When to Put on a Clicker

This wasn’t so much a question that was submitted as a search someone made, namely, when should a clicker be introduced to an Olympic Recurve archer?

I have some fairly strong opinions on this, but others do as well. I will explain mine.

I think beginners should shoot barebow until they have fairly consistent form. Then, if they want to shoot a clicker, or I think they are ready, we do a test. It goes like this: the student draws on target and settles in. When their arrow stops moving (back, only back; if it saws back and forth, they aren’t ready) I put a dot opposite their rest hole/plunger with a suitable marking pen (silver Sharpie, whatever). Then they let down. I ask them to relax, take a breath and we repeat. This is done 5-6 times resulting in 5-6 dots on the arrow shaft. I then show the student the shaft. What I want to see is the farthest dots no more than a half inch apart. If they are more than an inch apart, the student is not ready for a clicker. Between the half inch spread and one inch spread, it is your call. If the student is in a rush to be a champion, I’d make him wait. If the student is diligent, patient, and hard working I’d tend to go ahead with the clicker.

“I have some fairly strong opinions on this, but others do as well.
I will explain mine.”

This is obviously a test for draw length consistency. I do not want to introduce a clicker until an archer has a fair degree of form consistency because if that is lacking, trying to learn a clicker will be very frustrating. If you know any clicker stories, I will bet dollars to donuts they center on the frustration of using the danged thing.

Next a good starting point for the position of the clicker needs to be selected. And an excellent place to put the clicker is where the arrow point is when the spread of dots on that shaft is centered on the plunger. Voila! Adjustments, of course, will need to be made but you already have a good starting point

The situation I am trying to avoid is a student with a one inch or longer spread in arrow point location, because about one sixth of the time, the clicker works as we want it to, but one half of the time the student pulls right through the clicker on the way to anchor and another one third of the time, the student is so short at anchor that they can’t get through the clicker at all and have to let down.

I want them to practice succeeding using the clicker and five failures out of six tries is not good practice. And the frustration can deter an otherwise eager archer.

This works for kids, adults, everybody and I recommend it to you.

Teaching The Finger Release

A friend and fellow coach Tammy Besser asked for some advice on teaching the finger release. She commented on one young man who was shooting a compound bow with “fingers” and was a real “plucker.” Once she tried to correct him when he plucked wildly and his response was “But I hit the bulls-eye.”

This is a not uncommon problem. It is exacerbated in this case and many others by the fact that the young archer will receive advice from all and sundry, much of it being conflicting. I fervently wish that all well-meaning archers when tempted to give unsolicited advice to either refrain or ask “Do you have a coach?” first. Since I do not believe in miracles, we teach our students what to do when they receive unsolicited advice. We teach them to say “Gee, thanks, Mister/Ma’am, I’ll tell my coach the next time I see him/her.” This phrase is magical. It gets the youngster off of the hook in that they don’t have to immediately take the advice of a senior, and it satisfies the advice giver, possibly because somebody is working to help the young archer.

Back to the issue at hand: how to teach the release to youngsters. Here is what I recommend.

“I fervently wish that all well-meaning archers when tempted to
give unsolicited advice to either refrain or ask ‘Do you have a coach?’ first.”

When working on the release:

Don’t Work on the Release Yep, don’t even mention it. Work needs to be done on what will result in a good release, namely good alignment and relaxed hands. So, is their elbow in line? If not, how can they get it in line? That needs work. A “flying elbow” guarantees a pluck, while an elbow “at or past line” almost cannot result in a pluck. You can try asking them to rotate their elbow back around at full draw and you will touch it as a signal that they can release the arrow. Getting them to focus on the elbow will result in progress. Focusing on the release almost never does, because it creates an urge to “do something” with the release hand which is not what is needed. What is needed is the relaxation of the muscles in the forearm that are creating the finger hook. You can’t address that intellectually with a young archer, so you have to get them into a position where a good release will happen automatically.

