Short distance practice? Worth the time?

[jr.fish]

I'm just kind of curious to see what people's opinions are on short distance practicing are? I find myself lacking a place to shoot longer distances so I end up letting my arrows fly in the basement for the most part. At just 12 yards its not a very tough shot but I'm wondering how much this it really helping me?

I'm not sure what the laws are on shooting my bow in town but I don't want to scare the nabors just to get an extra 5 yards compared to the basement. The only other places I've considered shooting is at the baseball diamonds on the edge of town but I'm unsure if its enough of a sport to be legal.

[j_rod]

I think it's worth the time to practice at short distances, even one arrow at a time at 3 to 5 feet. It lets you focus on form, your release, follow through, etc. without the self imposed pressure to hit the x. I find the repetition helps build consistancy.

[Knotter]

I start and end with this kind of practice. Works wonders on clearing your mind of the other business of the day. 5 feet.

pick a spot, close your eyes through the draw and see where your sight picture is. if it's not what you expected let down and make adjustments and do it again. Once your happy. release.

it's also a great way to practice drawing your bow in silence and smoothly.

[RoscoeP]

It is great to just work on your form, you could use a blank target and just concentrate on your release and basic fundamentals. It is also great to keep the bow muscles in tune, good work. Cheers roscoe

[kritz]

I agree with the previous post , any te you can work on form and release is a good thing ! Any bit of shooting is good shooting , and it is relaxing

[nekred]

Short distance practice is awesome... the only oart it is missing is.... seeing how arrows fly at longer distance.

I spend most of my time at 10 yards.... I can do much more form work, more easily at short distance.

If you want to get an idea of what score would be at 20 yards vs 10 yards just use a target 1/2 the size at 10 yards.

[ULTRAlite]

Originally Posted by nekred

Short distance practice is awesome... the only oart it is missing is.... seeing how arrows fly at longer distance.

I spend most of my time at 10 yards.... I can do much more form work, more easily at short distance.

If you want to get an idea of what score would be at 20 yards vs 10 yards just use a target 1/2 the size at 10 yards.

x2 80% of my shooting is done at 10 yards

[pottymouth]

Originally Posted by Knotter

I start and end with this kind of practice. Works wonders on clearing your mind of the other business of the day. 5 feet.

pick a spot, close your eyes through the draw and see where your sight picture is. if it's not what you expected let down and make adjustments and do it again. Once your happy. release.

it's also a great way to practice drawing your bow in silence and smoothly.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

Practice your form, memorize your anchor points....If it's safe, I stand 2 yards away in a safe place and practice even releasing my arrow with my eyes closed. So I can concentrate on my finger on the trigger, and follow through.

[jetlynk]

Been shooting for 2 months now and getting pretty proficient at it. 3 weeks ago my hunting buddy and I started shooting 15 feet up of the ground and moving targets around to get used to shooting while up off the ground and also judging distance. We were placing the targets in-between 20 and 40 yards and was hitting the targets every time. After reading a few threads about closest misses on this forum and others I decided to start putting one target in close along with a few placed on the outer area of our range. I must have sent half a dozen arrows flying over the target before I got use to aiming over my top sight at close range. Be a shame to have the buck of a lifetime walk right under your stand and shoot right over top of him.