Working on my Recurve Bow Shooting

You know just like everybody else I go through ups and downs in my shooting. Granted now those ups and downs that amplitude is much reduced from what it used to be but I still have good days and bad days just like everybody else. But one of the things that that helps me to get back on track is to start shooting at those longer distances. I feel like you know I'm standing at 15 yards right now. I feel like when you only shoot at you know 10, 15, 20, 25 yards it can sometimes be easy to start letting things slip a little bit because I know you know just the way your mind works it's like you know subconsciously that at these closer distances you can kind of relax a little bit. You can kind of let things slip a little bit and still make a good shot. But when you start to back things up when you get to 45, 50, 60, 70 yards you there's no margin for error. And to be able to group arrows at those longer distances you have to have a level of consistency from shot to shot that you just don't have to have to be able to make a decent shot on a target at these closer ranges. For some reason people get worked up when I post videos about shooting at longer distances like they think that I'm promoting shooting at animals at you know 70 or 80 yards. It's a target. It's a foam target. It's practice. It helps you maintain consistency at you know acceptable hunting ranges. So when I'm at so this is about 15 yards right here the way that I have my broadheads oriented they're vertical and the top edge of my blade I can use that basically like a sight pin. And so by having just that little bit extra at 15 yards I'm able to put that that just the top edge of that broadhead right on that deer's brisket and it comes out to be a perfect height which is about seven inches higher than what that than the brisket is. These arrows are flying this is uh this bow is 59 at 29 and these arrows are 65 pounds with 190s on the front. Focus on the process. Focus on executing a good shot. Don't worry about so much exactly where the arrow goes. You know it's a good shot before or you know it's a bad shot before the even hits the target. You know if you pluck the string you know you know you know immediately when that thing is released whether it's a good or a bad shot. I just picked this bow up this uh and re-tillered it a little bit. It was 63 at 29 which I can shoot I just can't shoot it very well but I took a little off of it brought it down to 59 at 29. It's much more manageable now I can shoot a lot better. Doesn't sound like a lot but just that little bit reduction in weight makes a big difference when you change distances. Most of the hunting shots that I take the farthest shot I ever took at an animal was 35 yards and that was a bull back in 2015 I think but uh most of the hunting situations that I find myself in are you know anywhere from 8 to maybe 18 or 20 yards so relatively close. I just set myself up to be in those types of positions. So if you watch very many of my hunting videos or shooting videos you'll notice that a lot of times I have a clicker on my bow and I don't have one on this you don't a lot of people don't want to shoot with a clicker but I get questions all the time about from guys who are having troubles with consistency in their shot and a lot of times that's due to uh collapsing on the shot and a clicker as much as people don't like them it really is the fastest way to overcome that stuff but once you train yourself to make that shot and to perform the the motions that it takes to set that clicker off which is basically just a you should have that thing set if you are shooting with a clicker you should have it set to pop right when you're at anchor and you just put a little bit of extra back tension on there a little bit of expansion on there and that should pop but once you shoot with that thing over and over and over and over again that shot that that shot activation movement just kind of embeds itself and you can take the thing off and still have that uh that that that motion embedded in your mind embedded in your your muscle memory but you can also relapse if you take it off um if you're not careful you have to be you have to really focus on coming into alignment and and increasing that back tension before you let that string go you know I hit that one that really I hit a little bit high on that my left and right was good I hit high but I that was not a good shot even if that had hit where I was looking where I was aiming and intending to hit it wouldn't have been a good shot I didn't I don't know if you know could see what my elbow did on that shot or not but I didn't get the the right amount of back tension there that's what I'm talking about it I mean the arrow's got to go somewhere and it may go exactly where you're looking but you know still still might not have you might not have executed that shot perfectly and I didn't on that one not focusing on what I'm doing let's say that I made that shot and the arrow hits where I want it to go but I didn't I didn't get into my back tension the way that I should have even though the arrow still hit in the spot that you wanted it to it was a not a not it was not a good shot and so you've got you if you're going to maintain consistency with this type of shooting you've got to focus on getting into your back and that's a that's a hard thing to do without a mental trigger to do that every single time but it's so important after I anchor after I'm I've got my aim my my conscious thoughts go are going all to taking that elbow and rotating it around my body I'm not really thinking about aiming I'm just that just happens a little bit high you got to get an arm guard for this jacket that's a good way to bam I like it that'd be a short blood trail this bow shoots I can shoot it so much better now that I reduced the weight on it a little bit oh what was that see I mean you have a bad shot every now and then and you got to stop this is why I shoot one arrow at a time like what happened it forces you to think about that there we go that's what I'm talking about I wasn't getting all the way into my back that's what I'm see with a clicker you don't have to worry about that because you know like when that clicker pops you know unless you're just increasing your draw like like pulling back you know if you're rotating if you engage that clicker with a rotation elbow back you know that you know you're there but when you're relying on yourself without that mental trigger it can be difficult when I talk about this rotation of the elbow around the body it's not really something that is a it's not something that you're going to be able to see it's it's more just an increase of tension in the back rather than an actual like movement around that was that was perfect not because I hit where I was aiming but because I because everything went smoothly I hit every step of my shot cycle and I hit it well that was that was good the problem with see a lot of people when they don't have a mental trigger when they don't have a clicker or some other psychological trigger they get into the habit of and this again this this is something that I have kind of battled against forever but when you don't have a mental trigger you you get into this habit of getting your tip about if you're aiming or even if you're not aiming if you're if you're instinctive shooting and you get that correct sight picture it's like it's gone you don't have time to evaluate your shot and if you start going down that hill it's like you you it leads to target panic because you get to you get that sight picture starting to look right and then you just let it go that's a bad path to travel down leads into darkness things got a different sound to it when it hits in that worn out spot in the middle I like that sound if you guys have watched the uh watch my white tail hunting videos where we're chasing those deer around the mountains um that hunt I actually wait to release those videos until the next year because if you look at the um the search the youtube search is nobody's searching for deer hunting in December so I just hold that video hold those videos until the next year but anyway that hunt is coming up and um I think I've thought about uh giving away a couple of hunts like two hunts maybe one hog hunt down south and then a spot at that white tail camp that's uh that's a hunt that I look forward to all year long it's a fun hunt lots of deer good good dudes but um if you're following along on instagram and patreon that's where I'll post the uh the details on that later on so for those of you who've been following along with my youtube channel for a while you know I've I've been looking at some other channels and that's experienced a lot of growth over the last a couple of years and the hunting public is one of them but one of the things that I've noticed and by the way they've got a they put out some very good content hunting content if you haven't if you haven't followed along with those guys but one thing that I've noticed is they're the channels they're growing a lot are very well very consistent for one thing with uh their schedule but they put out these series and my channel has grown a lot but you know one one week I'll have a hunting video and then the next week I'll have a shooting video and then hell I might be doing some kind of primitive skills or something who knows it's been there's not very much consistency and so I think next year I'm going to focus on trying to I don't know if I'll be able to do this or not but I'm going to try to put out a new hunting video every week and we're headed down to Florida shortly after Christmas and I've got some good hog hunting spots I think they're going to be good hog hunting spots I was looking at my uh some aerial imagery on onyx the other day and I found some areas that I think are going to be really good but once I get down there I'm gonna have to scout them out but from the aerial imagery it like they look really good so we're going to start off the new year in a new direction there we go got to focus on that back