The Witchery of Archery Part 2 The Basics

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Tags: Archery,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,Survival,Bushcraft

Video Transcription

morning guys today camera at the Pathfinder school back out here with another video in our witchery of archery series and what I thought I'd do today is start off with the basics because I have a lot of guys ask me questions about archery and how to shoot bows and things like that so I thought what we do today is we start off with the very basic concepts of archery talk about the components of our bow how our bow set up right or wrong and then what proper form we need to shoot our boat correctly so first of all let's talk about the bow this is a longbow this is made by two tracks bow company out of Michigan and it is a reflex D flex which means that the limbs curve a little bit this direction so that stores more energy it's not just a straight longbow it's got bamboo limbs covered in fiberglass with a maple core and some black walnut in here this portion of the bow is called the belly of the bow this portion is called the back of the bow your shelf is where your arrow rests and when you're shooting a traditional bow you're basically shooting your arrow off the shelf in other words there's no artificial rest for your arrow on here like on a compound bow you basically just have a piece of felt laying right on the shelf itself and that's what your arrow lays on top of the riser is everything between the limbs basically this part is considered the riser the brace height is the distance from your shelf to your string and generally speaking you want that to be about on a longbow or reflex D flex you want that to be about the distance from the bottom of your fist to the top of your thumb that will give you the best accuracy and will also keep slapping your arm so much okay now once we talk about the basic components and we also have down here we have the tips the limb tips and we have our string knocks on this bow we have what's called a knocking point which is just a basically a piece of brass wrapped around that string and the way you want to set that up is really you want your arrow to lay on the shelf and when you knock it under that knock point you want it to be setting about an eighth of an inch off center high which means your arrows can sit down we're just a little bit about an eighth of an inch that will give you the best starting arrow flight and you can adjust that depending on your aim point things like that down the road but for right now you start with that about an eighth of an inch high you'll be in pretty good shape if you don't have something you can crimp on there you can just wrap some extra string around it where the serving is and the serving is this protective wrapping around the string itself and you have string silencers on here to cut down on the vibration of the string these are made out of felt you can make them out of wool you can release this felt wool felted wool you can make them out of straight wool you can make them out of a lot of things they sell commercial string silencers if you want to use them but they're good if you're hunting with the bow you don't need them if you're not hunting now let's talk about arrow grip there's two different standard methods of arrow grip one of them is called three fingers under which means you are putting three fingers underneath the nock point and pulling the arrow back the other one is called split which is one finger over the top two fingers below I shoot split finger Irish shoots three fingers under I know guys that shoot both whatever works for you is what's best okay you can try both I've always shot split finger now let's talk about drawing the bow when you draw the bow there's several different types of draws so let's reposition the camera and we'll talk about that okay the two main types of draw that you have are what's called the swing draw which means that your bow is in the downward position as you bring it up you're drawing the bow at the same time it's a simultaneous motion then you have what's called the push-pull draw which basically you bring the bow up and you push out and pull at the same time that's a push-pull draw I generally when I'm hunting or target shooting use a swing draw most of the Green Archers used a swing draw in the past Howard Hill guys like that I'll use the swing draw fredbear use the swing draw so the very effective method to draw your bow now the most important thing to understand about shooting a bow is your anchor point and your anchor point is where you're going to draw that arrow back to and that's going to determine