So, I bought myself a 17" riser second hand from everyone's favourite online tat bazaar, with the intention of putting together a fun bow.
I spent a bit of time cleaning off the hardened glue, bogeys and other unidentifiable crud from it, then paired it with some 7.2s that I wasn't using. I combined this with a Hoyt Hunter rest on the grounds that I found one in the bottom of my box of crap, a string 2" too long with way too many twists in it and no button as I haven't got a spare one.
I eyeball aligned it, vaguely set the tiller, guessed a brace height and a nocking point and took it up the course.
It was awesome. It was shooting out arrows like a rail gun. 500s, 400s, random point weights, random lengths. Shooting them like laser beams. Bare shafts were the most surprising. They'd shoot off but then veer back and group perfectly. I'd never seen anything like it. All distances, 20 to 70. Below 20 was a bit off, but I could fix that.
There's only one explanation - I'm a bow setup savant. An archery god.
I saw myself winning competitions with a handful of random arrows from the lost arrow bucket. People would come far and wide and beg me to negligently put their bows together.
But under 20 wasn't quite right. Need to fix that. Obviously I started with a proper alignment and tiller set. It's the right thing to do, right? What could go wrong?
Quite a lot it seemed. I'd ruined it. It shot terribly.
Well, that's not quite true. It shot like a bow with really badly matched arrows.
The bareshafts were so bad that I whanged one into a tree and it peeled itself like a banana.
An afternoon's work got it shooting tolerably well with the 400s.
So had I carelessly ruined the holy grail of bow setups? Or had I just been misled by not enough arrows shot at not enough distances with an unfamiliar bow and poor releases that just happened to flatter my shooting?
I guess I'll never know.
But probably the latter...
I spent a bit of time cleaning off the hardened glue, bogeys and other unidentifiable crud from it, then paired it with some 7.2s that I wasn't using. I combined this with a Hoyt Hunter rest on the grounds that I found one in the bottom of my box of crap, a string 2" too long with way too many twists in it and no button as I haven't got a spare one.
I eyeball aligned it, vaguely set the tiller, guessed a brace height and a nocking point and took it up the course.
It was awesome. It was shooting out arrows like a rail gun. 500s, 400s, random point weights, random lengths. Shooting them like laser beams. Bare shafts were the most surprising. They'd shoot off but then veer back and group perfectly. I'd never seen anything like it. All distances, 20 to 70. Below 20 was a bit off, but I could fix that.
There's only one explanation - I'm a bow setup savant. An archery god.
I saw myself winning competitions with a handful of random arrows from the lost arrow bucket. People would come far and wide and beg me to negligently put their bows together.
But under 20 wasn't quite right. Need to fix that. Obviously I started with a proper alignment and tiller set. It's the right thing to do, right? What could go wrong?
Quite a lot it seemed. I'd ruined it. It shot terribly.
Well, that's not quite true. It shot like a bow with really badly matched arrows.
The bareshafts were so bad that I whanged one into a tree and it peeled itself like a banana.
An afternoon's work got it shooting tolerably well with the 400s.
So had I carelessly ruined the holy grail of bow setups? Or had I just been misled by not enough arrows shot at not enough distances with an unfamiliar bow and poor releases that just happened to flatter my shooting?
I guess I'll never know.
But probably the latter...
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