shooting low ??????

[Jmatt1957]

I need some advice. I am shooting low 4 inches at 20 yards and cant find they reason.I have 3 recurves and shoot the same with all three. All arrows cedar, aluminun,carbon shoot low shots between 10 and 30 yards. they shoot into great groups left and right just low. I have good arrow flight no fishtail or porpusing. I shoot split finger and anchor middle finger in the corner of my mouth. If i focus on moving arm up as I shoot it helps. This is not a new problem but one that needs fixed. My bow is 52# at 28.
 I guess my stance and shooting style would be like Fred Asbell teaches.

[McDave]

What do you mean by "movin arm up as I shoot?"

[Jmatt1957]

After I reach my anchor I slowly move my arm up as I shoot.

[McDave]

I don't think you should do that.  I think you should hold your bow arm steady throughout the shot, and after the shot.  If all your bows are shooting equally low, I would think that in time, your brain would reprogram so that your shots would move up towards the bullseye.

I don't know how well you have tuned your bows, but it is possible to move your point of impact up by lowering the nock point.  It wouldn't take much to move the point of impact up 4" at 20 yards, maybe 1/16 to 1/8.  You wouldn't want to do that if your bare shafts were already hitting at the same angle as your fletched shafts, but if your bare shafts are angled up a little compared with your fletched shafts, it would be an easy fix.

[Jerry Wald]

You may need to come to anchor longer. Fred's style is hard to copy. He really just feels it whenhe shoots and doesn't really pull up stop and anchor and then shoot. He is very fluid and it works for him. I have tried his style and it works very well close up, but I found I needed to hold for a bit and really concentrate before releasing to be more accurate.

Ken Becks style is again different. He pulls about 3/4 of his draw and aims and then pulls to anchor and lets fly. Both are very good at their style.

I find that I really improved when i finally bit the bullet and got a lighter weight bow and really worked on form first...really worked on it so it was duplicated over and over.

Then I transfered that to my hunting bow and it took a bit to get the consistency down with the new weight, but it was just that consistent.

I practiced very close to the target and then moved back in small increments and still do that when my shooting is off. put a 4-6 inch circle and shoot 3 arrows and don't move back until you cna put all three in the circle. Start at 5 paces then go back a big step at a time

Jer Bear

[Jmatt1957]

Dave. Yes bare shafts were at same angle as fletched shafts. One of the things I have been working on is follow through, holding the bow up untill the arrow hits the target. According to my wife my brain is unprogramable so I hope that is not the problem. I think tomorrow I will play with the nock location and see what happens.  Thanks Jim

[McDave]

If your bare shafts are at the same angle as your fletched shafts, you probably don't want to fool around with your nocking point.  Sometimes when I switch to a different bow, say a longbow that hits to the left, I will aim to the right.  After a while, I begin hitting to the right, and then I know that my brain has reprogramed.  You might try the same thing.  Look at a spot that is four inches above where you want to hit.  Maybe you'll hit your mark.  Eventually, you'll probably begin hitting high, and then you can look directly at the spot you want to hit.

[Langhorn]

I will start by adding, you have got a great solution to a big problem in South Carolina!  You would kill every deer that you took a shot at by shooting 4 inches low at twenty yards!LOL!May even want to aim a little lower:)  On the serious side though, I cant convince myself that shooting several different bows is the best thing for ultimate accuraccy.  If you enjoy shooting different bows, as I am sure alot of people do, then keep on chunkin' arrows.But I cant help but believe that you are "cheating" on your brain and its ability to become uniquely familiar to a single "most preferred set-up".  Like the old saying goes, "be wary of a man with one bow, he probably knows how to use it."  Good Luck, it sounds like you are on the horizon to solving your dilemma!

[Jmatt1957]

Langhorn,  i have sevaral recurves however I decide early each year which one Im going to hunt with and shoot it 95 percent of the time. Shooting low like I started doing I got the other bows down to make sure it was not the bow and was infact me. You are right about shooting low on deer double lung and a heart shot this year.

[Terry Green]

You could be dropping your bow arm.....or, you may just have your bow arm to low to start with.

[Bullet_Bob]

Don't shoot yardage. Shoot what you think is 15 yards shoot 4 arrows move back a few steps. As soon as you start to shoot low again move forward to get your group center again. Then start to move back again. I think concentrating on the feel of the distance and not yardage.

Listen to the Rick Welch interview.

[sdpeb1]

I wish I understood this question. It seems your shooting instinctive but maybe it's gap, or maybe it's with a sight. I don't know Asbells method, but it does seem you must be dropping your bow arm except when I do my arrows do not group. But that's what I would look at first, either watch bow arm when blank bale shooting or jam a stick(i used a shovel)in the ground and see if it's dropping.- Steve

[Jmatt1957]

Bullet_ bob I dont shoot yardage gust used 20yard as a referance.

sdpeb1, Instinctive I concentrate on a spot i see my arrow in perferal vision only. The arrows just end up hitting low I am going to work on my follow through and see if my bow arm is dropping. Been shooting a recurve this way for 15 years and all of a sudden I'm shooting low...

[jhansen]

Jim,
Ask yourself...what has changed?  15 years of success and now suddenly a problem.  Several different bows and you shoot low with all of them.  That pretty much seems to exclude an equipment problem which leaves you as the source.  So what has changed?  Are you getting older and shortening your draw?  Eyesight changing?  Or it could be something as simple as you psyching yourself out.  You may have convinced yourself that you shoot low and so you do.  I know that sounds silly but let me tell you what I did once.  I had purchased myself a new Yellowjacket bag target.  The center bullseye was superimposed over a drawing of a large yellowjacket wasp.  I remember thinking that if yellowjackets were really that big I'd want to hit them in the head to kill them before they stung me.  My first couple of shots hit the bug in the head.  This had me hitting about 3-4" high and a bit left of the bullseye.  I started telling myself to ignore the bug and concentrate on the bull.  I told myself to NOT hit the bug's head.  So I hit it every darned time.  The bug's head I mean, not the bullseye.  I couldn't seem to hit the bullseye no matter how hard I tried.  Without intending to I had given my mind the order to hit the bug instead of the bull and even though I am certain to this day that I was focused on the bull the bug was what I hit.  I finally cut out some heavy paper, put a sticky dot in the middle as a bull, and taped it over the target so I couldn't see that darned yellowjacket.  Worked like a charm.  

As someone else suggested, you might try getting up close and shooting with your eyes closed in a pure form excercise.  Or try going out and stump shooting.  Just do something different from your normal routine to break the mental pattern that has you shooting low.

John

[Jmatt1957]

John I think you have hit the nail on the head. Everthing else checks out. I think as soon as I can I will head out back to do a little stump shooting. I will let you know if that was it.  Thanks   Jim

[D. Devall]

aim higher.  :p

[Diamond Paul]

Jmatt: are you really shooting instinctively, or consciously trying to put your bow arm where you think it needs to be for the distance you are shooting?  You can either gap or shoot instinctively, but if you try to align the bow arm (consciously aim) and then continue the shot instinctively, it doesn't seem to work very well.  You might be fighting your instincts and keeping them from doing what they need to do.  If you really are shooting G. Fred's style, your brain should adjust naturally and subconsciously command your bow arm to come up some.  Perhaps you aren't really focusing on your spot.  Try shooting just one arrow at a time, then pull it and shoot another, etc.  You could be using a target that's too big, so you are shooting at the edges, rather than the imaginary spot in the middle.  Try a really small target, like a coke bottle top, and see if it gets better.  Good luck, Paul.