Inconsistency day to day

[fulldraw71]

I have been at the archery game for a long time. When I was a teenager I took it very seriously. My parents took me all over to 3d shoots. I won the ibo Heartland triple crown twice as a youth, but I could never do well at the world's, so I hung it up and only bowhunted when I went to college. I haven't shot a 3d tournament since I was 18. This last year my kids wanted to get into archery, so they could bowhunt with me. They are young and we have been shooting almost daily for a year now. Of course, I wanted to see what is new in archery, so I could coach them the best I knew how.

Joel Turner, whether he figured it out or parroted someone, has a subtle change that makes a huge difference. When I was competing as a kid, the method was to blank bale and the shot was to be a surprise, with the movement to release being completely subconscious. All the focus was to be placed on aiming. The problem is two fold. When you aim that hard, your movement to create the release will freeze when your pin moves slightly off target. Secondly, your mind wants the shot to go when the sight picture looks perfect. This is what you are suffering from.

The new school of though is to aim, and give yourself a command to start the shot. Once you say "here I go" or whatever, you let your subconscious aim and focus on the movement to fire your release. It should be slow and controlled. You should be able to stop at any time. If you have to stop, you restart your release with the same command again. This is the only way to shoot a command shot and have success, but many are better off using "back tension" to fire the release.

To boil it down, you need to stop aiming so hard, trust the float, and activate your release aggressively, but slowly. My personal advice would be to stop command shooting. Period. A few historical archery greats could do it, and even some of the current greats. If you watch them shoot in shoot-offs, they still get the yips. Given your current struggle, it sounds like you are destined to a lifetime of it if you do not stop shooting a command shot.

Also, one thing many fail to acknowledge, there is a secondary movement as a result of "pulling through" or "using back tension" to fire a release. With a thumb button, you have to let the release slide slightly or squeeze your hand together as you pull to get it to activate. You also can't let tension loosen on your thumb or you can pull forever and nothing will happen. With a wrist strap, you have to lock your finger, relax your wrist, and let the strap slide forward on your wrist as you pull through the shot to get it to activate. With a hinge, you have to let the release rotate. You can squeeze with your ring finger or relax your index finger as you pull through, or both.

The only true pull through release is a tension activated release. It is where I would start learning to pull through a shot. You dont have to worry about all the subtle hand movements to get them to work. I prefer to have a hinge, a thumb button, and a tension release that all have the same head length to work with. I can then isolate things I am struggling with. When everything is clicking, the thumb button is the most accurate, but if something is off, it is not even close. Lastly, I find I shoot better, and the releases fire more consistently, with a 2 finger over a 3 or 4 finger.

Good luck!

Interesting. I put my archery equipment up about 11 years ago and found a different hobby. My adult son told me a year and a half ago that he was wanting to get into bowhunting and he wanted me to do it with him and teach him as I have been shooting since the early 80s. all through school he never seemed that interested. He like to go out with a shotgun every year and rifle hunt so to speak but archery is something that I was always doing alone because he was too busy with sports. So this lit a fire under my behind and I got my bow back out of the case in October 2022 and went through the learning process all over again. Kind of as similar story as yours.

Recently I was trying back tension for a week or so, and it did work well with my wrist release, but I also started having occasional inconsistencies and I tried going back to command shooting, which I still can really good at. But I get the yips doing it either way.

Since posting this yesterday, I went out this morning and flung a few arrows and one thing I was practicing was kind of a hybrid release. I got my trigger set not so heavy for more of a command style shot and what I was doing was pulling back against the wall and letting my pin float with my finger curled around the trigger, and when I was ready to execute the shot , I was holding tight against the wall and basically making a fist which was curling my finger and I was hitting very well this way. And to touch on another thing you also touched on, I can blank bale all day long and I’ve proven that and get a perfect release every time at five or 10 yards. It’s when I back up to regular shooting distances and that starts floating that I start getting panicky if it’s too severe. In other words on days when I come home and for whatever reason I’m steady as a rock, I shoot well. But on days when I come home like last night and for whatever reason shaky I start getting the panics. Close range while blank baling you’re never that shaky because the pin is in the center of a much bigger target because you are so close. In other words blank baling doesn’t do a lot for me because if the pins not too shaky, I don’t suffer. Learning the float I think is the key to breaking this.

