Shot in the Dark

Today I want to show what has always been one of my favorite archery training exercises: shooting in the dark.

The shooting lane pictured above (in my family’s garden) is ideal for this exercise. It has decent distance of ~23m maximum and sufficiently insufficient light. What? xD

The point of this exercise is to be able to aim without looking too much.

The minimal light’s purpose is to show where the shooting lane is, we do not want arrows in the neighbor or his garden.

What should be used to aim is body posture, combined with the fact that you know where the target is in your mind. When this mastered, precision and posture coordination will greatly improve.

Start with a little light at the target and at the shooting line. The light should be just enough to make out the target but no details. Remove the light at the shooting line as soon as you can nock your arrows blind, something recommend  all archers to learn (and the next step is to string the bow blind).

Use a target that makes a distinctive noise when hit, so you know when you did well. If you can see your arrows, it is too bright.

Learn to use your other senses for shooting too! Having good eyes certainly helps to aim well, but you can also listen to your arrows, for example, to know their trajectory! Something I definitely want to try one day is to have a target making noise in darkness, and aiming must be be based on the sound.

It may be frustrating at first but do not give up! It is very good practice and eventually you will make it ^_^

kitty hugs + happy shooting~

Joouna

Archers are never bored, #7

Oooh look, coach hung a tiny marshmallow in front of the target, its probably a dry one, and oooh so tiny! Challenge accepted >ω>

1st arrow little too high, 2nd one a little low, 3rd one…

*splurt* aaaaaaah yuck!!! wasnt dry =△= oh well i got it before any of the sight- using recurves did :3 *goes triumphantly to clean up arrow*

Double Shot How-to :3

here is how to do a double shot, 2 arrows at the same time 😀 as seen here.

First of all, you will need a bow that fits the following description:

1. Either no arrow rest (finger shooter) or a simple shelf arrowrest like on this one for example.
2. No button or clicker or any other gadget sticking out in that area.
3. Your nocking point marker should be as small and unobtrusive as possible, or ideally nonexistent.

If you don’t have a bow like that, you can also make a really primitive bow such as this one here, it is very easy, cheap and fast to do.

Secondly, there is a safety precaution: Start from a short distance, 8m or 10m is enough. The reason being is that your bow is now launching twice the mass so the arrow trajectory will change. Slowly increase the distance while practicing to learn the new trajectory and avoid broken arrows.

Now, how to shoot!

Loading the arrows:

The first arrow goes as normal. The second one goes on top. Make sure the fletchings are not in the way for eachother, leave a gap. You might want to tilt your bow so the arrows do not slide around at first.

Gripping the bowstring:

-If you have click-nocks: proceed as normal but leave a bigger gap between your fingers so the nocks do not get pushed together.

-If you have sliding nocks: Put your index finger on top, middle finger between the arrows, ring finger below.

The Draw:

The torque of your fingers on the bowstring should be enough to push the arrows against the bow and prevent them both from rotating away. In the case that your nocks are very loose, you can grab them between your fingers and exert that torque manually. This may result in some fishtailing in the release but that can be minimised with practice.

Release: proceed as usual.

How to aim!

Up/down/left/right movement of bow will steer both arrows in the respective directions.

To increase vertical distance between the arrows, push the nocks closer together. (Beware, only few milimeters difference on the bow = ~0.5m on the target at medium distance)

To induce a horizontal distance (eg. shoot multiple enemies running toward you, etc) tilt the bow sideways. Be sure to take into account lost draw length if you do this.

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have fun with the double shot ^_^

kitty hugs to all~

Joouna