Random 8
Member
Just wondering what folks here do to tune up for hunting season? Tis the season, and archery being a most perishable skill/art, you can never start too early.
Having just cast off the cables and pulleys and gone full speed into traditional archery, I have a bit of a learning curve to climb. Right now I'm working on getting all my arrows relatively centered on the bale and rebuilding/re-learning my fundamentals to the new platform.
When I was in top compound form a couple of years ago, once my known distance groups were up to snuff, I played a few games that really helped my field shooting. I'll list them below.
"Five Step": In this game, I started from a confidence range and fired an arrow. Then stepped back 5 steps for the next one. Any bad shot at a given range was re-shot until satisfactory results were obtained. I'm beginning to play a variation of this with the recurve, only it's 2 step at shorter ranges.
"Open random": In this game, I tossed my arrows from the target into an open area at random distances, then tried to fire all into a kill zone from where they landed.
"Obstructed random": A variation of open random, only the arrows were deliberately placed behind trees in my yard, so I had to lean left, right, or under to clear the tree. I also varied this with a grass obscured target or target in partial defilade with a second bale so the shot had to be arced over the obstruction.
"Earn a beer": This was my favorite game, and should probably not be played at a public range. It involved any combination of above games with a pre-set and moderately difficult goal. When the goal was reached, a beer break in the shade was earned.
Having just cast off the cables and pulleys and gone full speed into traditional archery, I have a bit of a learning curve to climb. Right now I'm working on getting all my arrows relatively centered on the bale and rebuilding/re-learning my fundamentals to the new platform.
When I was in top compound form a couple of years ago, once my known distance groups were up to snuff, I played a few games that really helped my field shooting. I'll list them below.
"Five Step": In this game, I started from a confidence range and fired an arrow. Then stepped back 5 steps for the next one. Any bad shot at a given range was re-shot until satisfactory results were obtained. I'm beginning to play a variation of this with the recurve, only it's 2 step at shorter ranges.
"Open random": In this game, I tossed my arrows from the target into an open area at random distances, then tried to fire all into a kill zone from where they landed.
"Obstructed random": A variation of open random, only the arrows were deliberately placed behind trees in my yard, so I had to lean left, right, or under to clear the tree. I also varied this with a grass obscured target or target in partial defilade with a second bale so the shot had to be arced over the obstruction.
"Earn a beer": This was my favorite game, and should probably not be played at a public range. It involved any combination of above games with a pre-set and moderately difficult goal. When the goal was reached, a beer break in the shade was earned.