 

[ddowning]

Yep, you need to trust the float. Also, stop aiming "hard". The human brain loves to center things. Once you get good sight alignment and look at the center, you can focus on the movement to fire the release. It needs to be slow, deliberate, and you should be able to stop it at any point after you have started it. If you focus on aiming, you will stop executing the release when you float out of the center, and you will get anxious about the shot breaking when the pin is in the center. This is the exact opposite of what everyone was teaching when I was big into archery in the early 2000's. They wanted you to aim hard and let the release happen subconsciously. Changing my focus has helped with a lot of the problems I had back then.

 

[*zap*]

shoot just blind bales for a month while concentrating on form/checklist and anchor.

 

[fulldraw71]

I watched a video by someone the other day and I can’t recall who. It might have been John Dudley. It was talking about how long distance shooting uses big targets for the longer distances for a reason. He talked about how if you tried to shoot a smaller target at distance it would play games with your mind as your pin floated all over that smaller target. I have two targets. One is a Morrel high roller target and the other is a Morrel big cube bag crossbow target. On good days I can hit those 4” circles out to 50-60 yards or at least group around them at 50-60. 40 I can typically stack arrows in bunches in those circles on a good day. But on some days I am not as steady whether that be diet or who knows what. And tonight I shot using some mental things I’ve learned from this thread and although I didn’t shoot to my abilities I did have much cleaner releases than yesterday. But here’s where I had an ah ha moment. I recalled that video and I thought I’m not as rock steady tonight as I am on a good day so I rotated the target to show the deer vitals. What a difference that made at 30-40 yards aiming at the center of the lungs. The pin although no more steady than it had been was floating within that large lung area and not playing games with me tonight vs if it was dancing in and out of a small circle. Now again on a good day or maybe after a lot of shooting and I’m warmed up and steadier, I can stack arrows in the heart at 40. Basically I took Dudley’s advice and gave myself a larger target and the crazy thing was that when I aimed for dead center of the lungs, I hit right where I was aiming.

 

[mod-it]

After being a command shooter, then developing target panic, it can be hard to learn to trust the float and move to a true surprise shot. Just have to fully commit to it. I was a command shooter for years and understand the struggle for sure.

Put focus on aiming point, not the pin. Let the pin be a see through orb floating around. Start shot process and just let the pin float, let the shot fire no matter where the pin looks like it is. You'll be amazed how the shot can break and the pin looked like it had drifted off target, yet the arrow lands where it's supposed to.
It takes time to break the habit of setting the shot off when the pin wanders by the POA and to just let your brain subconsciously take care of the aiming part.
Learning a true surprise shot will take you down the rabbit hole of what can be done to get pin float more steady. Your own shooting form and bow setup.
Paige Pearce has a good video called, "Everthing I do to make my bow aim better". She simply talks about all the things she does when setting up a bow, it has a lot of good info in it. There are all kinds of small things that will make the pin hold better.

 

[Dirtscoots]

Anyone else get caffeine shakes ? Morning coffee makes it difficult for me to shoot A rifle. My bow is noticeable but I seem to be able to shake my arrow towards where I’m aiming. A rifle I can’t keep steady well at all.

 

[fulldraw71]

Anyone else get caffeine shakes ? Morning coffee makes it difficult for me to shoot A rifle. My bow is noticeable but I seem to be able to shake my arrow towards where I’m aiming. A rifle I can’t keep steady well at all.

I asked the same question a while back on that other archery forum. I think it affects me as well but as long as I’ve been drinking coffee I think not having some coffee in the morning might have an equally detrimental affect as well.

 

[JK47]

I get the jitters from coffee for sure. But I drink three cups when I drink coffee. So I wait a couple of hours before I even try to shoot.

Usually I drink a sugar free Red Bull in the morning, and those don’t give me the jitters near as bad.

 

[Whisky]

I am very consistent. I consistently suck from day to day. I have severe TP. I have some tools on hand to start the "curing" process. So we shall see. Like mentioned in a pevious post, I MUCH prefer to shoot at a vital zone 3d target vs spots. It's night and day for me.

 

[Pinewood]

I was really struggling with TP, much better now. For me getting the pin to float without releasing an arrow has helped. I'll get the pin to float and then have a big flinch as I was expecting the shot to break. It is so hard to not let the arrow loose and even harder to let down. The first step for me was going to a slow drive by, but sometimes I'd lock up just above the desired aim point. Now I drive by to get to pin float. Then start the release sequence. I've had to break it up into steps : draw, start driving to my destination, drive past my destination and now come back nice and easy. Then just eye on the prize and start pushing and pulling. Then I exaggerate my pull through lol.