Hello All,
I said that I was wanted to protect the Tab Sear concept, but I have received some very good advice on the patent process and it sounds like it would not be worth my while.
So here it is. I created the Tab Sear after realizing that those archers that were really at the top of the heap (Professional finger shooters) were not using a clicker. Some of them are what I would consider an anomaly, a person that can draw and hold on a target with no shot anticipation. Those people are very few and far between, people like Byron Ferguson, Addington, and Eagleton. The rest of the folks, instead of using a clicker on their bow, use a clicker on their tab or at least in their hand. The professionals that I studied are not stickbow people, but rather pro finger compound shooters.
When using a clicker in the hand, the archer is able to use muscles that are totally uninvolved in the shot. In other words, they don't have to pull extra back tension and add outside influences into the shot, yet they are getting the benefit of a surprise release. There are a few contraptions out there that people have come up with, but they have been extremely secretive about their design.
The Tab Sear is named as such because it works on the same concept as a trigger sear in a firearm. Two surfaces are pulled apart until they disconnect. Here is a simple drill to see the concept. Take your pinky fingernail and put it underneath your thumbnail on the same hand. Now press your thumb towards your palm very slowly. You will notice that the pressure will build and then, all of sudden, the pinky nail will pop out from under the thumbnail at some unpredictable point. That, my friends, is a perfect non-anticipatory psychological trigger!!!! So I took that concept and put a small metal plate on the back lower corner of the tab in the proper angle and length so it sits where my thumb rests at full draw.
I simply draw back and aim, when my aim is done and I give it away to the subconscious, I hook my thumbnail on the tab sear that is connected to the tab. When I want to activate my shot, I concentrate on pressing the sear towards my palm at a rate that is slow and smooth. Exactly the rate that you would if you were pressing a trigger on a firearm and attempting to get a surprise break on the trigger. I am saying to myself, Keep Pressing, Keep Pressing, Keep Pressing... until the sear disconnects from my thumbnail. When the sear pops out from underneath the nail, it is my psychotrigger to release the string. Again, you are not thinking about the sear, you are thinking about the action that gets the sear to pop. The release of the string is instantaneous because the sear pop is the "GO" signal.
Folks, I have tested this system extensively under extreme stress and I have found it to work flawlessly. I have harvested several big critters with it including a bull elk and bull moose last year with my longbow.
Tournament scores have skyrocketed, but more importantly, control of the shot and group size has become phenomenal. It may sound like another gimmick, but the psychotrigger of choice is not the key, the mental mechanics behind the use of the psychotrigger is the true cure for target panic.
I am designing a tab right now with a sear on it that will be adjustable to the hands of most archers. Anyone know of a source of good Cordovan other then directly from Horweens?