dathein

Thanks again for all the advice. I went back to the drawing board with my form and now I' m shooting 3 fingers under and noticing the tip in my peripheral vision to help line up the shot. My groups have tightened considerably but I am hitting 2-3 inches to the left consistently.

Just through experimentation I have found that the problem is my thumb on my anchoring hand. It gets in the way and pushes the back end out just enough to put me 2-3 inches left of my target at 15 yards. I tried a few different techniques, tucking it into the palm (didn' t work), put it straight up (got poked in the eye), layed it in line with my index finger (ended up folding up my entire palm), etc. The only thing that has worked is hooking my thumb around the corner of my jaw while hitting my anchor in the corner of my mouth. Kind of like having 2 anchor reference points. Is this a reliable technique to continue?? What would you suggest??

AK NIMROD

i don' t shoot 3 under but i' m right handed and if i cock my left wrist up ( hand is upward where palm is putting pressure on the handgrip causing torque on the
bow) i shoot left, if i straighten my my wrist i hit " Near" center. if you are shooting a long bow then the grip i discribe does not apply as longbows are designed with balance point over the whole grip and recurves like i shoot are designed to just have pressure at web between thumb and index finger.
other thing would be to continue to push with the left and pull with the right and not relax or settle in. hopefully this will be helpful. - pat

Arthur P

I don' t fold my thumb, but I do let it relax down into the palm when I shoot. With your arrows consistently hitting left, I' d say you' ve got one of two problems, or maybe a combination of both, in addition to what AK said. Either your arrows are overspined for your bow OR your anchor is putting the nock of the arrow to the right of your dominant eye.

The solution is to try a lighter spined arrow and/or play with your anchor. When I switched to 3-under recently I had to move my anchor forward, out of the corner of my mouth over the second bicuspid tooth to a point on my lip over the canine tooth to get the nock directly under my eye.

This is assuming that you have determined which of your eyes is the dominant eye. If you' re shooting right handed with a dominant left eye, that will also make you hit left until you learn to make the adjustment to shoot center.

dathein

I' m shooting a Crusader 52# @28" using xx75 2018 cut to 29" with a 125 grain tip. I use a grip similiar to what Fred Asbell describes in his books. I keep a fairly loose grip so I know I' m not torquing (-2 for spelling) the bow. My anchor hand seems to be moving my nock just to the right of my eye. As I described in my original question question, the only solution I' ve found is anchoring in the corner of my mouth as well as anchoring my thumb on the corner of my jaw. Is it feasible to continue to practice using 2 reference points for my anchor or will it begin to make the whole process too complicated??

Wahya

2018s? [] I tried the 2018s and they were way too stiff for my bow and style of shooting. I shoot 29" 2016s w/125g tips from my Crusader that' s 54# @28" . Same as shooting a 55-60 cedar, which I also shoot from the bow with no problems. Of course, my bow is 66" long, so if yours is several inches shorter and your brace height is on the low side, it' s possible that your bow is more efficient, but I' d still think that the 2018s would be too stiff. Maybe not though. Might be worth looking into.

My anchor is my middle finger on my eye tooth and the main knuckle of my thumb tucks into where my upper and lower jaws come together. I continue pulling through slightly to maintain tention and then release. My accuracy improved from my old snap shooting, no doubt about that one.

dathein

My Crusader is 62" . Won' t the 2016s be a little light??

I' m finding with three under and using 2 reference points for my anchor my accuracy is improving greatly. Also since I have not been able to get out to stump shoot lately (wife' s due date coming quickly), I have been using my target bag as a backing and setting up things like Coke cans in front of it to give me an object to really focus on, which has also been helping quite a bit.

Wahya

They work out to be about 495g, which is just over 9 grains per # of draw weight. Which is close to the minimum that I' d shoot from it. Surprisingly, at 20 paces and with 2 blade zwickey eskimos attached, the 2016s and my tapered 23/64 cedars that weigh 575g penetrate about the same into foam. They both passed completely through the boiler room of a dead 183# boar that my buddy shot with his rifle.

Jim DE

dathien, I found against all logic that my draw length shortened 1/2" 3 fingers under. Yeah I know it doesn' t make any sense and the opposite was expected but it is what it is for me. If it happened to you then your spine increased on your arrows as well.

Also rule #1 is you must have your eye directly over the arrow. If the nock is to the right you will shoot left. Also if all else fails can' t your bow over a bit.

dkbs

I shoot three fingers under and my thumb always rests on the back of my jaw/neck. It works great for me. I switched to three fingers under this year with a new longbow I built. I' ve never shot traditional equipment more accurately.
Good Luck
Dan

Strutter

My crusader is 54@26 and I shoot 2016' s with 145 gr points. With your arrows being 29" and 125 points, I' d say go with the 2016' s also. I cut mine to 27.5 and they bareshaft great and fly great when fletched. I put some coated cable inside my shafts to get the total arrow weight to a little more than 10 gr per lb of draw weight. Didn' t change the way they flew but they are a tad bit slower but do hit harder.