Shooting The Gap stinctive Trad Archery

Hey guys, I hope y'all are doing good. Maybe you've never shot a trad bow before and it looks like a lot of fun and you don't know where to start. Maybe you're like a lot of guys and you've been shooting for a long time but you're kind of disappointed with your results and you just think man it can't be this hard it's got to be easier. Well I've been shooting one for decades and I've trained a lot of people and I've got a way I think I can teach just about anybody within about four weeks if you've never touched a bow I can have you out and killing a deer. Now not everybody can do that but most people that I've trained have been able to do that. You know there's lots of different ways to shoot a bow you can shoot instinctively and you can shoot fixed crawl you can shoot the gap. I've kind of got a mixture I guess I've heard some people describe it as gap instinctive and maybe that's a little bit different for each person but let me tell you what I do. I started shooting this way back in the mid 90s and I'd been a hundred percent instinctive shooter and some days I was dynamite and some days I was lousy but once I started shooting like this I really shot a whole lot better and I think you will too. I want to mention just a few things here first off this technique like most guys nowadays you're going to shoot three fingers under the arrow with a high anchor point. Now what I like to do I don't have a glove on but take these three fingers and it's right here on this eye socket this bone I like to anchor and just split this fingers on top of that bone and that one's below. Now you can anchor any way you want but this the higher I can get that arrow to my eye the easier this is. So I'm going to anchor just like that and this cock feather the way I'm tilted a lot of guys touch their nose and you know your face how your face is shaped is all we're all different but I take that cock feather and it touches just on top of my nose most guys will touch it right here but just you know if you can have at least two anchor points sometimes three but at least two so my two is I want to anchor right on that eye socket bone and I want to lay that cock feather right here on top of my nose. Now the other thing a recurve you grip it a little bit different than a longbow a traditional longbow has got a certain way you want to grip it but I grip a recurve which is what this is just like I compound I've got this lifeline and I'm going to turn my hand like that and basically if you're looking head on I've got these two fingers like that and these other ones tucked back so my grip looks just like that and you're not grabbing it like it's a hammer like a handle you know you're you're grabbing it so make sure you got you a good good solid grip like that and don't want to choke just squeeze the thing to death you know some guys just barely hold it I'm I'm you know put a little bit of pressure with those two fingers here's another thing that is very important very important and it took me years to understand what was going on here but when I draw you know most people will say when you stop shooting a compound bow and start shooting instinctive or traditional rather you want to drop about an inch of draw weight inch and a half of draw weight well for me that is not true I shot that way for years and in fact I started drawing really really long and the farther back I drew that thing the better I shot and I never really understood why like with a compound my draw length was 30 and a half inches well I started drawing 31 inch plus with a recurve and my shooting got so much better and I think what that is is you'll look is when you draw if you're short you see where my elbow it's I'm exaggerating but see it's out here you draw that thing way back your elbow is more in line and when it comes time to release you're using those back muscles and you're just pulling through you're fully extended it's bone support there's no muscle like this holding it it's all just bone so you release you're just going like that so to me that is a very important critical step if you can get that down I think almost more than anything that has helped me so those are just a few really important things on this another thing a lot of guys shoot a bow and they just uh kind of like when they shot a compound and their pin goes by the bullseye and they snap at it well that's not the way you want to shoot you want to shoot a bow like you're shooting a rifle and if you shot a lot of rifles the there's different ways you can shoot rifles but the best way in my consideration is to squeeze the trigger just a slow squeeze squeeze same way with a bow rather than just releasing pulling it back and just releasing when you get back you just pull pull pull pull pull until it just comes off it's a surprise release just like when you're shooting a rifle you squeeze and it's a surprise release the way I shoot I'm just gradually pulling and it'll just slip away so I want to clear that up from the very start I want to put you know everything else I do is pretty much the same as what everybody else does but those are key differences that have really helped me all right let me explain what we're about to do we're going to figure out what our gap is at each distance and I want to do this at 10 yards 15 yards 20 yards 25 yards 30 yards we want to go back in five yard increments is far back until you hit your point on which for most people that's going to be anywhere from probably 25 to 40 yards if you're shooting a high anchor if you're shooting a low anchor it's going to be way probably way further than that to determine your gap at each distance aim with your arrow point on the bullseye the measured space between the bullseye and where your arrow actually lands is the gap that's a good tight group but back from around 20 yards you can see here's my point on which would be about 27 yards and around 20 yards I'm high so that's about where it ought to be we're going to do it at 10 yards we're going to write it down we're going to do it 15 yards write it down you know just keep doing that all the way back okay that's 10 yards and I'm five and a half inches it'd be best if you shoot three shot groups but I'm trying to keep this thing moving along fast so I'm just going to shoot one so that's 10 yards five and a half inches from here to here now we'll go back to 15 15 yards seven and a half inches now we're going to go back to 20 20 yards that's about six and a half so we're starting to come back down okay that's about 27 yards that's point on and uh if I had a shot a group of arrows they would all been