Thumb draw scores

Mirko, When you first start using a thumb ring after a career using three fingers, there is a period when your brain is re-adjusting the information from your eyes and relating it to your hand and arm positions. This makes it very difficult to compare scores until you are in harmony with the new style.

Bede,

I am not that new with thumb draw. I have tried it for past few years, not intensively, but whenever I am bored with standard shooting. First with weak bow and without thumbring, and since this summer with 45# @ 31" Kaya KTB and plastic thumbring. I like this bow!!! And technique is much more natural then my standard technique. I dont even have to warm up for shooting KTB. (With finger draw my shoulders hurt if not warmed up, probably due to anchoring). Only problem is that results are not good. Reason can be that I shoot without precise anchor point and without aiming. But, if I include these things, I can better switch back to finger draw.

I use the system of using the arrowhead to determine full draw and the position of the arrow crossing the face to maintain the correct angle. This is effectively like anchoring. With my normal draw this results in the nock being close to the ear so that there is a third point.

By leaning the body slightly forward at the waist and holding the bow nearly vertical, I can aim along the outer edge of the bow at +50 meters and along the inside edge a less than 50 meters. I find tilting the bow at +50 meters an advantage because it allows a clear view of the target. As you understand, we each have different body geometries so this is only how it works for me.

I don't shoot three fingered very often and I always find my aiming is out. If I shoot on the same side of the bow as I do with the thumb ring, I can aim accurately. I think this is because I am strongly right eyed, but that might only a rationalisation. I shot for several months with my right eye covered by a patch as an experiment and my shooting was not much different.

I will try to include aiming to determine is that main problem with my accuracy or not.
Can somebody post some other way to quantify shooting precision? (If nobody is shooting FITA rounds.)

I would try to concentrate on grouping. If your grouping is out, there is something seriously wrong. If you are getting consistent groups, but they are not where you are aiming, then the aiming has to be adjusted.

:) And what is grouping? Compound users consider arrows touching each other group at 30m, barebow users consider that few arrows inside 20cm diameter ring is good group at 30m, Olymipc recurve shooter have their standards... What is group for shooting traditional recurve bow with thumbring?

(I am currently following this logic- good shooting for Korean traditional archery standards is 2 m diameter group at 145m. Then, 20cm group is good for 15m, and 40 cm group is good for 30m.)

It is hard for me to call a score good. Thumbshooting is more complex than olympic archery. I try to miss the target (absolute center) less than 1cm per meter distance up to 30m. Beyond 30m I add 1,5cm for every additional meter. I score arround 350 on 18m and a 40cm Fita-target with 60 arrows and hope my opinion helps a little. :)

Thanks Amarutu, that is very valuable information for me!

I have tracked my results in the past month. FITA 2 x 18m (18m distance, 40cm target, 10-1 scoring, 60 arrows). My average score is 290, standard deviation 50 and best score 380.
I am currently facing two questions:

1. Aiming:
a. trough the limb
b. from inside the bow
c. instictive

2. Realease
a. dynamic
b. static

Trough limb aiming with dynamic release give me most stable results. Instictive aiming results in few very good shoots and then some very poor. I got best score using aiming from the inside of bow and static release. Yet, this style do not work for me every day and feels less natural then dynamic release.

My choice is a dynamic release, because I have to move the bow anyway, making a dynamic release with the same force in the opposite direction a good choice, I think. And I aim that way, making my arrows fly to the place where I was aiming at. This happens to be the left side of my bow.

And now some scores for 40m on a 80cm target:
260 on a bad day
436 was my best yet.

Hope it helps :)

I aim from both inside the bow and outside the bow.
I hold align the arrow with the center of the target by holding the bow outwards, I am holding the bow with my left hand and am looking with my left eye. on the left side of the bow.
Then I start drawing and when the tip of the arrow is gone from my left eye I pull my drawhand to the side of my cheek and I sight down the arrow shaft (the arrow is on the same level as my earlobe but the arrow is 1 1/2 inches in front of it and I use the string at my cheekbone as my drawcheck) and for this last third of the arrow until it is pulled to its full length I am aiming along the arrow with the right eye and "inside the bow", that is, on the right side of the bow.

I have found this is extremely accurate and allows a complete sight picture to be formed in your mind.

Here is the definition of good grouping in Saracen Archery:

To discover how well he is grouping, an archer should set up an object at five spans in diameter (about 38 in.) at sixty bows' distance and shoot.If he can concentrate his arrows in that object, his grouping is good.

Elsewhere "sixty bows' distance" is calculated as about 75 yards. Most manuals also consider an arrow that doesn't enter the target perpendicularly to the surface as deficient. Therefore arrows that struck at an angle or possibly even nock left or right were not considered scoring points so the test of accuracy also implied a bow of sufficient strength.

That is a traditional view of grouping. Busbequius reported that at short range the Turks could deliberately strike with successive arrows so that they touched the edge of a coin set on the target.

The SA test is within the reach of most archers with a little practice though it requires good eyesight. When I was much younger and used to shoot indoors at 18 metres, I would occasionally hit the nocks of my previous arrows despite not having my eyesight problems diagnosed at the time. In saying this I mean my grouping was good, but I had imperfect control of where the group would be. I also found that at distances up to about 50 metres, shooting instinctively was the easiest way to hit what I was aiming at. Above that distance, deliberate aiming was necessary. Internal and external aiming in my experience depends on two independent factors. One is where the nock of the arrow is in relation to the line of sight. The other is the relative strengths of the right and left eyes. Since there are two factors, it is difficult to give hard and fast rules. My right eye is stronger and I draw the arrow along past and touching the corner of my mouth. Usually I aim at long distances using the left edge of the bow. I turn my head so that it is almost directly facing the target and fletching is in contact with my cheek from the corner of my mouth to just in front of my ear.

Here's what I do; back to basic 9 steps to 10 ring, which is as per below step.


1.Stance & posture
2.Nock
3.Set -hook string & place bowhand
4.Set-up
5.Draw/load
6.Anchor
7. Load & transfer then hold
8.Aim & expand
9.Release
10.Follow Through

(Refer NFAA for above detail & explaination)

6 to 9 is rhe most critical step. Take time to aim your target, its not likely we draw and release to hit the target, but aim with both eyes focus to target (while hold/maintain anchor point) and once confident is there, we just ease off our thumb and follow through. In my case, my anchor point is to feel my ring is right behind my ear.