Darin,
With rifles it is similar to sighting in for maximum point blank range (MPBR), and ballistic calculators (like JBM) have a function that calculates the optimum sight in range for your specific load and intended target size.
I agree that it's a similar concept, but still different in that MPBR is the max range you can hold
on-target and still keep it in the vital from zero to (X) Yards. You could in effect extend MPBR by aiming low with a higher zero range with your rifle but you would sacrifice being able to hit short range tagets. Obviously M
PBR stands for point blank so the term would not apply any more since we are sacrificing point blank range for long-range.
With a bow the short range part is mostly irrelevant because at 10 yards all your pins are on a bull elk. I don't have a good ballistic calculator with graphical output to experiement with the rifle example here at the moment, but I'm sure somebody does... Here's an example graph of a 223 sighted in at various distances I found.
This 223 sighted in at 300 yards (purple) has 10.5" of trajectory. If we used the same principle as the trick pin and assume you have a miss tolerance of 6" (10.5" high to 4.5" high), then your effective range window is between ranges of about 60 and 270 yards (aiming 7.5" low while sighted in at 300). Using the same +/- 3" tolerance and the MPBR method you would have an effective window of about 0 - 225 yards (that's an estimate since there is no bullet path shown with a max of 3" of trajectory between the black and yellow lines).
A .223 is ballistically anemic, but it helps to illustrate the difference between MPBR and this concept. There is definitely a bigger trade-off with a rifle, but who knows... for the right application or the right person it might be the right answer.
Coop