Sight Picture

[McDave]

I think the comment you made earlier is a good start: “The first step in becoming a truly instinctive archer is to realize that it cannot be done with logic.“. When I teach someone to shoot, I teach them all about form, safety, different kinds of bows and arrows and how they work, etc., and don't say a word about aiming*.  Meanwhile, they are shooting hundreds of arrows.  It's amazing to me how few people even ask about aiming.  For the most part, they seem to believe that if they learn to do all the things I am teaching them to do, their arrows will eventually start hitting the target.  Which, for the most part, is true. 

Sometimes I will see someone scrunching his head around to get his eye behind the arrow like it was a shotgun barrel, and I’ll comment that that doesn't work very well.  Sometimes later on a student might come to me and want to learn about gap shooting and I will explain how to aim using the arrow point.  But in my experience, using the arrow point to aim is not something that naturally occurs to most students at the beginning level unless it is something they have heard of before.  Instinctive aiming does seem natural to most beginning students and they start doing it without having it explained to them, the same way they started throwing a baseball or football without anyone explaining it to them.

* Edit: other than to focus on the spot they want to hit.  I do tell them that much.

[rhampton]

Once proper form is established and it is time to try to hit a target, instinctively, all focus must be on the target.  Almost as if you are at the target and the arrow joins you there.  Most don't have the mental discipline to achieve this state. A trick to help the mind can do wonders.  If you anticipate what is going to happen when the arrow strikes the target, it helps to get the focus on the target.  If the target is going to make a loud noise or jump or move, the mind tends to anticipate it at the time of release.  If you combine this with target movement, such as a swinging target that will make a noise when the arrow strikes, it may help even more.  If you take a shot and discover you didn't use proper form, you must have the discipline to stop trying to hit and go back to form practice.  This takes tremendous patience and discipline.  Practicing the wrong form will defeat the purpose.

[McDave]

If you anticipate what is going to happen when the arrow strikes the target, it helps to get the focus on the target.  If the target is going to make a loud noise or jump or move, the mind tends to anticipate it at the time of release.  If you combine this with target movement, such as a swinging target that will make a noise when the arrow strikes, it may help even more.

It is interesting to me how different people come up with different ideas as to how to improve.  I would certainly not discourage this, as it is only through being unsatisfied with where we are that we we are motivated to get better.  Your idea that I quoted is a good example.  The fact that it is almost entirely the opposite of my approach only highlights the breadth of human experience.

My approach from start to finish of the shot is to endeavor to keep my mind in the present moment.  Any anticipation of a future event, such as the arrow impacting the target before it actually does, memory of a past event, or conceptual image from some never never land outside of time, is almost certain to have a negative impact on my shot.  My attention is divided between focusing on the target and being aware of my back tension and other aspects of the shot.  If I catch myself thinking cognitively (in words) during the shot process, I let down.  Often though, it is only after I shoot that I am able to think back and reconstruct what was going on in my mind during the shot process, and become aware of when my thoughts led me astray.

As far as we can discover, early man began to use the bow and arrow about 50,000 years ago.  This was well before any written language.  Probably humans at that time didn't have much more of a spoken language than the higher mammals do now.  In order to hit anything, they had to aim their bows, and without written or spoken language to learn cognitively, one has to imagine that they aimed instinctively.  I believe that the ability to aim or throw instinctively has become as hard wired into our genes in the thousands of years since then as the ability to run. 

As humans have developed cognitive reasoning and language skills, we have learned different ways to aim and run which have improved our abilities to do these things in certain specialized activities, such as foot racing, target archery, and sport hunting.  However, during the many thousands of years before the invention of agriculture, when we were running and hunting for survival, our instinctive skills served us very well without any thought as to what might be the correct way of doing things.

[rhampton]

I love your responses.  As I'm reading I can't wait to reply.  It is my belief that all aspects of form must be practiced to the extent that they do not require conscious thought.  For my shooting, a true instinctive shot has 100% concentration on the target and none on any aspect of executing the shot.  You said, "My attention is divided between focusing on the target and being aware of my back tension and other aspects of the shot".  If we are referring to instinctive shooting, I don't think both can be done at the same time.  I would separate "focusing on the target" from "being aware of back tension".  That's why I've said it is impossible to practice form and try to hit a target at the same time.  I agree with your statement, "Often though, it is only after I shoot that I am able to think back and reconstruct what was going on in my mind during the shot process, and become aware of when my thoughts led me astray."  Of course that happens to me and I think it does to any instinctive archer.  The moment I realize I was thinking about some deficiency in my form as I was trying to hit the target, I stop trying to hit the target and go back to form practice to correct the deficiency.  Your mentioned "letting down" if you catch yourself thinking in words.  I also try to do that and I think that is exactly what we should do.  Getting back to the brain and how it works, I believe our "instincts" must reside in the right hemisphere, while speech it a left brain function.  For me, an instinctive shot is "mindless".  Of course I know the mind is involved, but not the cognitive side.  I think of it as a Zen experience although I have never practiced that discipline and don't pretend to fully understand it.  I actually believe our brains still have "instincts" that we are born with.  We suppress them and are taught to suppress them from a very early age. 50,000 years ago, man must have been a much more instinctive creature and much less self contemplative.  I don't think they aimed instinctively, I think they functioned purely instinctively.  When I first started to try to shoot thrown targets, I was friends with Dale Marcy. He told me to start by trying to hit extremely small targets, not larger targets.  And he said to imagine the arrow hitting the target just before my release. It worked for me and I use visualization in my shooting.  I do see the arrow striking the target before it happens--if this is never-never land, then that's where I am.  And now I have run out of "words" and I'm doing a poor job of trying to verbalize a mystical experience.  When practicing, since I don't have the mental ability to shoot shot after shot, instinctively, I use the tricks I described to help get my focus 100% on the target for the shot. When hunting, the instincts that are hard-wired, kick in and I let myself embrace them completely.