I am pretty silent on these forums and seem to only chime in when I am asking for help. I have soaked in a wealth of knowledge over the past 11 months that I have been active and actually shooting traditional. Thank you for all of the help either direct or indirect that you all have provided.
I hope to be able to contribute more to these forums in the future. For the time being I thought I would share a little experience and a few tips that have seemed to really help my accuracy and enjoyment. I know this has been mentioned time and time again but I figured it was worth another go as it's very simple and helped me quickly.
The first, is try something NEW. If you feel that you could improve, don't be afraid to try something new. For me, I have been shooting split for the majority of the past year. I have dabbled a bit with 3-under, tried gloves, shot different tabs... but for the most part its been tab split. Well I finally decided to give 3-under a legit effort. I shot a little 3-under with a tied single nock set for split. The results... were underwhelming.
But I liked the change. The bow seemed a tad bit louder to both my ears, and my wifes, but mostly it sounded like a different noise to both of us. That's something that annoyed me but I figured I'd stick with it for now. So, I tied on my nocks correctly (two for the set, one above and one below)for 3-under ( ), set my correct nock height (about 3/4" for me above LEVEL ARROW height), found a new anchor point (knuckle closest to my fingernail on my thumb tucked behind my jaw and underneath my ear lobe, and my outward fletching lightly touching my nose), and let her rip.
BAM... slightly better then underwhelming! Well that was two days ago. Yesterday evening I got to put in a little more time to the new feel and man oh man has my accuracy taken a tremendous leap finally. I am now able to pretty consistently hit about a X" group at XX yards, and sometimes even better! (those numbers shouldnt matter if your having fun and improving by the way). I attribute this to trying something new. Try new things; grip, form, release, release mechanism, aiming technique, target, hell if your old enough try a new beer while shooting. Will I stick with this forever? Probably not. Why? Because eventually I'll want to improve, or I may just need a change in pace... but that's OK because I'll be trying something out of my comfort zone, something new.
And guess what? That "louder sound" that was associated with 3-under... well it is a LOT quieter now that I am set up correctly and shooting correctly. Is it marginally louder? Possibly, but very tough for me to discern. I would mainly call it a different sound.
That brings me to my second piece of advice. Pick a smaller target! Whatever you are shooting at right now, downsize. I have been shooting at a small block target for months now, trying to pick a spot on the target. It works, and I'll continue to do it, but I had a discovery yesterday. I had just finished an adult beverage and lightning struck. The next thing I knew I had my can sitting in front of the target and I was at full draw staring it down. First shot, clink!, I nailed it. Just the audible sound of hitting something gave me a ton of satisfaction I really hadn't felt before on my regular target shots. I was focusing on the red circle on the can and now I was hitting X"-X" groups! Of course I had some flyers etc. but man was it gratifying.
Pick a smaller target. That's it... pick a smaller target to shoot at. I have been shooting at the same damn thing for months and months with decent accuracy. You may think this one little change in pace would have negligible effects, and for you that may be true, but for me it was fun hearing that clink of that can, fun shooter smaller groups, and definitely fun trying... you guessed it, something new.
I hope this gives just the slightest bit of encouragement to a new shooter, an experienced shooter, or possibly even a veteran of the discipline. Thank you all again for the help and the community. Shoot straight!
Topic: A thank you, a short story, and a beginner tip or two (Read 376 times)
