actual sight for an uphill appearing 60 yard target among the mixed tall trees. I drew to aim and after “fighting my bubble” for awhile, I let down. Trying again I let down once more, stating that “my bubble must be stuck.” You guessed it, it was fine, it was my brain and my body that was crazy. Maybe exaggerating only a little to make my point, it was a case of multiple misconceptions. The target was uphill with the face pinned up with a little tilt, the bale itself setting at another angle with the trees in the background slanting a little with the profile of a nearby rise adding to the disillusion. My body did not want to believe that my bow had to be held at the angle the bubble was calling for, the bow seemed perfectly vertical where I was wanting to hold it. The bubble was not lying, I finally FORCED myself to hold it over at what seemed a crazy angle and all my shots scored well. But down at the target I decided I was just a normal slob when I noticed that virtually EVERY hole was in the right half of the paper including plenty of complete misses, obviously shot by those without a bubble level or by those who refused to believe it.
LET’S TALK ABOUT PRACTICE AREAS. By now you may be thinking you “can’t trust” anyone or anything but yourself, which is about right! Understand how vulnerable practice areas are and remember that there are NO REGULATIONS or INSPECTIONS for practice areas. Strangely enough I recently had the chance to remind myself of what I’ve been teaching and suggesting to others, of how to avoid letting an inaccurate practice area RUIN YOUR DAY. I’ve never make adjustments on practice area information before a shoot so after finding my 40 setting was impacting a few inches below dead center I also evaluated my 50 and 60 settings, finding them the same. Since they were perfect the day before it would relatively stupid to doctor them for no concrete reason, right? By not panicking as so many do at times like this, I decided to just keep that information in the back of my mind and just go to the temporary range area that had been setup only for this event. I can’t be sure why I did not match up with their practice area, but after finding my settings were perfect there I’m glad I remembered to practice what I preach.
PLUS OR MINUS 1 YARD TOLERANCE SHOULD BE EXPECTED ON EVERY ROVING FIELD COURSE. Here is where both experience and luck come into play. Between the accuracy of how well the range was originally measured and marked, the accuracy of your sight scale, the accuracy of your decision of how to compensate for uphill or downhill slopes also come into play. Miscalculating for any of these conditions on any target will always cost you points lost. So, even with PERFECT SIGHT SETTINGS and perfect shot execution there is no guarantee of total accuracy.
A few weeks later at another ranges practice area I realized another “mistake” often made when setting up practice areas. The shooting line was at about a 20 degree angle, not square with the targets but which were well marked for distance which is often missing in practice areas. But since there were no lane markers no one knew where to stand and almost everyone was crossing arrow paths with others which of course meant that some were unknowingly several feet farther away than they thought they were.
As they step up to each new target, those who have learned to know and trust their equipment are ahead of the game. But those prone to think their equipment is no longer correct just because they had to use a setting a yard or so longer or shorter than the marked distance and begin to make changes on all their marks are in for a long, bad day. I suggest you understand there is always something that could be “tweaked” a small amount to get you even closer in to dead-center and I personally couldn’t care-less whether it is caused by “me” or by “them” as long as I can make it work on the first or second try.
On anyone’s practice area, to avoid being duped into doing something that you might regret later I suggest ALWAYS setting your sight a couple of yards SHORT and then shooting only for groups. Besides avoiding what might be false information it can also serve to save your nocks and fletch when 25 or 30 more continued on next page
RAGSDALE & ASSOCIATES • INCIDENT INVESTIGATIONS, • EXPERT WITNESS PROGRAM
This is where the toll is taken, you make your initial best-guess sight setting and then you have to decide whether to use it again or make a sight setting adjustment for the second shot. If you actually used the right setting but performed a bad shot and then make an unnecessary over-correction on a better performed next shot your may lose a second point that you would not have lost had you known exactly why you missed the first shot. My point here is simply that even if you are experienced enough to know how to prevent losing additional points after the fist miss, it is already too late if you were seeking a perfect score, IT WAS LOST on that first miss.
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On an absolutely flat field it is no problem at all to accurately measure the shooting distance to within one inch but it is a horse of a different color when laying out a 28 target roving Field course in rough terrain. Years ago when I was the NFAA Texas Director we had over 40 courses and inspecting them was an education. As you might imagine, the older the course the more inaccuracies there were. It’s hard enough trying to be accurate measuring up or downhill and over dips or a canyon or creek beds to begin with but after years of replacing butts and kicked out and washed out stakes it can get to be a terrible mess. Between sloppy measuring, butt replacements that were placed at a few inches from where they were and the arbitrary replacing of loose stakes after being washed out by rains and the like can leave grossly inaccurate distances and are commonly found.
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RAGSDALE & ASSOCIATES 14230 Shadow Bay Drive Willis, TX 77318-7406 888-407-3084 936-856-0928
Robert Ragsdale, A. E.
August/September ‘05 Archery Magazine 33