Develop Their Awareness Young archers tend to focus on all of the wrong things. (How could they know what the right things to focus on are?) Typically when they release an arrow they are focused on where that arrow lands. (All beginners shoot arrows to find out where they will land. Experts know where they will land once shot.) But archers need to develop the awareness to know, for example, where their string hand ends up after the shot (and bow arm, too). If they learn to recognize when their string hand ends up in a wrong position, they will realize that they made a mistake (probably an alignment one) they need to correct. This requires a great deal of reinforcement in the form of questions: Where did your release hand end up? Did you notice where your release hand was at the end? etc.

Take the Target Face Down! Beginners think a good shot is one that goes into the center of the target face. When working on any part of their shot, they need to shoot “blank bale.” The target gives feedback that cannot be ignored (not by them, not by you, not by me), it must be removed. Then the young archer has to evaluate what a good shot is without an arrow score. This will move them into developing their body awareness.

There are more advance techniques, but those probably aren’t appropriate for beginners.

Tammy, I hope this helps!

 

 

 

 

Tab or Glove?

Beginners often start archery without using either a tab or a glove and this is fine because if their bow’s draw weight is quite low, which it should be, the pressure on the fingers is quite low, so the chance of harm to the archer is also quite low. Our rule of thumb for beginners is we will give out a tab if an archer complains of finger soreness (or they just want one).

To be clear, the reason to use “finger protection,” that is tabs or shooting gloves, is not just to protect the fingers from the pressure of the bowstring. It also provides a slicker surface for the string to slide off of and helps the fingers act together, in concert, when coming off of the string.

We strongly recommend tabs for beginners rather than shooting gloves because the fingers of a shooting glove are not tied together and can act independently. Having the string fingers linked helps them come of the string as a unit, as I say “as a chord and not an arpeggio.” This doesn’t mean they can’t use a glove if they have one, it just means that they may encounter less success with one. Since the bows beginners use are light-drawing, there is little tension on the string, which means the string fingers can distort the shape of the string quite easily. This is a source of inaccuracy. If the string fingers act together, rather than as three separate fingers, this “sting torque” is minimized.

Good archery tabs have a fairly sturdy and stiff body that assists in keeping one’s fingers together while on the string. Simple tabs are often just one thickness of leather (or, ew, synthetic leather) and don’t perform this function well at all. Traditional archers often prefer such a tab, but they have practiced long and hard to make sure it does not handicap them.

Olympic Recurve archers often use a tab with a metal plate for a body, which shows you how important they think that stiffness is. We recommend the Wilson Brothers Black Widow Tab for a number of reasons. It comes in a wide variety of sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL) to fit archers hands. (A tab that is too small or too large is more trouble than it is worth.) It is adjustable (it has a Velcro band that fits one’s middle finger) and it is inexpensive, costing typically about $10. Fancy tabs run from $30-75.

Tabs need to be broken in and if you or your archers are really competitive, we recommend you buy two and alternate their use. In this manner, if you lose your tab, you have a spare. Or if you are shooting in the rain, you can switch to a dry tab after a while. If your “back up tab” is not broken it, it will perform quite differently from its broken in predecessor, which is why we suggest you alternate using the two. Each will have about the same amount of wear.

Tabs can also be adjusted by trimming away excess material with scissors or a very sharp knife. If your hand is “between sizes” but the next larger size and trim it down.

The Black Widow Tab

Helping Them with Stabilizers

If you are following the AER Curriculum or not students will get interested in stabilizers at some point. Either a student joins the class who already has one, or a student sees a YouTube video, or. . . . or your student reaches that point in Stage 2 of the AER compound or Olympic recurve curricula.

What you can do to help is the topic of this article.

What Stabilizers Do
In archery, a stabilizer is anything that makes it easier to hold your bow steady while at full draw. Most non-traditional bows come with a hole in the “back” of your bow to allow a stabilizer to be fit. The holes are the same size with the same threads no matter where the bow as made, so you can install just about any stabilizer you get your hands on.

A popular short stabilizer amongst target archers.

