Bowhunting demands accurate shooting under intense pressure. To prepare for the season, bowhunters must practice while trying constantly to improve. Follow these 10 accuracy-boosting tips to achieve your shooting goals.
Have you taken archery lessons or examined each aspect of your form? You might be shooting fine, but a few tweaks could improve your accuracy. Find a qualified coach in your area by clicking here.
Archery is fun, which can lead to practice sessions that are all fun but no work. To improve, set specific goals for each practice session. Pick one thing to work on and focus on it.
Shooting 20, 30 and 40 yards is great for setting your sight pins, but you must shoot in-between distances to learn how to adjust your aim. And don’t forget to practice 5- to 15-yard shots.
You know to look through your peep sight, but to further increase your accuracy, align your peep’s circle with the sight pins’ circular housing. You’ll create a more consistent anchor point by aligning those concentric circles.
Don’t forget to breathe when your quarry walks into range. People naturally take short, shallow breaths in high-stress situations, which boosts your heart rate and makes it hard to settle down. Take a slow, deep breath to settle your nerves, and then go into your shot routine before releasing your arrow.
You’ll be shaken by nerves and adrenaline when getting a shot opportunity. That reaction causes many great bowhunters to make mistakes. It’s easy to get so caught up in a desired result that you forget your shooting fundamentals. Instead, focus on what you can control. Create a mental checklist of your shot’s important steps. Silently recite those steps each time you shoot so they become part of your shot routine. You can then draw on an animal, and follow your mental checklist to execute a lethal shot.
How do you aim steady? Even top archers can’t hold their sight dead still. Therefore, don’t focus on the movement or try to control it. Let the sight pin float while focusing on the spot you want to hit. Focus on the spot, not the pin, while slowly applying pressure to your release aid’s trigger.
Practice letting your bow down smoothly with little extra movement. This practice pays off when you have an animal in range while at full draw, but don’t get a shot opportunity before tiring. If you can smoothly let down unnoticed, you’ll gather yourself before drawing again.
Punching the trigger is the most common error archers commit. If it becomes a habit, it can be hard to break. If your trigger is set very light, increase the pressure required to set it off. Then get used to aiming while resting your finger lightly on the trigger, and slowly increasing the pressure until the shot breaks. Aiming drills are also great exercises for chronic trigger punchers.
If you eagerly fire the moment your pin touches the spot you want to hit, this drill is for you. This issue is linked to punching your trigger. It compresses aiming and firing into one step instead of two. To reverse this bad habit you must separate the two steps. Draw your bow and aim, but don’t fire. Aim as long as you can while watching the pin float, and then let down. This drill teaches your subconscious that it’s not time to shoot just because your pin is centered on the target.
As the season nears, make practice increasingly realistic. For instance, hold your bow at full draw for 30 seconds to one minute, and then execute a good shot. This drill simulates when you draw on deer, and wait at full draw for it to offer a shot.
What’s the fastest way to improve your shooting? A one-hour lesson shortens your learning curve considerably. Instead of trying to self-diagnose your issues, hire a trained eye to examine your shot and offer solutions. Find a nearby coach by clicking here.
