Savannah Tovar, February- Being able to adjust between 10 and 15 meters is crucial in archery.
Before learning how to adjust an aim spot, it is best to have good groupings, which is a cluster of arrows relatively close together. In order to get a good grouping, it is necessary to follow the steps and make sure that there is a good form: anchoring in the same spot, not plucking the string, looking through the bow strings, and more. Once good groupings have been achieved, it never hurts to make them even tighter. More practice is very beneficial and will help in the long run, especially achieving tighter groups and being more consistent. In general, though, too much practice could be less beneficial and possibly do more harm than good. Once the grouping of arrows becomes tighter, then it it important to know that in order to go to 15 meters from 10, the aiming spot will move up some. Just fiddle with the process and once you get a 9 or 10, then shoot all arrows at that aiming spot.
Once an archer has attained some decent groupings, or even if not, it doesn’t hurt to have some fun with shooting. A good way to get better at adjusting between 10 and 15 meters is by making fun games out of it. The games are beneficial for all archers from beginner to intermediate and beyond. These games don’t cost much money and promote how to adjust aiming spots through fun challenges, friendly competition, and more. There is no official name for these games, but they still can have some silly names.
Balloon Pop: Blow up some colorful balloons and hang them in different places around the target using cap nails or something likewise. The balloons shouldn’t be too large to provide more of a challenge for archers. Let the archers try to pop all of the balloons on the target with their five arrows.
Candy Clash: Tape a box of candy or smaller packets of candy to each target and have the archers shoot, if they shoot the candy, they win it.
Paper Shootout: Print or draw an image (like a ghost character for Halloween) on paper and stick it to the target using tape, cap nails, or anything else handy, then shoot and try to hit the paper.
Learning how to adjust an aiming spot doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be on bullseye, shooting 3D archery can help too. 3D archery consists of six foam animals ranging between 10 and 15 meters away from the shooting line. It’s not the animals themselves that can help adjusting; It is simply the process of having to move an aiming spot around between the animals. Take for example aiming at the center of the turkey, an aiming spot therefore at the coyote might be at the top of the 10 ring. The more practice you have with adjusting your aiming spot, the more likely that it will come more naturally and be less of a challenge. While not every team is able to have a 3D range and team, it is still very beneficial and would help to better understand adjusting aiming spots.
To conclude, once an archer has a good grouping, they can begin to go from 10 meters to 15 and continue to perfect their aiming spot that is slightly higher. To get even more practice, shooting 3D or even playing games will continue making the adjustment between 10 and 15 meters easier.