With over 3.5 inches of rain and winds up to 40 mph, this past week was less than ideal for shooting, especially precision shooting. Add to that the arrival of a brand spanking new Destroyer 350 sent over from Bowtech for review, and I wasn’t able to squeeze in an official scoring round. Unfortunately this means that you don’t get to see which shots I screwed up this week!
All was not lost as I was still able to sneak in shooting between the main downpours or whenever it slowed to a drizzle. The biggest enemy was not the rain, but rather the wind. Most of my shooting this week was not done with my target rig, but rather the Bowtech Destroyer 350 setup to shoot BHFS but using the same techniques of back tension and form that I have been otherwise practicing.
Shooting the Destroyer was different in a number of ways. The obvious differences are the lack of long stabilizers/side bars as well as using a standard pin sight instead of a scope. Because the Destroyer is much shorter, 32 3/8″ ATA, it doesn’t hold and balance the same, and more importantly the string angle at full draw is much steeper. This required an adjustment in form to get the string to a comfortable. Usually with my freestyle gear the string touches and squashes my nose quite a bit. With the Destroyer I held my release hand just a fraction of a inch further back and the string just barely touched my nose.In the past I’ve tried shooting with the string off of my nose and was never successful in finding a method that I could use repeatedly. Thus I always will find a way to get the string on my nose depending on the equipment type.
So what do people do that shoot multiple bows for different tournament types that may overlap? You can either adapt to the different equipment types with two slightly different shooting forms or use the same equipment (even though it may be set up different) no matter the venue. Dave Cousins recently switched to shooting shorter ATA bows for all tournaments (starting with the Hoyt Alphamax 35 and recently switching to the Maxxis 35) and has continued to shoot very well. I personally do better with keeping my equipment the same but that isn’t possible as I work on reviewing various bows.
This experience of focusing so hard on my shooting style and throwing a different bow into the mix has taught me a couple of different things. First of all, good form can be adapted to different equipment. Care must be taken that your shooting form remains steady no matter the equipment. The most important piece of equipment is your own body, and that doesn’t change. The second thing is that in the future I’m going to seriously consider consolidating my bows into ones that have holding dimensions as close as possible so as not to mess with my form as much.
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