Shooting & Accuracy Information

Lessons of the arrow. 1. "Are you Robin Hood?"

feeds@yuku.com (Rod) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:07:37 GMT

It was a mild morning in the early summer and the sun was slowly warming the ground between the trees.
Tucked away behind the visitors centre, a small early audience was settled on a series of rough benches in front of a small stage where two men were getting into their rehearsed stage fighting routine.

The small girl had wandered away and crossed over to a fenced off patch of greensward, where a couple of targets were set out in front of two high lengths of loosely hung, heavy...

String Stiffness/ Armguard?

feeds@yuku.com (bglong) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:27:35 GMT

I just bought a 64 " Osage Orange self bow. The string that came with it had little tiny loops that fit tightly to the nocks. I could barely unstring the bow and could se that I was going to fray the string in no time just taking it off the nock.

My wife was going by the archery shop today, so I sent the string with her and asked her to get me a new string. She brought back a string for a 64 " recurve. I had been practicing with an aluminum easton 2314 because I...

4. Selecting Spine Match

feeds@yuku.com (Rod) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:09:10 GMT

The usual method of estimating a spine match is based upon a series of adjustments or allowances, starting from the known draw-weight at a given draw-length.

In its simplest form we only need to know the shaft length, point weight and draw-weight, but there are other contributing factors.

When we speak of shaft length we are measuring from the seat of the arrow nock to the base of the point.
In other words we are...

Things don't fall up in the woods.

feeds@yuku.com (jwellsy) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:41:21 GMT

Ever wonder how an animal can jump so quickly at the sound of an arrow being shot that they can turn, duck, jump or dodge an arrow? I think that a lot of times we tip our hand prematurely with a swing draw. Things fall down and animals move horizontaly, nothing falls up in the woods. So when you swing your bow upward during the draw, that unnatural act can alert the game a second before the shot that something isn't right.

To avoid the unnatural movement of something falling...

Book on shooting

feeds@yuku.com (Manyskins) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:13:18 GMT

Hi Everybody,

I am looking for a book on traditional and/or primitive archery shooting for a wedding present for my wife to be. Something that concentrates on form with a lot of diagrams or pictures would be best for her. Any recommendations would be most welcome.

Andy

1. Introduction: About Form

feeds@yuku.com (Rod) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:30:55 GMT

In the most simple terms, a basic description of how to shoot with a bow and arrow might be:

"Pull it back, point it and let it go".

The Problem.

1. How to do this without struggling with the draw-weight.

2. How to loose without making the arrow go somewhere else.

A Solution.

One part of the process involves...

3. Understanding spine.

feeds@yuku.com (Rod) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:43:26 GMT

Presuming a bow with shaft contact against the left hand side of the bow, the archer drawing right-handed with a loose on the right-hand side of the string. An equalised pinch grip is more neutral but limiting in controllable draw-weight.

What is spine?

Spine is a measurement of the amount a shaft will flex when a force is applied to the nock by the loosing of the bow.

What should a spine matched...

Horsebow

feeds@yuku.com (cyrille) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 08:21:41 GMT
I posted a message similar to this one on the "new" chatroom thread, but am not sure if it got through so I am reposting it here.
I have been shooting recurves "bare-bow" for a number of years. I recently became interested in "horsebows" and have been shooting for a few months, however my accurcy "sucks" beyond 15yds.
The bow is a Kassari out of Hungery and distributied by one Ed. Gilbert out of Wisconsin. The bow is measures 58# @ 30"...

Archery Targets

feeds@yuku.com (toxophileken) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:30:02 GMT

One of the fun things about learning to make bows is that you end up with bows you can give away to kids and friends. Many times, it will be their first bow, and they will need arrows and a target, too, if they want to shoot when they get home. And they will...!

It occurred to me awhile back that I could give away bows and arrows cheaply enough, but I couldn't afford to give away targets, too - which sort of put a damper on the fun.

Well, Tom Mills and others told...

Common Fallacies: Dropping the bow-hand raises draw-weight.

feeds@yuku.com (Rod) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:39:03 GMT
"It is possible, for instance, to drop the bow-hand a little which would somewhat increase the draw-weight without endangering the bow."
Robert Hardy, p.20 in "The Great Warbow".

This is a piece of received wisdom which is not true.

With a shift in hand position on the bow, one limb is effectively shortened and the other limb effectively lengthened.