Typically stabilizers are either “short” or “long.” Bowhunters prefer short stabilizers because they are less likely to get tangled up in brush or a tree stand. Consequently all of the shooting styles that are based on hunting require that you use a “short” stabilizer (NFAA styles: BH, BHFS, BHFSL). The last we checked this meant under 11˝ in length (measured from the surface of the bow). Short stabilizers can be really short ~3˝ up to the max, just less than 11˝. Long stabilizers may be any length you want and people have tried stabilizers that have been ridiculously long, but most are somewhere between 24˝ and 36˝ long.

All the stabilizer does is spread out the weight of your bow. The more spread out the weight of the bow is, the harder it is to move, which means once the bow is in position at full draw, it will resist the forces trying to move it during the shot. (Think about it—aiming is putting the bow into a position which will cause the arrow to go where you want. Any movement after that is moving the bow where you don’t want it to be.)

If you hold a broom by the middle of its handle, you will find it easy to hold and move around. But if you hold it by one end, you will find it much harder to move in two important directions: left-right and up-down. (Try it.) It is still easy to move the broom back and forth along the line of the broom handle, though. If you were to think of a broom being attached to your bow (sticking straight out) it would make it harder to swing the bow left or right or up and down. You would still be able to push the bow in and out toward the target, but that doesn’t create much a problem when shooting arrows—swinging the bow left and right or up and down does. There is also one other thing you can do easily with the broom attached and that is to rotate the bow around the shaft of the broom handle. (If you think the idea of the broom on a bow is crazy we know an archer who used a golf club for his stabilizer!)

Let’s get rid of the broom (but remember what you’ve learned from it). One of the ways to reduce the ability to rotate the bow around the stabilizer is to add what are called “side rods.” Archers typically use a “V block” which is inserted between the long stabilizer and the bow. A V block has two threaded holes in it to attach shorter stabilizer rods on both sides of the bow (see photos below). This is the typical stabilization setup used by Olympic Recurve archers.

If you look closely, many compound archers who use side rods use only one rod. This is because the bowsights used on compound bows are significantly heavier than the bowsights used on recurve bows. The one side rod is used to balance the extra weight on the other side of the bow caused by the bow sight.

And most people shoot for quite a while with just a “long rod” before they then try side rods, so you don’t need the whole setup all at once. And do realize that there is a large number of gewgaws you can screw into your stabilizers: weights for the shaft, weights for the tip, vibration dampeners (Doinkers!), etc. These are used to adjust the weight distribution of your bow or too absorb vibrations left over after the shot (so that you don’t). (If you don’t think vibrations can make you tired, talk to a jackhammer operator sometime.)

Helping Them to Learn to Shoot with a Stabilizer
We recommend that when a student decides to try a stabilizer, that they borrow one. We have a half dozen “loaners” that we let our students use, but you may not have stabilizers for them to try, so they will have to borrow one from another student. Remind that they are not obligated to lend any piece of archery gear, so the person they ask may say no and that’s fair.

If their “style” requires a short stabilizer, then they may be stuck with a short one, but urge them to go ahead and try short and long stabilizers. If they really like what a long one does for them, they might want to switch styles!

Start by having them carefully screw the stabilizer into the hole designed for it. This must be done carefully because a number of things can go wrong. If the bow is brand new, there may be construction debris in the hole (metal shavings, paint, etc.). This may cause you to “cross thread” the stabilizer, which is to get the screw threads misaligned. If you force this, it can mess up the threads on both the stabilizer and the bow, which can be an expensive repair. If they encounter a great deal of resistance, we suggest they ask you for help. If the bow is old, a previous user may have cross threaded the hole and not told anyone. We carry a tap wrench and tap the same size as the stabilizer hole so we can “chase the threads” that is run the tap in and out and it will clear up the threads if dirty or only slight damaged (see photo). We don’t recommend doing this unless you are familiar with tap wrenches.

In all likelihood, the stabilizer will screw in easily.

We then recommend you have the student(s) take some shots at short range into a blank target bale. The bow will feel different. For example, bare bows generally rock with the top limb toward the archer during the followthrough. With a long enough stabilizer the bow will rock top limb away from the archer. Because of these effects, if you haven’t introduced a shooting sling of some kind, now would be good. You can find the specifics in the AER Recreation Archery Curriculum Coach’s Guide.

