Saturday, April 27, 2013

Still Chasing The Arrow

I was able to sneak away to Archery Field & Sports this afternoon and spent about an hour quite happily flinging arrows at ranges from 10 to 30 yards. Yes, that's right: I took a brave pill and shot from 30 yards today. I've been replaying the man's advice from last week, and I've since bought a Limb Saver stablilizer and a 550 cord wrist sling. Applying said advice, right away all my left and right errors were gone. Typical 10 yard target below:



After shooting at 10 yards for a few minutes, I was warmed up and went to the 20 yard line. Somehow, I forgot to take pictures of some 20 yard groups, but suffice it to say I was consistently hitting right of center and making a group about the size of the white area of the target. Since I left my allen wrenches at home, I didn't get to adjust my sight housing to bring the group back onto the bullseye. This turned out to be quite good fortune.

I was all alone on the range, and being free from judgemental eyes, I set up a block at 30 yards. I shot three arrows just to make sure I was in the ballpark. Mediocre results below:


I took a minute to relax and clear my head , then stepped up and shot this group:



Supposing that to be beginner's luck, I dropped back and let six more arrows go:

So, I have a few observations to make. First, I fail to see how short bows are "harder to shoot" at longer distances. Second, my lowest pin in my sight is dead on at 30 yards, which means had I adjusted my sight at 10 and 20 yards, I would have been hitting left at 30 yards. My rudimentary sight isn't windage adjustable at the pin--only at the housing, so I can't move the pins independently. I'll have to think my way around this to get my point of aim and point of impact back together. 

Also, I learned that archery is hard, and that a bow is a lot like an AR15 when it comes to accessories. I'm off to search the interwebs for string and limb silencers. That's all for now.

3 comments:

James said...

Do you have a bubble level on your bow? Left/right weirdness can be a cant issue.

The Flatland Gun Nut said...

I do have a level in my sight, but the lefts and rights were from my lack of a wrist sling. My remaining errors to the right are primarily because my release has a shit trigger. I'm looking into upgrading maybe next month.

James said...

The release I always used had a very nice trigger, better than pretty much any rifle (aside from set triggers.)

Probably a little on the dangerous side, but "keep your booger hook off the bang switch" always applies.