how long your arrow really needs to be because that's your draw length the way bows are measured in poundage is a certain amount of weight it takes to draw that bow back at a certain draw length and a standard is 28 inches most bows are measured in this is the pounds of draw at 28 inches so this bow is measured at 50 pounds at 28 inches if it's less than 28 inches on my draw whatever my draw length is it's less than 20 inches the bow is going to be shooting less than 50 pounds if it's over 28 inches the bow is going to shoot over 50 pounds the mathematics is you know they're to be figured out as far as what that differential is above and beyond 28 inches or below 28 inches but we won't get into that today just suffice to say if you're less than 28 draw and you've got a 50-pound bow at 28 inches it's going to be less than 50 pounds if your draw length is over that 28 inches it's going to be more than 50 pounds so we have to pick an anchor point to draw this boat to and you want to use the same anchor point all the time when you draw that bow and you also want to keep your elbow straight behind you when you draw that bow you don't want it up here you don't want it down here you want it straight behind you and you want to point your shoulder at the target so you want to stand this direction with the target off to your shoulder so that when you bring that bow up and draw it your shoulder is pointing the target your hand is pointing the target you're basically pointing your fist at the target as you're drawing the bow and if you get that thing anchored in the same place every time your arrow will begin to go to the place you're looking every time but what you have to remember is you've got to keep a constant anchor point you can't anchor it once a day here once up here once up in here once it over here it's got to be in the same spot every time on your anchor point I choose the corner of my mouth because it's really easy to figure out when on that full draw because my finger touches the corner of my mouth and that's when I'm ready to release now you can snap shoot a bow which means you just bring it up and you let it go and that's pretty much how I shoot I bring it up as soon as I hit anchor I let go I trust my eyes to do the rest if you can hold that bow it draw then you can concentrate for a minute and a lot of tournament shooters especially the traditional archery like to be able to do that because snap shooting is not as accurate as being able to hold that bow and draw a lot of people want to see you bows that are way too heavy remember that if you're going to hunt with that bow you should be able to hold that bow at full draw for at least 10 seconds because once you draw that bow if your ground hunting and a deer comes in or a turkey comes in and you get that bow to full draw and he moves and you don't have an ethical shot then you may have to hold that draw until he moves back to a position where you can get a shot because as soon as you let off and he sees you move he's gone the game is gone so you've got to be able to hold that draw the heavier your bow is the harder it's going to be to hold that draw most states allow 40 pounds of draw weight as a minimum for hunting animals 40 pounds is plenty to kill anything in North America 50 pounds is more than enough I generally will never shoot a bow over 50 pounds because number one I don't want to have to try to hold that draw length on a bigger bow on a heavier bow number two I don't need that much weight it doesn't take that much weight so now let's talk about you know hunting with long bows for a second when you're hunting with a long bow you have to realize that you're not going to be shooting at 50 yards your shot is going to be whatever you can shoot arrows at and put 10 arrows in a pie plate if you can put 10 shots in a pie plate that's the size of a deers vitals at a certain distance that's your minimum safe distance for an ethical shot or maximum safe distance for an ethical shot I should say so if I can shoot 10 arrows out of 10 arrows into a pie plate at 15 yards but when I moved back to 20 one of those arrows goes off the pie plate then 15 yards is the maximum distance I'm going to be to ethylic a shoot an animal so I've got to get close 20 yards that's probably an outside shot 25 yards very outside shot for most longbow hunters but it's not that hard to get game close people don't realize unless they hunt that you can get a deer to come very close to you especially if you're not out trophy hunting for the biggest buck in the woods if you're trying to fill the freezer and be self-reliant you can get a doe to walk within 10 yards of you so easy it's not even funny

