Hello. My name is Matt, and I have target panic.
I've been shooting trad going into my fifth year now. The first few years, I shot pretty good.
Being in the Deep South, the heat shuts down my shooting for a few months each year, but if I hit it heavy in early September, I was always on point come October 1st. I didn't get as good last year, mainly due to not practicing enough, but I still shot plenty good enough for my hunting ranges. (Still no trad kill to my name unfortunately).
This year, I couldn't hit crap after about three weeks of steady shooting. My groups were hovering around 15"-18" at 15 yards. Needless to say, I was getting frustrated.
Well, I've been getting a younger guy at work started in trad recently (because I'm an old guy at 32
) and I showed him Clay Hays' new Ascension video a couple weeks back. I also told him he might want to look at some of his other videos for shooting tips and such. I don't need them because, you know, I'm a veteran trad guy and all now. He pulled one up with some tips on basic form, release, etc. and I kinda sorta watched it over his shoulder.
A week or so later, while still shooting all over the place, I started thinking about some of what Clay said, and one thing really stood out. To paraphrase, he said that you need to have control over your shot to shoot well, and if you can't stop your shot at any point in your shot sequence, then you didn't have control over your shot. He then said that this is what's commonly known as target panic.
I've heard guys talk about target panic before, and I always sorta laughed and wondered what kind of head case could suffer from something as absurd as that. Well, thinking about what Clay said about it, I knew that couldn't be my problem, but I figured I'd go ahead and prove it to myself. So I drew to my anchor point and held without releasing........except I released.
I tried again, and released again. I probably tried 15 or 20 times and not once was I able to hold without releasing. I hadn't even realized it because I had never really held at anchor, even when I was shooting well. I would release as soon as I hit anchor. Only I wasn't quite hitting anchor now, and the variance in my hand location at release was destroying my accuracy.
So I quit and went in the house and started wondering how much money I could get if I sold all my bows. The next day, I decided writing off archery altogether might be a bit rash, so I tried again. After 4 or 5 failed attempts, I decided to try it without the target. I pointed my bow out through the woods, drew to anchor, and no release. So I guess "target" panic is the perfect name for what I had. I then turned to the target, still at full draw, aimed for a second or two, then let down.
That was last Thursday. I'm still struggling at times, but after just 4 days, I can draw, hold, then let back down, as long as I stay focused on my shot sequence. If I lose focus, I'm still prone to release prematurely. But when I stay focused, and I do decide to shoot, my grouping has improved greatly. As long as I stay focused, I'm grouping around 3"-5" at 15 yards. That's a change from 15"+ down to 5" or less in just 4 days.
To be fair, I still make bad shots, but now I know before it hits the target that it's a bad shot because I know instantly that I released too early.
I've got two weeks, so if I keep working and disciplining myself, I think I'll get there. If I'm not there by the Oct 1st, we've got a long season here, so I'll just wait until I am ready, and start hunting then.
I just thought I'd share my experience in the hopes that somebody else might gain something from it. I think I was right before and only head cases suffer from target panic, but I guess it's easier to become a head case yourself than I realized. Regardless, target panic is indeed real, and it can be a difficult problem to beat.
Matt Toms.
Topic: How not shooting made me a better shot. (Read 760 times)
