How To Shoot a Compound Bow [For Beginners] | The Sticks Outfitter

Welcome all you outdoorsmen and women to the Stix Outfitter. My name's Craig and today we're going to show you how to shoot a compound bow. Kind of like that. So I'm shooting a Matthews Monster Chill and I'm a big fan of Matthews because of the reliability, the durability, and just the performance in general. The draw length ranges between 23 and 30 inches. Mine is roughly 29 inches. It shoots 333 feet per second, is 3.9 pounds, has a brace height of 7 inches, draw weight between 50 to 70 pounds. Mine is about 70 and retail goes about $999. You're going to want to check your strings before you shoot. Make sure you get some wax on there if you have to. You'll see here that the strings can be a little bit frayed if they get too dry or whatnot. So just apply wax every so often. So let's just get straight into shooting. First off you're going to start off with an athletics dance as after all we are athletes. We might be hunters, we might be fat, but we're still athletes. So get a little bit of bend in your knee, lean a little bit forward into it just like if you were to shoot a shotgun or whatnot. Not too extreme and even balance so you can pull back the bow. Now to put on the arrow we're going to knock it and we're going to knock it until we hear the click. You'll feel it and you'll hear it once it clicks. If you don't put that in properly it could be dangerous so make sure you hear that click and you feel it before you start shooting. Then we're going to put the arrow in the rest and we're going to lock that up. There are tons of different kinds of rests but they all serve the same function. All right so now we're going to use our release and we're going to knock it forward and pull back and when we pull back you want to use kind of both shoulders and pull them back with that right shoulder simultaneously. If you try and pull back just with the right arm it's gonna be pretty dang tough so try and pull back with both arms. Also when you pull your bow a lot of people like to point up or whatnot but try and focus on going straight back. If you have to pull up it's probably too heavy of a bow for you and go down a little bit and pound it. All right so now that you're pulled back find your anchor and a lot of people like their anchor under their ear, under their jaw, they'll use their nose. I like to use my mustache. It's a great place to anchor but just make sure your anchor is consistent. If it's not a consistent anchor you're probably not going to be having accurate shots all the time. All right so now you're going to want to find that peephole. The peephole will rotate so then it'll line up between the sights and your eye and you want that peephole to be just around the sights. Once you pick that up have a light grip in your hand make sure you aren't gripping it tight. If you grip it tight there's a good chance you torque it and torquing is bending the bow back and forth wobbling and that'll make your shot go left or right up or down. So you'll see here that the bow is resting in between my index finger and my thumb. I'm not grabbing it it's just resting there against my palm and I'm pushing against it kind of extending the bow away from my body. Kind of like if I was gently grabbing a crazy alpaca that was trying to attack me. All right no that's a terrible analogy let's just move on. As a result your elbow will bend out a little bit and it'll actually avoid the common rookie mistake of having the string hit your arm. And the release I'm using is the Wiseguy by SpotHot. Now these releases you can get totally different kinds of releases but we'll go into that in another video. So before you release make sure you have a light grip with your release hand as well. And as you can see here the release is fully adjustable you can lengthen it shorten it you can loosen or tighten the wristband but make sure you're consistent with that length otherwise your anchor will be inconsistent causing your draw to be longer or shorter leading to an inaccurate and inconsistent shot. There are several ways to grip the release. I like to have my fingers pointing out. Now you can try out whatever's most comfortable but typically you want to have the trigger of the release at the end of your fingertip because that's where all the nerve endings are on your fingers. And when you pull back make sure you don't pull it like a trigger. If you were pulling like a trigger of a gun you want it to be nice and light. You don't want to yank or pull you just want those hands to go down or the fingers you want those fingers to go down and just tap it. You kind of want it to be a surprise so make sure your release is light. If you feel like you have to pull a little bit lighten up your release. And after you release make sure you keep that light grip in your left hand and let that bow fall forward. It's not going to hit the ground it's just going to fall forward in your hand. What that does is make sure you follow through. A lot of people will want to grab it and pull to the left and that means that's going to make your shot go left. And don't forget if you're hunting or even competing make sure you practice in different situations. 20 yards, 30 yards, 40 yards, more, whatever you need to do. Go up and down on your knees whatever it takes because when you're hunting elk or deer you're going to have to try different crosswinds. Just put yourself in different situations. Start running get the adrenaline going. You can't really replicate killing an elk really so just try and get that adrenaline up as much as you can. Have your buddy yelling at you or whatever it takes to get you pissed off and ready to kill an elk. Thanks for watching another episode of the Stakes Outfitter. To see more videos like this how-to or DIY for hunting and fishing click on that subscribe button up here and check out our other videos listed to the right as well. We got some DIY projects for bow hunters and share with your friends if you think it's a helpful video but until next time keep hunting fishing and living in the sticks.