ATARNarchive

Draw Consistancy

3 posts2007live thread
M Hardman
Hello All

I'm not sure where this should go, so feel free to move it,

Ok, as I have discovered, the anchor point in the thumb ring technique isn't quite as precise as in the 3 finger technique. I'm not that great an archer, so my draw varies quite a lot anyway, but basically at distances longer than 60yrds my arrows are all over the place because of the lack of (or sometimes too much) power going into them.

As I can't use a traditional arrow head to measure when I reach my full draw (target archery and all that) is there any other way of doing it? I've thought of putting a loop of twine round the end which I can feel for but that doesn't really sound very authentic.

Many thanks

Mike
Bede
It depends on what type of arrow and arrow head you use. I think it is easy to achieve consistent draw length by having someone stand beside you and tell you when the arrow is at full draw. After a half hour of coaching, you will start to get a feedback from your muscles.

Over several hours of shooting your hand becomes insensitive anyway. Mechanical methods of checking arrow length tend to fail then. You can check visually too.
Stephen Selby
In Mongolian traditional archery, they do indeed put a ring of plastic around the shaft so that they can feel the point for consistent shooting.

You also need to drill into your mind that you must not allow the arrow to creep forward before you release. That seems to me the major cause of inconsistent shooting with heavy bows. In Tibetan contests, most of the bad shooting is down to 'creep'.