the trick is to get that bow drawn and get the shot off before that doe spooks but as far as sitting still and wait for them to come to you you can get a doe to come to you in an ambush point on a trail or whatever the case may be within 10 yards no problem don't ever let anybody tell you that you can't because if they tell you that they're not a very good hunter or they don't hunt at all one of the two it's very easy to get close to game but the good thing about hunting with a longbow is it forces you to get close to game so it forces you to become better at getting inside that animal's inner circle and giving them a chance to get away that's what I like about bow hunting so much and shotgun hunting over long distance rifle hunting and things like that because the distance that you have to get to the animal is much closer and I believe that you're giving that animal much more respect

by killing him up close and personal than by being 200 yards away and shooting him across a ridge with a high-powered rifle where he has no clue that you're there and has no chance to live if you're a very good shot okay off my soapbox back to shooting bows so what we have to remember is if we're going to use a swing draw shoulder to the target bring it up anchor in the corner of our mouth and then let go same anchor every time we hit that Anchor Point every time we draw that bow we're gonna hit that anchor point okay that's important to remember mechanics mechanics mechanics repetition repetition repetition elbow same spot anchor point same spot bow same spot I like it when my string actually touches the side of my nose a little bit when I'm getting ready shoot my bow then I know I've got a solid straight alignment and my eyes are looking at the target okay now let's talk about left eye right eye dominant for a minute real quick okay if you are left eye dominant you need to be shooting a bow left handed if your right eye dominant you should be shooting a boat right handed so mechanics now people ask me how do I practice my archery well what I tell people most of the time of what I learned from one of my mentors and archery Steve Schneider is that the first thing you do is get yourself a block target and cover that thing up with a black plastic bag that way you're not looking at bull's-eyes you're not looking at anything and get yourself about five six yards from that target and just start pulling arrows and shooting them and chase the last knock pull it shoot it pull it shoot it until all your arrows are grouping in the center of that target at that point back up to ten yards do the same thing when you're getting a good solid you know two inch group something like that in that target back up to 15 yards when you get that good solid 2-inch group back up to 20 yards and do the same thing at that point you're ready to pull the bag off the target and try to start shooting something that you're looking at or you can just paint a circle on that trash bag but targets that have big circles all over them and deer vitals and turkey heads and all of that business only confuse you you want to be able to look at that target and look at one spot on that target that's as small as you can possibly get it it goes back to the old saying aim small miss small if I shoot one arrow into that target at the center and I'm aiming at that little bitty nock is the next arrow I'm shooting then I'm aiming small if I've got a big circle on that target or a big vital area for a deer and I'm looking at that hole vital area every time I shoot my arrows I'm never going to get a good grouping I'm never going to get muscle memory to get a good grouping every time I shoot so let's get back five yards from this thing and shoot and we'll see what it looks like okay now before we start shooting multiple arrows what we want to do is we want to shoot one arrow at a time and the reason we want to do that is because I don't want to get used to aiming at other arrows off the bat I want to see where my arrows are landing naturally so I'm just looking at the center of the bag and there's really nothing there to look at and that's the point of covering that bag with a trash can with covering that with a trash bag to begin with is there's nothing for me to aim at so I'm looking at that whole square and I'm trying to put arrows in the center of that square one at a time if I see multiple arrows I'm going to be I'm going to be tricking myself into looking at the last arrow and I don't want to do that yet I want to make sure that my arrows are hitting in the center before I do that so I'm going to shoot one pull it shoot one pull it now once those arrows were hitting in the same place about every time or close then I'm ready to start shooting multiple arrows okay we'll shoot one more here okay all three of those arrows were within I'm going to say two inches at the most of each other so now we're going to shoot a group of arrows okay one more thing real fast guys before we start shooting your arrow if you're shooting fletchings which means you've got feathers on their veins means they're plastic anytime you're shooting off the shelf with a traditional bow you really want to be shooting feathers and not vanes and the reason for that is is that the feathers can compress when they go by the bow in other words when this travels past this bow like this those feathers can compress veins are not going to do that that's why most compound bows have a raised or elevated arrow rest on them because the vanes will not compress so you've got usually one feather that's different than the other two on a three feathered arrow and that's called the cock feathers and it always goes to the outside so when I knock my arrow I have two feathers here and the cock feathers out so that when it travels past my shelf those two arrows are pretty flat and this one's on the outside if I put it like this it's forcing this arrow to compress this feather all the way across there when it doesn't need to and sometimes that'll make it kick out a little bit on you so you really want to make sure that you've got your cock feather on the outside every time you get ready shoot that bow and remember elbow towards the tart excuse me shoulder toward the target anchor every time same spot every time anchor okay that's a little bit high that's okay for me though because I'm close I'm not worried about that okay that arrow is right on top of it close to it get that one hit the other arrow might have busted a knock actually I saw something fly open with styrofoam okay let's zoom in on those a little bit move the camera a shade here to do that okay you can see those red feathers so you know where those arrows are at okay guys so here's our four arrows and I was I was right okay you see this one right here I just got to knock shot completely off of it that means that this arrow hit this knock just like this and blew it completely out so it was a William Tell basically but now I'm down an arrow so that's the way life goes all right okay guys well I appreciate you joining me today on this second part of our witchery of our Surrey series we're getting into archery mechanics and actually beginning to shoot our bow we covered a lot of ground today and we're going to come back and revisit some things on the next part of this series as well as expand on what we're doing so that we can start honing in our skills on how to shoot not only targets in 3ds but also live animals in the woods I appreciate you joining of this video I thank you very easy for me for my school for my family for my friends my sponsors and my affiliates I'll be back to another video soon as I can guys thanks you