Also because of these effects, they will find that all of their previously determined points of aim or sight markings will now be different (not hugely so, but different). Don’t have them “sight in” again because they may be switching to another stabilizer to try or they may decide they don’t want to shoot with one at all and they will be right back where they were. When they have decided on what kind they want and have acquired their own, then they will need to “sight in” again.

Acquiring a Stabilizer
When they have some idea of what they want they will need help in finding the one they want. If you have a well-equipped pro shop in town, you can just send them there. If you don’t, we use catalogs to give them an idea of what they want at what price and then send them off, probably to the Internet, because big box sporting good stores are unlikely to have much in the way of stabilizers to choose from (short stabilizers are way more likely to be found than long).

While stabilizers help them hold their bows steadier while shooting they also add weight to their bow, so if their bow is already a little heavy (this is typically true for most beginning youths shooting compound bows) they will need to find a very light stabilizer.

What Age to Start?

I just got an email from Paulette Krelman asking “Could you please let me know what is the age recommeded for a child (boy) to start with archery?” This question comes up very, very often because, well, how would a parent know? Here’s the answer.

The rule of thumb for starting kids in archery is the age of eight. This involves the child having not just the physical maturity to handle the activity but also the emotional and social maturity to be in a group and to be able to follow safety rules.

Having said that we know of a child who started shooting at the age of two (really). But this was a case of the child having archer parents. So there are kids who arile they shoot. Since this is not possible in a group class setting, you may want to attend such a class and ask the instructor, either before or after the class, whether your child is “ready.” The instructor may have your child sit in on a class session or may ask them some questions or may try teaching them how to shoot or some combination of these, but they are likely to spend only a few minutes making the assessment. There is no formal process for doing this, so their estimate is just a estimate, but at least it is an informed one.

 

I wrote a book for parents of archers or potential archers covering such questions (and more, like how do you know you have a good class/instructor, what about buying equipment, etc.) and I recommend it to you (A Parent’s Guide to Archery). It is available on Amazon.com.

Why Are My Groups Much Wider Than They Are Tall?

I was watching an Olympic Recurve archer shoot group after group indoors whose height was excellent but the groups were 5-6X wider than they were tall. I finally broached the subject with him. In general, it is not recommended that coaches offer unsolicited advice (it is strongly recommended to not) but I had met the young man prior to this and I knew he had had some coaching in the past.

He apparently had had this problem for a very long time, which is sad because I told him his problem was simple: he need relax both hands (primarily his bowhand). You see, if your hands are tense it tends to cause the bow to jump ever so slightly left and right upon release. This causes a left-right dispersion. A very tiny movement of the bow (twisting it around the pivot point) moves the bowstring even more. A tiny (1mm/1/16˝) movement of the bowstring left or right is going to make several inches difference at 20 yd/18 m.

So, you coaches working with beginners, once you have established a reasonable full draw position for a student-archer, you need to next focus on them having relaxed hands. (Yes, even the string/release hand. The muscles crooking the fingers are in the upper forearm; the hand needs to be relaxed otherwise.) This is one more reason I recommend low draw weights for beginners. (I start adult beginners with a 10# recurve bow.) The less the strain on the archer, the easier it is to learn to relax. Also, to get off the bowstring when the draw weight is very low requires even more relaxation, so such bows give good feedback. Once the proper behaviors are learned, then the draw weight can be cranked up a little at a time while the archer focuses on retaining his/her good form and execution.

Let me know if you encounter puzzling situations you would like some help with.

Practicing Indoors for Outdoors

Just a quick post this time. The question is: how does one prepare to shoot outdoors when it is still snowing outside in Spring? This is especially apropos for my college archery team here in Chicago.

There are complicated schemes involving using one scaled down target to aim at and another to collect the arrows that requires as little as 5-6 feet to set up for a 70m shot. But for now, consider this: a 70m shot at a 122cm FITA target would appear the same to the eye as a 35m shot at a 60cm FITA target or a 23.3m shot at a 40cm target. Since the 40cm target is normally shot at 18m, if you can arrange to shoot it at 23m, you will have a sight picture that is very close to that of the 70m outdoor distance.

