bscofield

How do you practice? How do you ' fine tune' ?

My goal is to be able to shoot 1/2 doz. arrows into a 6" target at 30' by October 1st (start of deer season). Today, I was getting maybe 3 or 4 arrows in my target area. I' m just standing at 30' and shooting my target and have adjusted my sights along the way cause the bow is new. What' s a good way for me to figure out when my sight' s are on if there' s human error in my shooting?

Also, is my target area good, or should I shoot for something better for the sake of a fresh kill?[X(]

dick_cress

I' m sure you will get a lot of replies here but I have a piece of advice. Don' t practice so long that you get tired and start letting your dicipline down. When you do, you are practicing bad habits and that will only get much worse.

stalkin steve

By holding the bow vertically on your knee (not drawn back of course) and with an arrow knocked, look straight behind the arrow so the string lines up with the centre of the arrow. When the sting is in the middle of the arrow your pins should disappear behind the string if they are alined correctly for left and right error to start with.

That was probably pretty confusing but it works for me.
But this only works if you ar shooting a release aid not fingers.

Also go by what Dick_Cress said about not shooting untill you are tired cause you will form bad habits and they are hard to break. Im still trying to break mine.

Hope that helped a bit. Good Luck

DaveH

First you should make sure your bow is tuned properly. After you make sure of that, you might want to try beginning each practice session with some very close shots with your eyes closed. Make sure you are close enough that you won' t miss the target and concentrate on each part of the shot feeling the correct way of drawing, holding and releasing your arrow. Practicing perfect form until it' s second nature will go a long ways towards tightening your groups.

Buckbuster4ou

Good advice from all of the above. I also keep my muscles in shape by using a
3# - 4# hand wt., with a 12" to 16" piece of black thera tubing tied to the wt. handle. Hold the wt in the bow hand and draw back the tubing with the other hand, just as you would your bow. Try to aim the wt, rock solid, on an imaginary point. Work on increasing the amount of hold time. Also I strengthen my back
muscles by drawing the wt. with the thera tubing the squeezing my shoulder blades
together and holding for 5 - 8 seconds and building up my reps.

Try shooting longer distances aiming at a small point on a target. This helps tighten up the shorter distances.

Hyawatha

10 yards isn' t far, but just right to start.

Are you all over the place, or just left and right?

Anchor points!! Make sure everything is the same each time you shoot.

Where your knuckles touch your jaw.
Where the feathers/vanes touch your lips, or cheek.
Where the string touches your nose.
The feel of the grip in your hand, which you barely want to hold on to at full draw.
But the thing that helped me the most once I got all that down, was keeping the field of view in my peep, the exact same, every time. I line up the edge of my sight with the left side of my peep and the top of the sight ring with the top of my peep.

I don' t shoot at the same target more then once at 10 yards or I loose nocks and vanes!

There isn' t really a right way or a wrong way, but only one way and that is to do it the same everytime and you will be accurate.

Fine tuning for me is when I get back to 30-35 yards. That is when left and right are more noticeable and you can really fine tune your sight.

Just my 2¢

Rack-attack

I will just add, don' t sell yourself short on your grouping size. with proper practice you will/should do much better than 6" at 10 yds. To be honest I would not let a new hunter even go in the woods with that sort of grouping. At ten yrds even an o.k. shooter should get 2" groups. You should get to the point of shooting 3-4" groups at 20 yds before hunting. And don' t shoot any further until you tighten them up. A hunting situation is much,much tougher than backyard practice and accuracy is that much harder. be patient and learn the correct form and it is not that hard.

get some advise on your form from a good local pro-shop, before you ingrain bad habits.

get your boe properly tuned from a pro-shop or download the tunning guide from eastern' s websight - it is a great guide to learn whats going on yourself.

jsasker

Adding either the no-peep or a peep sight will help you get a more consistant anchor point--EVERY TIME.

davidmil

RACK ATTACK beat me to it. Don' t sell yourself short and worse yet... don' t sell the equipment short. 6 inch groups at 10 yards can be bettered with your eyes closed. Even if you' re just beginning they should shrink from that after a couple practice sessions. Your goal should be to get that group or better at 30 YARDS.... not FEET by next fall. But, if you' re a beginner I' d stay away from hunting at that range for a while but would certainly practice at it. At ten yards you should be slapping arrows by next fall. It can be done. As someone said... FIRST A WELL TUNED BOW. Due to the different hand pressures and torgues we add as beginners... one persons way of looking down a string may not work for another. Whatever it takes to gain consistancy is the goal. I would certainly hook up with an experienced archer if you' re new and get a couple lessons on the basics(form, anchor, follow through etc.). AS he said, 6 inch groups at 30 FEET are totally unacceptable for bow hunting. It not that hard. It won' t takes hours of practice every day. It takes GOOD practice. You should have better groups than that now and all you have to do now is work on form, building up muscles and learning. Your anchor doesn' t have to be like everyone elses. Your form doesn' t have to be exactly the same. It just has to be repeatable time and time again. It should be natural and relaxed. ABOVE all else....... IT MUST BE FUN!!! As someone else suggested.... don' t over do it. Work up to it. 20 good arrows with proper form are far better than 100 arrows just to get numbers in. You might want to consider cutting your shot numbers down and work on some strength training to build up the right muscles. 20 or 30 minutes of light muscle strengthening drills would be far better than 20 more arrows when you' re tired.

bscofield

Thanks for the help everyone... LOTS OF USEFULL STUFF IN HERE!

Now time for the stupid man to admit his mistake... I wrote 30 feet, I meant 30 yards (95+ feet)... my bad. Hope I didn' t worry anybody that there was somebody going hunting who couldn' t get within 6" at 30 ft... []

Now, I don' t think this needs to be in a new thread, about practice shooting:

I have heard 2 conflicting statements,

1-) don' t practice with anything but what your going to shoot with

2-) don' t practice with broadheads, it' ll jack ' em up.

My question is what to do...? I have practice heads on that are 100gr and have broadheads that are 100gr. With the weight being the same, is there that much of a difference in shot because of the shape?