Tuning Makes Good Shooters Great
By Mark Melotik
One of the rites of spring for many bowhunters is kickstarting shooting practice sessions. Regular practice will improve anyone’s accuracy, but you might never realize your potential until you can tune your bow proficiently.
The truth is, pinpoint accuracy and consistency are impossible with an out-of-tune bow. The good news? A few simple DIY tuning methods will get you quickly on the path to confidence-inspiring, arrow-touching groups.
Start with paper tuning your bow using field points, which is shooting your arrows through a stretched piece of paper, and then analyzing and correcting the resulting tears. For the full run-down on paper tuning, do a quick search on YouTube for several informative how-to videos.
The gist is that you make slight adjustments to your rest, or maybe your nocking point height, to eliminate arrow fishtailing. While using good shooting form, you’re looking for your arrow to make a perfect bullet hole through the paper. Any other type of consistent tear means you’ve got some tweaking ahead. And if you’re getting inconsistent results, it’s likely that your shooting form is to blame.
At some point before the season you’ll also want to tune your broadheads — and the sooner, the better. The goal is to synchronize your broadhead-tipped arrows to your field point-tipped arrows, so they hit the same spot. Be sure your broadheads and field points weigh the same.
Start by shooting three field points at 20 yards, followed by three broadheads. If the broadhead grouping is different from the field point grouping, you’ll need to move your rest to bring the groups together, similar to your paper tuning. At this point, adjustments needed will be very minimal. To check your work, once again shoot a few field points along with a few broadheads. If both are grouping similarly, you are ready to rock.
In the end, archery skill takes more than proper shooting form and practice. You must also shoot a tuned bow, and it’s wise to repeat the tuning process monthly as the archery season get closer. The exercise will not only sharpen your tuning skills, but will keep your bow shooting to its fullest potential. Along the way, you will find out just how scary-accurate you can be.