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Aaron
Joined: 30 Aug 2008
Posts: 13
Location: Rockland, Maine
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 Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:06 pm Post subject: Aim or use "The Force"? |
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The oldest boy and I were shooting the 30 # fiberglass recurve today strung with essentially 40# working load kite string. I bought 2 crappy $2.50 fiberglass kids arrows for it and a kid sized arm guard. Good arrows make a world of difference these ones are awful!. We we're shooting a hay bale a 20 yards. If you tried to aim with these arrows you'd miss every time. The arrow would waggle it's way down range and once even took a hard left turn at the last minute like a curve ball. How ever if you didn't aim at all and just kind of mentally pictured the arrows going high and right of the target you could nail the bale dead center every time. It was the same for the 9 year old. When my 7 year old got home he wanted to try but the bow was far to big for him and he got frustrated. Wanting him to like shooting I cut a branch off a maple about 3/4" in diameter. I ended up with about a 48 " rough, green, bark intact longbow that actually shot off the finger pretty well. It drew around 25# (guessing). It didn't throw arrows as well as the Fiberglass bow but did OK for a 5 minute bow. Anyway I can't wait till my Martin is ready. Checked today and they still have not had a chance to make a string for it. Hopefully tommorrow.
Is that what (so called) instinctive shooting is all about? Getting a feel for how a particular bow throws an arrow and just using the force to land the shot? Just curious if this is kinda what you guys feel or do when shooting.
Aaron
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Canerod
Joined: 16 Feb 2008
Posts: 33
Location: Carmel, Maine
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| Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 8:15 am Post subject: |
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Aaron,
I learned to shoot traditional by just focusing on a spot and shooting. I guess this is what you mean by "The Force", what most refer to as instinctive shooting. To me, it's kind of like throwing a baseball, you look at where you want to hit and shoot, the mind taking care of range, ballistics and such.
The nice thing about this method is it is quicker, for those field shots where you don't have a lot of time. That said, a lot of target shooters will use some form of gap shooting, where you estimate the range, then hold the point of the arrow at a certain point in relation to the target, given the range stimate you came up with. This is more certain for a lot of shooters, but since the focus of my shooting is hunting, I practice the same for the field or the target course. This sometimes costs me a few points on the range, but keeps me consistent for the field. Those score cards taste like c&@p, no matter how you cook them 
Hope this helps,
Kevin |
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Aaron
Joined: 30 Aug 2008
Posts: 13
Location: Rockland, Maine
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| Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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I shot the Martin Lynx today finally. Johnson's made up my string, and showed me how to use the bow stringer I bought. Still not real confident with that device. Looked a lot easier in pictures.
It's a 50# recurve. Not "that" hard to pull back for me despite no bow muscles but I had some steadiness problems at full draw. Also in my impatient newbie desire to shoot the bow I shot it without an armguard (which I need to get but local shop doesn't sell a leather one just camo). Not sure what I did in my nervous anticipation but the arrow fell off the rest, jumped out of the nock, and went nowhere. The bowstring promptly bit me in the arm for my stupidity. This caused the 30 or so subsequent shots to be apprehensive. Still I managed about an 18 inch group of 6 at 20 yards shot into a hay bale. Hay bale is no match for a 50# recurve even with blunt target tips. They go right through. Inexpensive target/stop suggestions? Old mattress? Old thick oriental carpet hanging? They want $80 for a manufactured target/stop and it seems a bit small to my newbie eyes.
The bow... seems heavy and it is very loud. Twang! Twang! Twang! Like shooting a banjo... LOL The range at Johnson's is $7 an hour. Gonna have to go there and build some confidence. I'll keep you all posted.
Aaron
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