What won’t be the same is arm angle. If you can arrange to place the 40cm target as high in the butt as possible, this will help. Also, your arrows are no longer “to scale” in that they are larger in diameter than scaled down arrows would be. So, if you are shooting practice rounds for score, require yourself to get the whole shaft of the arrow into the higher scoring ring to count it at that higher score.

If you search the Internet you will find that a number of people have created target printing programs that take into account the diameter of your arrows while printing scaled down targets. If you are serious about doing this in your basement or garage, you will find these.

Working with Adult Beginners

An interesting thing happened about a year and a half ago. The Chicago Archery Center put out a Groupon offer for a set of four archery lessons at their center. A whopping 1400 people bought a Groupon! But that’s not the most fascinating thing; that was that the vast majority of those purchasers of archery lessons were young . . . adults. As you are aware, archery is undergoing one of its typical growth spurts, probably fueled by popular movies, like Brave, The Avengers, and The Hunger Games and by television shows like Arrow. Many of these archery newbies are adults. Working with adults is different from working with kids. Let’s explore this.

Are Adult Beginners Different?
We teach all beginners in much the same way but we see three different groups, each of which have to be addressed at least somewhat differently: pre-pubescent youths, post-pubescent youths, and adults. Pre-pubescent youths do not have much muscular development, so the lightest weight equipment is used and “fun” is emphasized over everything but safety. These are pre-teens who usually looking at archery for recreation and not as a competitive sport (but there are exceptions, of course). Post-pubescent youths have more muscular bodies but are often growing rapidly, so much attention must be paid to their equipment so that it fits them, especially if they are getting serious and purchasing their own equipment. Allowances for growth must be made especially in arrow selection. (We go over this in detail in our bowfitting seminar.) Adults, on the other hand, do not have growing up to deal with, but we still start them with lighter weight equipment because archery form, posture, etc. is best learned with as little stress as possible. Once proper posture and technique is learned, draw weight can be increased fairly rapidly, as long as it does not degrade an archer’s form and execution.

How We Treat Adults Differently
Adults have a number of traits archery coaches to be cognizant of; here are a few:

Adults Can Overpower Light Weight Equipment By “Light Weight” we mean bows with low draw weights. Adults can overpower the equipment trying to force it to do what they want rather than learning how to get the equipment to show them how it operates best. The first job in learning to shoot well is learning how to relax. Youths often don’t have the option of muscling their bows into a particular behavior, so they can often learn to relax quickly. Some adults struggle with this. Constant reinforcement regarding relaxation is needed.

Adults are Self-Conscious About Appearing Incompetent One of our coaches went to a family reunion and took some bows, arrows, and a target to teach the kids how to shoot. One particular young lady was shooting very well in short order and this was pointed out to her parents and grandparents. When Dad and Granddad were coaxed into giving it a try within two arrows they were competing with one another and their quite young daughter/granddaughter to see who could score better! (Of course, scoring was not being emphasized.)

As adults we want to appear to be at least competent and especially do not want to appear to be foolish. This is akin to teenagers wanting to look “cool” and it is as big a handicap. Our best recommendation is to encourage adults to channel their “inner child” (ask them to revert to being a 12-year old again) and just enjoy what they are doing. Encourage them to avoid thinking about how they might look to bystanders. (Most of the bystanders are other beginning archers in any case.)

Adults Control Their Own Money No parent wants some archery coach getting their kid jacked up about all of the expensive equipment they will need to progress in their sport. So, we make every effort to educate the parents and involve them whenever we make a recommendation regarding a purchase of any kind (organization dues, competition fees, equipment, etc.). With adults, you generally control your own purse-strings, so we talk to you directly.

