Even with experts, a good release shooter will usually beat a good finger shooter on the target range, but not by much.

Look at the 2001 NFAA National Champions in Bowhunter Freestyle (BHFS) and Bowhunter Freestyle Limited (BHFSL). They both shoot under the same equipment restrictions, but BHFS uses release and BHFSL uses fingers.

Steve Bullard won BHFS with a combined score of 1650. Robert Gentry won BHFSL with a combined score of 1607. At first glance, that 43 points looks like a big margin. Not at all. You're looking at the combined 3-day scores for a 28 target Field round, a 28 target Hunter round and a 28 target Animal round. That's 84 targets and a minimum of 252 arrows.

Doing a little calculating, it comes out to Bullard beating Gentry by an average of 1/2 point per target. Or 17/100ths of a point per arrow. If you ask me, that's cutting things to an awful fine point. Way too fine a point for anyone to make claims about releases being a lot more accurate than fingers.

For the man that practices and perfects his fingers release, buys a good fingers bow and sets it up properly, he is every bit as capable of shooting a deer in the woods, or piling up big X-ring counts on the line, as anyone using a release is. And there are a lot of benefits to shooting fingers.

You can buy a whole pocketful of tabs for the price of one release. If the release shooter forgets his release after a 100 mile drive to his hunting spot, he's generally out of luck and headed back for home or to the nearest pro shop. A fingers shooter can't leave his fingers on the kitchen counter. Fingers also allow you to get off a quicker, quieter shot.

Disadvantage, (for speed freaks anyway) finger shot bows shoot a little slower than release shot bows. You also have to shoot a full sized bow, not one designed for concealed carry.<img src=icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>

I have always shot finger, I tried to practice with a release for about 2 week and threw it back in the box. I'm shooting a 36&quot; Mathews Ultra2 without any problem's with just fingers. When I got the bow is when I tried a release, I guess after 20 years of bow hunting I'm stuck to shooting one way. Pops and Bro went to a release and do just fine, not me.

North America Outdoors
www.naoutdoors.com

this topic has provided some interesting reading. i personally shoot a release

You will have to try it each way. I would love to be ablt to shoot fingers, did for a long time, but was not happy with my accuracy. Went to a release and things got WAY better. With my golden eagle I need to shoot with a release, but sometime I may get a traditional setup and shoot fingers, I am interested in that setup/challenge.

--Jim

Bryan, is it correct that the model you got was the FX? That's what I acquired last Spring, and I love it.

When I first started archery, I bought a 40+ inch A-A Golden Eagle and learned to shoot with fingers. After a few years, I went to a Proline and shot that with fingers also. When I tried out the Mathews with its much shorter length, I found that the angle made by the string at full draw caused way too much finger interference and knew I'd have to switch if I got it.

So that's what I did. It took a few weeks until I was confident with every shot; gradually had to work my way out of the odd flyer caused by poor trigger technique. I love the bow (heck, I've loved all of the ones I've had) and do shoot significantly better as a release shooter than I ever did with fingers. And that wasn't for lack of practise with my earlier bows either.

So I guess my vote for you would be to go with a release. Keep having fun out there.