Ok so I've been shooting Hill style bows for a little over a month now. In love with my Old Tom, briefly owned a Big5 and sold it back to original owner, and now have a Redman also to shoot along with the Old Tom.
I posted about my experience switching over to a deer 3d target from only shooting at my bag, that was an ENLIGHTENING experience to say the least.
Since I got back into trad I've become a full blown Toxophile and I have built myself a respectable little bow collection. The Hill bug is the latest thing and I've been trying to dedicate myself to learning the bow style.
I tried my first "stump shooting" session or 'faux' stump shooting session yesterday on the property where I live, which involved kicking around a 10" foam ball that I spray painted bright red for visibility. I spent over 3 hours kicking it all over the place and having it land uphill, downhill, flat ground and then shooting at it wherever it landed. After pacing them out later, most of my shots ended up being 20-25 yds, and some 30 yds or so, which I'm finding seems like a pretty comfortable distance. Here are pics of a couple of my best attempts...I would kick the ball, then where ever it landed loose a bunch of arrows at it...walk up, pull arrows, kick the ball again somewhere different and a different distance and repeat.
Let me just say, I really find shooting the Hill bows to be challenging, which is good, but it definitely is way different than shooting one of my bows that's got a locator style or recurve style grip and closer to centershot. By the end of the day I was starting to get the grip adjusted in way that seemed to yield repeatable results and that pic of the 30ish yard shots was a result of that, that arrow that's in the ball was the first shot. That shot was beautiful...everything worked, it was a 100% instinctive shot that somehow I just got right..crappy thing is I tried repeating it with the subsequent arrows and it wasn't easy, they all just skimmed over the top of the ball and around it nicking it. Heeling the grip like everyone says seems key. I ended up having the grip wedged real good in the crook of my thumb and the rear portion of my hand lower than my fingers up front, my thumb oriented quite a bit lower than my index/ring finger. That seemed to yield the most accurate targeting. Also, shooting these bows, they really DO like split finger. I like to shoot 3under and it always works well for me on my close to centershot/ r/d/locator type longbows but let me tell you, on the Old Tom and Redman I experimented and they LOVE split finger, I just was soo much more accurate using that style with them.
I discovered pure instinctive a few months ago by trial and error and it is not easy to learn, my post on using the 3D deer target illustrated that. I had the idea for the red foam ball as a good object to REALLY focus on, seemed to work and was a definite improvement over my bag target as far as teaching focus.
One crazy thing I discovered shooting yesterday was that I ended up shooting BETTER if I quickened up my shot rhythm..I'm not talking 'snap shooting' per se, but more like just really trying to be fluid and fast nocking, half drawing, aiming and loosing. Seems like it prevented my mind from getting distracted or something, I just tried to zero on the ball, nock, zero on the ball, half draw, full draw BAM! Howard talked about the faster rhythm H.the Hway, I guess he knew what he was talking about
Crazy.
The fact that I could get the arrows all very close to the ball, often skimming it just barely if not hitting it was confidence inspiring, I figure on a larger target area it would equal a decent hit. Just gotta practice practice practice!!
Topic: First follow up to my 3D deer target experience (also posted in Hill bug thread) (Read 331 times)
