The Think Tank

We tried to shoot outside today, we even went out to Sylvan, but by the time we got there it was pouring rain so we went over to Archers Afield and shot there.

The first 4-5 arrows were pretty shaky on the aim and scattered a bit, but I got things under control by the time I started scoring. (I adjusted the left-side v-bar to stick out away from the bow a little more, offering some off-center balance to see how it felt. I think it may have steadied me up a little, but I’m not sure how much if really helped.)

I cleaned the first 5 ends, mostly shooting 2x’s and a pretty close miss, although I did have some legitimate fat-shafters in there too. All in all I felt I was shooting very well, and the v-bars were still helping to keep my aim under pretty good control. I do think I want to add a little additional weight to the v-bars though. Tonight I added 5 stabilizer weights on the bow behind the stabilizer, which helped to steady things down.

The first five ends were really easy, my aim was good and my shots were coming off clean and smooth. In fact, things were so smooth that I forgot to go through my mantra of focusing on form, feeling where the bow and release will end up. Instead I was just sort of blanked out. End six started with two almost perfect X’s, and when I was aiming the third one I distinctly remember thinking to myself “you cant miss”. Naturally, I proved myself wrong instantly by shooting a six O’clock 9.

Fortunately, that woke me up and I tried to focus on my form to finish up from there. It took a few arrows to get back in the swing and I was struggling just a bit, but everything was very solid 10 ring, but only 1x 30s on 7-9.

I knew I had a good round going, and I really wanted to stay clean the rest of the way, so each end I got a little more nervous/excited. By the last one I was fairly amped up. No butterflies or anything, just a level of excitement and a feeling that if I dropped a point here I would be very disappointed in myself.

I used that excitement as motivation. While I was aiming I made sure I was staying strong, doing my push-pull routine and going through my mental mantra of focusing on form. I literally told myself “shoot your form and you will hit x’s. All that matters is your ending form position”. The first two were solid shots,  both nearly inside-out x’s. That left me feeling very confident on the third and final shot. Although, not overly confident like before. Instead, while I was aiming I told myself “I don’t care where the shots goes, I am going to hit my final form position”. The shot went a second later and landed a dead center, inside-out, hair-splitter X.

Round 1: 299 19x

I still had an hour before the shop closed, so I decided to shoot another round. I really thought I could clean it and get the 300 I’ve been waiting for.

I started out OK, but I could tell I was getting tired, struggling a lot to get through my shots, and holding a long time, even though I was still going through my mantra of form first. On the second end I drilled the first arrow, fought through the second, let it down, and fought through it again, and shot a horrible, weak shot which went skirting out into the tomato patch. (As it turned out, it actually broke into the nine ring by about a millimeter, but it was still ugly.) I tried to recover on the third shot, fought it as well, let it down, and shot another horrible, ugly nine, though this one was inside-out gold at least.

I took a breather and drank some soda pop, then came back sort of fired up and shot 3 solid X’s, though I was still fighting through every shot. Ends 4 and 5 were both difficult again, and I dropped a nine on each one. At that point, I was very frustrated and contemplated going home, since I was struggling so hard, shooting bad shots (something I don’t really want to practice), but I really hate to end on a bad note, so I solidered on. I took a look at my trigger tension and discovered that the setscrew was loose again: instead of being 1/2 turn from firing on its own, it was 1.5 turns. I readjusted the tension to where I normally keep it, and started shooting again.

Now that the release was not so hard to pull through, I started coming through my shots pretty easily again. After a couple arrows, everything was feeling pretty natural again. Since I wasn’t holding each shot so long, my shoulders started to recover a bit and my aim settled down again to almost perfect, which in turn made it easier to concentrate on my form, which I did a good job of.

One thing to note: especially when I get tired, I have to make sure that my bow arm stays strong through the whole shot. Working a very subtle push-pull thing seems to work very well. Usually I envision a rod extending between the back of my bow hand and the knuckles on my release hand, and then I see that rod extending out a little bit, pushing my hands away from each other. I have no idea if that is at all representative of what actually happens, but when I think that my bow arm winds up with a little forward movement after the shot and the shots are solid. When I forget to do that, or lose track of my bow arm, it tends to stop the forward motion and things get ugly fast.

After that I shot 3x’s, 1x, 3x’s, 1x and then another 3 solid x’s to finish out the round. The arrows that missed the x were all solid tens, mostly just out at 3 O’clock but still solid 10. Except for one. I had one arrow sneak out a long way at 3 O’clock, barely fat-shafting through the line on target 2. I hung to the right on #2 all day, despite changing arrows.

I finished that round with a 296 18x, and a total of 595 37x for the pair.

I actually feel better about the shooting than the score makes it look. For the most part, I felt very solid and composed today, and even though I went through the one rough patch, I definitely feel I can build on this sort of shooting. I need to cement my mental process in place, watching myself to ensure that I am thinking about my form and feeling it in my mind before I actually release. One promising trend is that whenever I start to feel anxious at all, that mantra comes through loud and clear, and when that happens, I drill the x. That is very encouraging.