The shortened limb is now harder to pull, as if piked,...

Out of Position Shooting(Link to Low Res Photos For Dial Up)

feeds@yuku.com (toxophileken) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:06:30 GMT
By request, here is a link to a photo album with low res photos, for dial up users. They are in the same order as the photos in the original tutorial.

Out of Position Shooting Photos

Here is the text from the original post, in case dial up users couldn't access that either.

___________________

For quite some time I...

How to use an Archers Thumb Ring

feeds@yuku.com (ginobrancazio) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:44:23 GMT
ok, so does anyone have any advice or pictures on how to correctly use an archers thumb ring WITHOUT a string loop?

Cheers,

G.

Diagnosing Shooting Faults: 1. Arrow shoots to the left.

feeds@yuku.com (Rod) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 05:53:47 GMT

Currently under revision.

A left-handed archer drawing to their dominant left eye should read right for left and vice versa as applicable throughout the text.

Throwing out of the aimed line.

Having once drawn back the shaft and aligned it with your mark, what you should not do is throw the rear end of the shaft out of alignment as...

2. Finding the Dominant Eye.

feeds@yuku.com (Rod) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:59:46 GMT
We need to find the dominant eye because it is the eye that does the aiming and usually determines which side we draw, anchor and aim

If we do not do this we are said to be shooting "cross -dominant" and will have an offset in alignemt to deal with.

A simple test for eye dominance.

Cut a small hole (about the size of a penny) in the centre of a small sheet of paper or thin card (postcard size is big enough and convenient).
...

8. The Loose.

feeds@yuku.com (Rod) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:52:05 GMT
There are two thing required of the loose in purely mechanical terms.

The first is that the shaft should go exactly to where it has been pointed at full draw.

The second is that there is an advantage in the shaft leaving with a consistent speed, which makes an aiming solution in elevation more predictable.

A great deal of writing about the loose tends to be about the mental state of the archer at this crucial point in the...

Tuning a bow/arrows for proper flight. Original thread title: "Tuning...HELP!!"

feeds@yuku.com (poekoelan) — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 16:20:56 GMT
I usually don't have too many problems getting good arrow flight but one bow is giving me FITS!!
It's got two fairly big knots, one in each limb. It's the noisiest bow I've made. I don't notice much handshock, but I use a very loose grip to begin with. I suppose the knots contribute to the noise, and string silencers may help ...but....

No matter what arrow spines I try, I'm getting crappy flight. The weaker ones that I normally use in most of my bows...

Out of Position Shooting (a Photo Essay)

feeds@yuku.com (toxophileken) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:25:14 GMT
For quite some time I have been wanting to publish an article about this subject. When I got on Paleo Planet, I wanted to post it here, too... I just didn't think people would like to see me shooting a modern recurve here. Now I have a wood bow I can shoot... Yay! Maybe I will get something published about it down the line... But for now I wanted to share this with my PP friends.

The question of canting keeps coming up, and I always answer the same way. Now, here it is with...

11. About Looking

feeds@yuku.com (PaleoAleo) — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 10:06:03 GMT
By Rod Parsons:

"Aim small, miss small" is a good piece of advice, except that I would never want to be thinking about missing.
But why does aiming small work?
It seems like a stupid question, but it useful to understand how and why it works.

Simply put, in our everyday life we walk around recognising things by their shape, colour, movement and other context.
We are naturally accustomed to looking for and looking at shapes.

Therein lays...

13. The Mental Side (part 2)

feeds@yuku.com (PaleoAleo) — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 08:24:19 GMT
By Rod Parsons:

On the Snap Shooting thread Austin asks "What do you do if your subconscious gets you into trouble?"
The answer is simple, you learn how to use your subconscious abilities and teach it to keep you out of trouble.

The truth is that your subconscious only gets you into trouble if your conscious mind creates the conditions which allow it to get you into trouble.

To shoot consistently well it is necessary that you come to believe and...

13. The Mental Side (part 1).

feeds@yuku.com (PaleoAleo) — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 08:23:27 GMT
By Rod Parsons.

This is something that is greatly disregarded and is more important than most folks realise.
Everything that has gone before is just detail work.

This is the stuff that is really important, regardless of your style of shooting.

The part of your mind that is good at aiming and shooting is your subconscious.
Ultimately you must learn to let your subconscious do what it is good at doing.

It is essential that you learn to...