Instinctive Bow Shooting: Part 1

Instinctive bow shooting is defined as shooting without aid of aiming devices or points of reference. In its pure form, instinctive shooting is performed just as you'd throw a stone or a ball by looking at what you want to hit, and letting her fly.

The key to accurate instinctive shooting is intense concentration with both your eyes and the muscles that direct your arrow.

For this key to work, you must have established the fundamentals of bow shooting -- a consistent and workable stance, hold, draw, release, and follow-through, as well as the right mental approach. It's much more effective to begin with good habits than to break bad ones and start over.

In the first part of this series, I will cover the basics of preparing for instinctive shooting, and will cover shooting techniques in the next article.

Start With Good Stance, Hold

Mastering the fundamentals of instinctive shooting starts with a good stance and hold. After years of practice you may be able to shoot accurately from almost any position and even with your bow only partially drawn. But while learning, use a consistent form that promotes accuracy.

Among the most crucial elements of instinctive accuracy is aiming with your dominant eye. To determine which of your eyes is dominant, pick an object in the distance, point at it with your finger, and close each eye alternately. With one of your eyes open, your finger will appear to move to the side -- that's your subordinate eye. With the other open, your finger will remain pointed at the object -- that's your dominant eye. Hopefully, if you are right-handed, your right eye will be dominant, and vice-versa for lefties. If it doesn't work out that way, you should seriously consider shooting from the opposite side so that you would pull the string with the hand on the same side as your dominant eye. Otherwise, you'll have great difficulty with instinctive shooting.

There are two basic stances to choose from. If you've been shooting compounds, you probably stand at right angles to the target so that a line projected across the tips of your toes would intersect the bull's-eye.

This can work with instinctive shooting. But many instinctive shooters have better results with a more open stance -- with their bodies turned a bit more toward the target. This makes it easier to bend the knees, bend the waist, and lean a bit forward in the traditional instinctive shooting form, which aligns the arrow directly below the dominant eye. The right-angle stance has a couple advantages in that it promotes a bit longer draw length, which will extract more performance from your bow, and it promotes better use of the back muscles, which leads to cleaner, more consistent releases, which are all-important. Experiment with stances before settling on one to see which works best for you.

One of the most crucial factors is how you hold your bow hand, and the proper way to hold it is not the way you'd naturally hold it. The natural tendency is to grab a big piece of the bow handle and distribute the pressure across your palm. The most accurate way is to hold it delicately, balanced, and without a grip, so that there is no uneven pressure that might twist the bow at the release and misdirect the arrow or bump it into wobbly flight. Simply, rotate your wrist outward, away from the bow, almost to the point of discomfort, so the bow touches only the bottom of your thumb. Apply no pressure with your fingers. Some people take this delicate grip to the extreme and shoot with a fully open bow hand, fingers extended. But that's not necessary, and a little risky. I can guarantee you'll never catch me holding my $750 custom recurve in a way that could send it clattering down a rocky hillside. I close my fingers on the grip without squeezing.

Two Methods To Hold String

The position of your other hand, your string hand, is more complicated. Most archers use the split-finger, or Mediterranean draw, with their index finger above the nock of the arrow and the next two fingers below it. Other people, myself included, prefer to shoot with all three fingers under the nock -- the so-called the Apache draw. It's largely a matter of personal preferences -- each method has advantages and disadvantages.

Most people use split-finger because they've been taught that way, and because it feels more secure -- it's easy to keep the arrow on the string. It also more evenly distributes pressure on a bow's limbs, because the bowstring is pulled closer to the center of the bow than with three-fingers-under. But there are problems that can arise from the split-finger. The biggest is arrow pinch. When the arrow is drawn, the fingers pinch the nock and can actually bend the arrow against the bow. This leads to poor arrow flight, especially when the degree of this bending varies from shot to shot.

Shooting three fingers under the nock, you won't torque the arrow shaft. But you tend to put more pressure than normal on the bow's bottom limb. This can be a problem -- it can make your bow noisier and reduce its efficiency. But you can avoid this problem if your bow is specially tillered for this style of shooting. And drawing with three fingers under the nock gets the arrow a little closer to your eye, which seems to make shooting more precise.

I started out shooting split-finger, and did so for many years, until a traditional-archer friend of mine recommended I try three-fingers-under. I did, and noticed immediately that I seemed to be more in touch with my arrow and that my shooting improved. I always recommend to people that they at least try this method.

In Part 2, I will cover shooting. Plan on many, many sessions on the practice range before hunting. Start shooting from close range with a very small target and a very large backstop, which will save arrows and help you gain the most important elements in instinctive shooting -- concentration and self-assurance.