It is perfectly acceptable for them to use your “program equipment,” as long as all they want to do is shoot arrows for fun. But once they address archery as an endeavor deeper than that, they need their own equipment. Usually the thought comes to them “if I did a little work at this I could get pretty good” or they get home and find that shooting arrows has made all of your “problems” disappear for a while. (Not only does it do that but their problems come back to them in the order of their importance, at least to their subconscious minds anyway.)

In order not to be limited in what they do, they need a bow of the right size, weight, and especially draw weight and draw length. The last two are the two pillars of archery performance and without them, not much can be done. Program equipment has all been chosen to be “enough:” that is long enough (arrows), light enough (in draw weight), light enough (in physical weight), but it can’t possibly be expected to fit every participant and it does not.

If they become interested in purchasing them own equipment, our guiding principle is that folks should buy equipment that matches their level of expertise. Experts should buy top-of-the line gear, intermediate archers should buy intermediate-level equipment and beginners need to buy beginning level equipment. This does not mean all beginners who want a compound bow need to get a Genesis, or other zero-letoff bow, a bow with letoff is good to have, but just not a really expensive one. Not only is the higher end equipment harder to afford, it is harder to use, that is it requires a higher level of expertise to use it to effect. If you want to become more expert in making equipment recommendations we teach a seminar for you in bow and arrow fitting and even if you haven’t taken the course, you may be able to recommend equipment to your adult students that will fit them and their recreation budgets, too. As always, limit yourself to your own competence. If you don’t know much about compound bows, tell your student that they will be better served going to a local shop. Do tell them that they are looking for “beginner level” equipment,” though.

Adults Often Want Explanations Kids are usually told they need to just do what adults tell them to, so often we give suggestions and they just go about trying. Adults, on the other hand, are used to making their own decisions. Consequently you will need to supply explanations if asked. We recommend you wait until asked for an explanation because our definition of boring is “an answer to a question you didn’t have.” Archery class is supposed to be fun.

We also insist that “the athlete is in charge” in that unless there is a safety violation involved, they pretty much get to do what they please (in the context of the class. Archery is an individual sport and we can’t promote your independent excellence as an archer but denying you the right to make your own choices. If a student insist on drawing his bow with a two finger grip on the strip, please do tell them that we recommend three fingers on the string (to avoid damage to the nerves in the fingers from the pressure of the string) but if they insist, it is their sport and they can do what they want.

So, we encourage adults to ask away . . . but they need to recognize that in a class setting you have many people to pay attention to and you may have to ask them to hold their questions while you attend to one of your other charges. You are not being rude; you are doing what we want you to do. Just monitoring the safety of all participants, our #1 goal, requires a great deal of your attention.

If they are taking pleasure from their excursion into archery, one of our staff has written a book for adult beginners: “Shooting Arrows: Archery for Adult Beginners.” Recommend it to those who want such a thing.

How Far Out is the Sight Placed?

I got a question from Jan Tollenaar of Canada via email regarding how far out should a sight’s extension bar be extended. The question was: “I am wondering if you or someone on your staff can tell (or advise) me what is the proper distance to set the extension bar on a target sight. I have not been able to find any reference for setting a proper distance. When you take a look at Axcel sight instructions there is a reference to most archers set the scope 30 inches from their anchor point. (Why 30 inches?) I heard a coach use a rifle analogy: setting the distance on the sight extension bar to its maximum is like a rifle with more distance between front and rear sights (better for long distances). Does distance between the archer and the target have bearing? (indoor at 18 vs. outdoor at 50 m). Or is it personal preference.”

This is a good question and things can be complicated, but the simple answer is you can put it anywhere.
The more complex answer is that there are a number of parameters involved as to what you best sight extension might be. Now, I wasn’t told whether we were talking about an Olympic Recurve target sight, a Compound sight with ’Scope, or a Pin sight, so I will have to include a number of parameters that might not affect you.

Here are the parameters:
1. The farther out the sight bar is extended, the farther apart your sight marks are. At longer distances, your aperture can get in the way of your arrow. At shorter distances you may see some interference with your sight line by your riser (if the riser is short). Youths trying to “make distance” often move their sight bar closer to the riser, even inside of the riser to benefit from these tendencies.
2. The farther out the sight bar (and aperture), the more sensitive the sight is and the more fine you can aim. (This is the rifle sights argument.) In opposition to this is that the farther out you hold it, there harder it is to hold it steady.
3. If you shoot with a peep sight, the aperture may be moved in and out to make your peep hole concentric with your scope housing.