Technical note: I took the old chrome stabilizer weights off the riser and them on the V-bars after I got home today. This will put a little more weight down low on the bow, which I think will make the bow balance out a little better.

Additional information: —————————————

Start date: Mar 23, 2011 6:05 PM Target: FITA Total score: 595 37x

Sent from my iPhone

I shot the Contender today at Archery World.  I did not track my shots in Targetmate, so I don’t have an arrow plot for today.

I shot at least 120-150 arrows yesterday, so my shoulder was tired when I started today.  Still, it wasn’t too bad.

The first hour or so went very much like they had gone yesterday at Archers Afield: Pretty good but only about 3/4 of the time.  One consistent factor in both days is that I could not aim well at all.  My dot kept dancing all around the yellow, and unless I shot a spot on perfect release the arrow either missed or fat-shafted a 10.  There was very little consistency.

I mentioned to Mom that I was having a very hard time aiming, and she suggested that maybe we should try a V-bar setup.  We had spotted a stabilizer/V-Bar combo in the consignment case for $200.  We went and took a look at it today, and it turned out to be a pretty impressive set: A 34″ Doinker long-rod, a stabilizer weight for the long-rod, a Doinker adjustable V-Bar bracket, some other kind of down-angle fixed V-Bar bracket, two 10″ V-Bars with weights and an additional 5-rod Kudlacek stabilizer with a down-angle quick-release.  All said and told, when new, these items probably cost $600 bucks, so the $200 price tag is quite fantastic.

I bought it and put the long-rod and v-bars on the bow, with the v-bars pointing straight back at about 45 degrees out from the bow.  The inside rod poked me uncomfortably in the belly, but I gave it a few shots anyway.

The results were less than impressive.  I still couldn’t aim for sour owl bowel and any shot that was less than perfect was a big stinky nine.  Needless to say I was very disappointed.

I adjusted the the v-bars so they were pointed down at about a 45 degree angle and pulled them in toward the bow so they wouldn’t poke me as much.  This resulted in a much better aim and three solid X’s.  Unfortunately, the rear bar was still poking me uncomfortably, and this time it was in the junk.

I adjusted the v-bars to about a 60 degrees down-angle, and pulled them in as close to the bow as I could and tried that.  The result was a rock solid aiming on the first arrow and a dead center X.  The next two were a little bit shakier, with some movement in the sight, but it was very controlled movement, if that makes sense.  Two good shots and two solid X’s.

The bow felt very well balanced, and after the shot the bow did not move much at all.

I kept shooting it that way, and things kept going well.  The aim was greatly improved, and even when I had to hold the shot longer than usual or struggled a bit, the shots just kept finding the 10 ring, with about half Xs, maybe a little more.

With the aiming thing settled down, I was able to spend more energy focusing on my bow hand and my form.  Both things came together much easier without having to pay so much attention to aiming.  Even on the shots that I struggled through, the arrows still were solidly placed in the 10 ring.

I shot one 8 at nine O’clock, but it was off of a shot I really fought through.  My aim was pretty much 10 ring solid the whole time, so I kept fighting.  At the last second, the sight slipped out to nine O’clock and it fired.  I hit pretty much where I aimed.

I dropped one other shot after that, again at nine O’clock, again off of a struggled shot.  Aside from those two, everything else was an X or a solid 10.  After 4-5 ends, I started feeling pretty confident and then even when I fought through shots, they still hit X’s.

I ended on 6 solid X’s off of 6 shots that were held almost dead solid.  And my arm was very tired at that point, having shot for almost three hours again today.  (With very few breaks.)

For the first time that I can remember (since I started shooting again), I left the range feeling very confident and encouraged.  I’m very excited to shoot tomorrow.

One other thing to note: I switched the points on the three arrows I shot today, using the 75gr points.  I think they were working better than the 100’s.

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

My shiny new Hoyt Contender Elite arrived today!  As you can probably tell, I’m pretty excited about it.  I slapped my stuff on it and shot about 20 arrows through it tonight, and so far it seems quite nice.  The GTX cams are awesome!  They feel much better than the Fury cams on my old bow.

I have a lot more fine tuning to do, but from the little bit I shot it today I am pretty sure I am going to like the bow a lot.

As an added bonus, I think its kinda pretty too!

Today was the second and last day of the NFAA Indoor Sectionals.  I wound up shooting 1 X worse than yesterday, finishing with 300 and 49 X’s – and a weekend-total of 600 with 99 X’s.  (Perfect is 600-120X).  This makes twice in a row now that I have set a goal of shooting 100+ X’s for the weekend, and twice I have fallen short.  That is very disappointing to me as the 100 X bar is pretty low.  I know I can shoot better than this.

Oh well.

Debbie accidentally went Smurf huntin’ again today (which means she shot an arrow in the blue, costing her one point).  She was a little bummed about that, but she improved on her X’s from yesterday, so that is good.

This tournament pretty much finishes up the indoor season.  The next few weeks won’t have much going on, and then the outdoor season will start up in April.  My new bow should be here around the first part of April, so I am excited to get it and take it outside for a while.