clustered around that that's a little bit low but if I had a shot a group it would have been there so so any distance that I'm going to shoot beyond 27 yards rather than that point being right here to hit I need to put the point right here so from zero to 27 yards that point is going to be below the spot the 27 yards I'm going to have that point right on the spot beyond 27 yards I'm going to have my point up here and have the arrow fall into it okay that's a real good group but you can see that I've passed my point on my point on is at 27 yards and this is about 29 30 somewhere right there what I've done here is I have written down the gaps in inches for each yard increment so at 10 yards my gap was five and a half inches at 15 yards my gap was seven and a half inches at 20 yards my gap was six and a half inches at 25 yards my gap was three inches and at 27 yards I'm point on if you'll take those four gaps that I've got right there and average those together you're going to get about 5.6 so I'm just going to call that six inches so we've taken all those gaps and averaged them a lot of people are going to memorize each individual gap for each yardage I don't do that let's just remember six inches that's all I want to focus on all right now here what I do is a little bit different than a lot of guys we shot all those gaps at different distances and we know the how big the gap is for each five yard increment we averaged them all together and we got six inches so on this technique it's very very simple I just say six inches I'm going to take the point of that arrow I'm going to draw back I'm going to put the point of that arrow six inches below the spot I want to hit and then I'm going to forget about it while I'm looking at it I've set the gap I'm going to look at the spot I want to hit I'm going to put all my interest all my focus right on that and I'm just going to look at that and pull pull pull pull pull pull pull pull pull and it's going to go off and it's going to hit that from zero to 27 yards now when I get to 27 yards that point will be right on there but everything closer than 27 yards I just put my point right here subconsciously six inches below that put all my focus on here and that's how I shoot now as you shoot like that over the months you're going to get better and better and most likely you're going to get where you don't even think about how many inches down this field point is you just put all your focus right here and you're going to start shooting 100% instinctively you're not really even going to be aware of that so that's kind of where I'm going with this now when you're first starting this start up real close start about five yards and when you can hit that tape every time at five yards move back to 10 when you're really really accurate at 10 move back to 15 and then 20 where a lot of guys get in trouble is they move back too far too fast get really good move back in five yard increments another thing that I do is I hate shooting groups I hate shooting groups I don't shoot competitions I don't shoot tournaments I'm a hunter there's nothing wrong with those guys that do that but that's to me I like to put all my focus 100% focus into that one shot I'm shooting so kind of the bar I think that old rule of thumb if you shoot six arrows into a pie plate at 20 yards you can hunt deer at 20 yards I think that's a good rule of thumb but I don't think you should shoot a group immediately at six arrows into a pie plate take that pie plate 20 yards take a long concentrated shot shoot it walk up there think about it think about what you did right what you did wrong pull that arrow go back to 20 yards shoot it again that's how I like to shoot I don't like to shoot groups I like to I think that walk up there to pull my arrow really helps me think about what I did right or if it was a bad shot what I did wrong and I like to put all of my focus onto that one shot just like when you're hunting you only get one shot you can't make corrections you only get one chance but anyway back to the pie plate you know if you can take six consecutive shots in a row and keep them in that pie plate I think that's a good measure of where y'all be hunting to make this technique work really good there's a few things you need to do the most important thing is grip your bowstring with three fingers under the arrow with a high anchor if you're anchoring low it's just not going to work as good you're going to have about a three foot gap and to do this I like to stay about six inches to 10 inches for my gap and anchoring three fingers under the arrow up high right underneath your eye is going to help you do that also I like my knocking point to be up really high so I would tune my bow to get that thing as high as I can possibly go and still have good air flight for me that's about three quarters of an inch also if you can shoot full length shafts that's going to help out a lot and the last thing is use a heavy point weight on your arrowheads take all these things into factor when you're tuning your bow and you know you don't have to do them all but those are things that you can adjust and you get that thing just where you want it you can get your gap pretty short I hope this has helped you guys I've trained a lot of people and I've shot a lot of different styles but this technique right here for some reason people really pick up on this fast you know if you get to shooting good like this and want to try some other methods there were some really good ways to shoot too but I would learn this way first if you want to start shooting purely instinctive where you don't even look at that arrow or if you want to try string walking or point of aim or you know there's a number of different ways that are good too but start with this kind of set your bar see how good you are I think you're going to get better fast with this I've trained a lot of people in about four weeks most people can put six arrows into a pie plate at 20 yards you know almost every single time so main thing is don't get discouraged I don't want to see anybody quit because this is too hard to do you know there's a lot of stuff on the internet that there didn't used to be I mean it's real easy to learn and I've kind of taken you can break all these parts down a whole lot more involved if you want to I've tried to just like I said lay out the nuts and bolts of this and make it real simple where anybody can understand it but don't get discouraged you know if you uh have any questions if you message me I try to look at that and I'll see if I can help you out but you guys y'all have a good week and we'll talk to you next time