The Think Tank

I shot for a long time today at Sylvan, probably about 6-7 hours. The good news is that my shoulder feels pretty good after all that, which is really good. Especially when you consider that I shot 3 hours on Thursday and Friday both.

The scoring wasn’t too bad either, although it was nothing to write home about.

I wound up walking a full 28 target field course although I did it in two sections: I fooled around on the practice range for a while, then I shot B15-28. I finished with a 265/19x which wasn’t horrible but quite a bit lower than I would have liked. It was one of the lowest scores I’ve shot so far, barely beating the 262 that I remember shooting my first time out.

On Friday I started experimenting with a new anchor point, moving my hand down under my chin instead putting my middle knuckle where my ear meets my face, and bringing the string more down the center of my face. This seemed to eliminate most of my left/right issues, though I did notice that the shots I struggled on still missed left instead of right, especially at distance. I wasn’t terribly comfortable with the new anchor because it felt floaty: i didn’t have a solid reference point for my hand, so I had trouble finding the same spot, and this was made more difficult because of my beard. It also meant that I raised my peep up about an inch, which felt much more comfortable and had the added benefit of raising my sight marks considerably, which was nice.

I shaved the beard down to a goatee (or a van dyke, there is some confusion over the difference) which helped some but in the end I just didn’t feel all that comfortable. I was having a harder time aiming solidly as well, probably due to the floaty nature of the anchor.

After the first 14 I decided to mess with my anchor a bit more. I had liked the feel of it higher on my face, so I moved it up some so that my middle knuckle was behind my jaw bone. That felt very good, much more solid and my aim settled down a lot. I had to lower the peep down a bit to compensate, but it only lowered my marks about 1 line, so no biggie there. I also tied in a kisser-like knot just above the serving to act as a second reference point, since I’m still a little unsure of the anchor.

With the string down the middle of my nose, the kisser goes between my lips just the right of the center as I recall. I will have to double check that he next time I shoot. My anchor is behind my jawbone, with the jawbone between the middle and ring finger knuckles. That puts my index finger sort of crammed into the back/side of my neck. My chin is touching the string as well, lightly on the point of the right side.

Because I’m anchoring further back now, behind my jawbone, my bow arm is bent a little bit more to make up for the extra length. This feels very comfortable and sort of allows me to pre-stress the muscles in my back. The explosion is a little more pronounced as well.

I also have been holding my release a little differently with the new anchor: I’ve been putting my forefinger into it a little more, tipping it in my hand so the thumbnut is up in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger.

That is the setup I used on the second half.

Before I went out I shot for a while on the practice range and it felt like my sights were drifting a bit to the left at the longer distances: my last end at 80 had all 8 arrows grouped in a 5-ring circle but centered about two inches outside of the five. Only one arrow caught, at 9 o’clock. I shot four arrows at 20 after that, and they were center/right xring, so the deviation wasn’t as drastic as it had been when the longer distances missed to the right (before changing anchors).

Nevertheless I decide to see where we were at and Shannon and I went out on B1-14. Things definitely went better this time out. I was holding very well, especially in the beginning, the new-new anchor point feeling very solid. This allowed me to pay more attention to hauling back with my release arm and less on aiming, which really worked well. I definitely feel that the shots that drop out the right side at 3 o’clock when I’m still aiming well are caused by a little creeping. This new anchor really feels locked in and makes creeping a bit harder.

I had some rough ends, dropping a point in the middle on a 25 yarder (up hill, which I seem to struggle on), and then a 17 on the 80 walk-up that was a big bummer. All three misses were in a quarter-sized group at 9 o’clock, by the line in the four ring. The 60 yard shot was the only one that made it, an inside out X, but still on the left side.

Toward the end I started noticing that the 4th shot on ends where the first three were clean were more difficult, and a few times I actually had a voice in my head saying I was going to miss. Usually I did. I’m not sure if that was my old demons from before, or if it was my subconscious telling me something was wrong and I needed to let down and start over. I was positive and assumed the latter, and I did a better job of letting down when that happened the last few targets. (although it did happen again on 27: I shot 3 x’s and then a four by less than 1/4 inch at 9 o’clock.)

Looking at the target you can clearly see that most of the misses are out left. There are only two arrows outside the 5 ring to the right (a few others were low also, which caused them to miss, but they would have still caught had they been higher). The vertical variance is pretty good. Very few arrows missed the five ring high-low. Again a few shots were left-and-high so they missed, but had the windage been on only two or three would still have missed.

The horizontal variance is a bit troubling, especially on the first round, though it has been plaguing me all along. I did make a very minor adjustment to my rest before I left, moving it in towards the riser by 1/2 the width of the sharpie mark on the rest. I shot two ends after that, one at 50 and one at 20 and the left-right seemed pretty good though it is hard to tell with so few arrows to compare.

My x’s were also low, tallying only 44 for the whole round. That puts them at 39% of my total arrows. I would like to get that total up to 50% or higher. Hopefully that will come with figuring out this left-right issue.

The target below shows only the field courses, not the practice arrows.

Additional information: —————————————

Start date: Jun 5, 2011 1:38 PM Target: NFAA/IFAA Field Total score: 536

— Sent from my iPhone