The Think Tank

I shot my new Contender Elite today.  I spent the first couple of hours working on getting the bow tuned up and ready to go, so there isn’t a lot of actual shooting to report on.

The first thing I did was turn the draw weight down.  It was at 62 lbs. when I received it, and I backed it down to 57.  (It looks like one full turn = 2 lbs.)

I started out by shooting it through paper and I found that I had about a 1.5 inch left tear.  I adjusted my rest by moving it in toward the riser as far as I could.  There was still a slight left tear, but I was out of adjustment on my rest, so I just left it.  I will probably need to slide the launcher shaft out a little bit so I can get my rest back into the middle position of my adjustment.

I shot for about 40 minutes after that with mixed results.  I thought that my draw was a little too long, so I had one of the guys there at Archers shorten it up 1/2 inch, bringing it to 30.5 inches.  (That is what I thought it should be.  I’ve done measurements in the past that suggested 31 was correct, but 30.5 is usually what feels right.  When you factor in release rope/D-loop, it makes sense.)  I also dropped the draw weight down to 54 lbs.

After that, things felt a lot better.  I started holding better and my left shoulder started feeling better, thanks to the reduced draw weight primarily I think.  I also pulled the peep down about 1/4″ because I had been fighting with it a little bit.  Moving it down stopped all the struggling to see.  I pulled up, set my anchor and everything was right.

I shot a few ends on the same target, then I put up a new target and started keeping score.  I was already tired and struggling a little bit to aim on some shots, but I wanted to get an idea of where I was at.  I took a short break, then shot two practice ends.  My sights were a little low from the peep adjustment, but I got those up into the X by the second end.  I felt a little unsteady on the aim, bouncing around the whole gold sometimes, but mostly staying in the 10 ring.

Once I started scoring I tried to stop thinking about the equipment, and focus on shooting my shot like normal.  Things started settling down when I refocused my attention like that.

I noticed some side-to-side variation all day, and that carried over the first 3-4 ends on the new target.  I started paying attention to my bow hand.  The grip on this bow is quite a bit smaller than it is on the Scepters, which I actually like quite a bit, but it does feel different in my hand.  I started curling my last three fingers in on my bow hand, so that my pinky finger is touching my palm.  I couldn’t do this easily on the other bow without my fingers touching the handle and applying some side-to-side pressure.

That grip feels very natural to me, and it seems to work very well.  After that, I never had an arrow go farther astray (horizontally)  than the edge of the X ring.  Two of the points that I dropped were before I started paying attention to my grip, and both of them were in the same hole at nine  O’clock.

There was one peculiar thing that I noticed today.  I took two breaks during the scoring ends, after ends 3 and 7, and both times after I came back my first two arrows were low.  One of them caught the bottom of the 10, the other was just out on both ends.  The two nines were almost inside-out in the same hole.

I’m not sure what to make of that.    I will have to watch that in the days to come.

All in all, I thought the bow is shooting very well. I shot 19 X’s this afternoon, which I’m pretty sure is my highest Vegas X count since I started shooting again.  That is not to be confused with a “good” X count, but it is showing some improvement already.  I will be happier when I get that up to around 22-25, which is about where I was when I quit.

The 296 is not fantastic, but it too is my highest Vegas score since I’ve been back.  (I have had two rounds where I only dropped 1 point on the day, but they were both incomplete.  One was only 7 ends, the other 8 ends.)

After I got the bow hand thing figured out, I was mostly dropping arrows in the same holes when I shot well, and those holes were in the X ring.  When I struggled, things opened up a little bit, but still they mostly caught liners or were barely out.  I didn’t have any that were near the tomato patch, unlike the last several times I shot the Scepter, which had one or two out there every day.

One thing to note before shooting next: I need to retie the bottom nocking point.  It is a little too low, which allows the arrow to slip up and down about 1/8 of an inch.  It’s not a lot, but it certainly may account for some of the vertical variances I saw today.

Additional information: —————————————

Start date: Mar 19, 2011 2:54 PM Target: FITA Total score: 296 19x

— Sent from my iPhone