During the winter months, my boys and I do a lot of shooting in the evenings in the basement. Its our hangout, and with that, this is the time of year I like to experiment.
One thing I'm doing this winter is shooting opposite-handed. I'ma lefty, and with the exception of my youngest son, so is everyone else in the family.
My youngest son is the proud owner of a beauty Bear Kodiak Magnum, absolute mint condition, and one of the finest looking Bear bows I've seen.
I started shooting it along with my usual assortment of bows, for a couple reasons. A while back in talkin with my Doc while he was adjusting my neck, he mentioned it would be good to shoot from the other side, as archers tend to have stronger back and shoulder muscles on the side they shoot from. He suspected it could be pulling unequally on my neck, which made sense to me.
I like the challenge of shooting both hands, and I've found it really isnt as hard to do as I thought it might be. The hand-eye coordination doesnt change, its just a matter of building the same muscle memory. So from here on out, when I shoot, I shoot an equal number of arrows both left handed,and right.
Tonight was my first go at it in quite a while, and I was pleasantly surprised with my results.
I shot about 8 groups of 4 arrows, and was nailing the vitals on the bag target pretty regularly. I did notice some muscle fatigue faster from the right, which really proves the point my Doc pointed out.
Who knows,I may end up doing some hunting next fall shooting a right handed bow, and a left.
Doing stuff like this is what makes trad archery so much doggone fun. There is an endless list of stuff we can do to make it fun, and challenging.