 4. With telescopic sights, it gets complicated. While these apertures are sold by the power (4X, 6X, etc.) the actual magnification is a function of the distance from peep to lens (the greater the separation, the greater the power).
and
5. The farther out the sight bar, the more forward heavy your bow will be (which is why you will see some designs have the sight bar at the bow with a long (and lightweight) carbon fiber boom out to the aperture.

This resulted in a follow-up question: “I’m not quite sure I understand: ‘the aperture may be moved in and out to make your peep hole concentric with your scope housing.’ Did you mean the scope can be moved in and out to make the aperture concentric with the scope housing?”

Yep, you got it in “one,” Jan! One aspect of exact aiming (that compound letoff affords an archer the time to do) is the alignment of the circular peep opening with the circular scope housing (see photo). You want the appearance of a little gap between the two, not so fine that one would fidget trying to get them perfectly aligned, but no so large a gap that you can’t easily see the two openings are concentric.

Moving the extension bar in or out a tad can fine tune this. If you have to move it a lot, you have the wrong hole diameter in the peep. (Generally hunters and indoor shooters shoot fairly large peeps (due to low light conditions), whereas outdoor archers shoot smaller peeps (to cut down the amount of light and also by selecting a smaller part of the cornea to focus the light through, it actually corrects one’s vision. (I have heavy astigmatism—so heavy I can’t get contact lenses—but I can shoot without glasses because of this effect. Optometrists are quite aware of this “pinhole effect.”)

As always, you want to move the bow, not the head to achieve this alignment (assume one’s head position is good ;o).

PS If just one bow is being used indoors and out, I think it is Specialty Archery which makes a peep with removable aperture holes and a variety of peephole insert sizes to choose from. This makes changing around from indoor to outdoor a matter of just changing peep height and peep opening and she is good to go on to the next season.

A Little Bow Geometry

Everything about archery consists of tradeoffs, starting with the design of bows.

Consider the recurve bow at brace in the figure. The horizontal centerline of the bow is midway between the arrow rest hole and the pivot point of the grip. The nocking point is about one half inch above the level of the arrow rest, so that arrow (depending on size) is attached to the string about 3/8˝ above level and an additional inch or so above the previously mentioned centerline. All of these are examples of many of the various tradeoffs necessary to design a bow.

Basically this results in the archer’s fingers (plus tab), being 2-2.5˝ high, being practically centered on the bowstring (see fingers in diagram in relation to bows centerline (CL) which is also the string’s centerline). The bow hand is on the bottom half of the bow, creating what is called a “tiller” problem. (The word tiller means the same as the word tiller associated with sail boats; it means a thing “to steer.” By holding the bow asymetrically, that is on the bottom half, we in effect have made the top limb longer. Many people adjust for this by turning the limb screws to create a slightly weaker limb on top than bottom. (In the old days, they actually sanded one limb more than the other to make it weaker.) Others address this issue by adjusting the nocking point location, leaving the limb bolts alone. If you move the nocking point up, you are decreasing the leverage you have on the top limb, making it effectively stronger, etc. and apparently only small adjustments in nocking point location are necessary to adjust for the problem that comes from holding the bow on its bottom half.

The same issues come up whether you shoot a longbow, recurve bow, or compound bow. The simplest approach is to set the tiller at “even” and then adjust the nocking point location while tuning (bare shaft test). Tiller is determined by measuring from the top or bottom of the riser to the bowstring (at a right angle), then “tiller = top tiller measurement – bottom tiller measurement.” Typical recurve settings are +1/8˝ to +1/4˝ (string closer to bottom limb than top).

This situation has benefits, though, in that as the bow is drawn, a torque is created hinging on the bow shoulder that helps to raise the bow. Basically the draw is part “back” and part “up” (using the bow arm as a boom.