A Tale of two Tunes

First off let me congratulate our buddy Elton Wong from Barebow Basics for shooting well this weekend and taking gold at the regional event in VA and bronze overall in Barebow Masters 50+. Very few understand the amount of tenasity it takes to juggle family, archery, and running any kind of social media or content creation. Elton gets it!

After almost two years and this being my 4th competition since coming back since surgery I’m more hungry for redemption than discontent from this weekend’s performance. The only reason I didn’t do better is because of myself.

So here are the mistakes I made so that some of you can learn from them and not do what I did this weekend.

Going into this tournament between family, fire company and yes Barebow Project obligations I just was not able to get the reps that I wanted to. To be honest the shooting part of this weekend wasn’t so bad. I held in the middle well. The issue I was having is that the groups just weren’t staying consistent. I honestly only had two really bad arrows, that were evident by end 19 arrows 1 and 2. Ironically I scored a 1 and a 2 and then came back with a 27 on the last end of the day. I had changed my approach a little going into the weekend and went back to aiming with both eyes open, no glasses and no tape on my lenses. I almost using my bad vision to my advantage as when I hold in middle I don’t freak out because the arrow is blurry. When I close my left eye and the arrow and target clear up it’s well after holding is done and I can execute consistently.  Aiming was roughly a B- on the weekend.

I attended indoor nationals with my barebow BFFs John Demmer and Elton Wong. We traditionally head to VA to support our pal Bob Ryder year after year. The facility is top notch, it’s super well run and there is more space in this facility to shoot comfortably compared to most others. Since we were shooting the noon line we decided to go to a local range and practice on Friday night. John was working on some tuning, Elton and I were just getting in reps, or so I thought.

While we were shooting I heard a slight rattle in my bow. I checked it over, banged on the riser and we came to the conclusion that it was just the rest making some noise when shooting. Groups were decent, shot’s felt good. I gave the bow a quick once over and checked nuts and sets crews around the rest and moved on. I did however notice when putting my bow together that the brace was off quite a bit. So I added a few twists, maybe I had some string stretch and moved on. Got it back to 9.75″ brace on my 74″ bow (Hoyt GMX3 27″ & XL Axia limbs) and kept shooting. It seemed to get a little better, had to make some adjustments on the plunger and I moved on. Toward the end groups started opening up but I figured I was just tired. No harm no foul, right? So we left our bows together to not change anything, packed up the car and headed for the VRBO. Normally I take my bow apart but it made sense in that instance to leave it together. This small detail will be important later.

Day 1: Little bit of the same situation, shots weren’t terrible but the grouping just wasn’t consistent with how well the shots felt like they were feeling. It was frustrating to say the least. The most annoying thing in archery is when shots feel good and just aren’t landing. John went through a similar situation which we both found out later on.

We went to the range again and shot some more, I actually was shooting very good but my form was spot on. It was a super calm environment and we all were pretty relaxed. Well except John because something with his tune just wasn’t sitting right. We hung out for a bit, got to what we thought was the best at that time and went for dinner to prepare for Sunday’s shooting time.

Day 2: Started off the day much the same, form felt pretty good. Aim was good. Execution felt wonky though and I noticed on both days the string almost felt like it was getting hung up on my release hand ring finger. I couldn’t figure out why. My first half I just could not get arrows to hit the ten. My entire target had arrows surrounding red’s and 9 liners with just a few in the blue. The bow almost felt sloppy and groups were just not good. I also notice some weird arrow flight things happening.

Around the middle of the second half John figured out that when making adjustments with his limb bolts he must have gone just a little too far. It was outside of spec for Hoyt and he was getting these weird arrow dumps low. This prompted me to look at mine around end number 16. What do you know, I found my rattle.

Usually when I put my bow together I always check everything. Brace. Tiller. Check for rattles and get ready to shoot. With not doing that for a few days it just slipped my mind and to be honest it’s a bonehead move. I know better.

So when I checked my bow and found the rattle I realized it was the set screw to the bottom limb bolt. I got out my allen wrenches and it took 8 turns to tighten it. I was like, OMG you are a bone head for missing this! Then it all set in that my negative tiller on Friday night was almost double my normal negative tiller. So I quickly added 3 turns to the limb bolt. Tightened down the set screw and prayed that the adjustment wouldn’t be too bad. My groups immediately tightened. I was not going to make bad shots because you can’t tune with bad shots. I scored 8-7-7 after the adjustments in a 2″ group around 2 o’clock on the target. I adjusted the plunger, made a tab crawl change and finished 29 – 27 with tight groups.

I write this so it’s a reminder for you all of what not to do. When something doesn’t feel right and you’re making good shots. Don’t ignore it. Don’t leave any rock unturned when searching for the problem. Oh and take your bow square with you and maybe even check it periodically throughout the round. These are rookie mistakes. I didn’t give myself enough credit that I was actually making decent shots and I assumed that was the problem all weekend.

Oh well, on to the next one….

Shoot straight or shoot often.

Frank McD