100 Arrows

October 26th, I remember being excited that I was hitting the bag.

November 7th

November 12th 2019

November 14th, for some reason I'm always more accurate on this target than the Yellow Jacket one I have at home.

My goal is to shoot a minimum of 500 arrows a week. This breaks down to 100 arrows 5 days a week. Some weeks I’m able to get 6 or 7 days in; but living in the Pacific Northwest I’m currently fighting with the lack of daylight. 4 days a week my commute gets me home when it’s already dark. I use the lights of the indoor arena to practice 2-3 nights a week and then use daylight hours on my work from home day and both weekend days. I’m the only one at the barn in the evening so I usually get in 40 -60 shots on foot and the remainder on Joe. On the weekends there is always a chance I won’t be able to shoot in the arena at the barn due to lessons and other riders, so I get my practice in on foot in the back yard.    

Why 100 arrows a day? The first few times I practiced at home in September I was only able to shoot up to 40 arrows from my 35# bow before my arms were shaky (yes, I most likely bought too much bow). Over time and several YouTube videos I learned to load the bow from my back and not my arms. As I shot more efficiently and became stronger, I found something magical would happen around the 50^th arrow, my groupings became tighter. They might still be a bit high, or off to the left or right, but they were consistently together. From there I could make an adjustment and get closer to the bullseye. I am a perfectionist and I find it ironic that I took up a sport where I’ve heard several YouTube instructors say, “You’ll never be perfect at this”. I get mad when I don’t hit the bullseye every time out and I never hit the bullseye every time out. Yesterday at 30 arrows I thought I wanted to quit for the day. Every shot was going to the left even though I thought I had a repeatable set up. I kept at it so I could hit my goal of 100. 

2 days ago I had made a change to my stance and for 2 days it had served me well but now I was at a loss. On foot I had been standing facing the target, yet under saddle the target is to my left. Joe has a tendency to drop his left shoulder which was amplified when I would lean to the left when taking my shot. I had to stop leaning to the left. To fix this I decided to exaggerate my set up on foot and under saddle until staying upright in my core become second nature. I’ve most likely been collapsing to the left under saddle without paying attention to it for years. It’s interesting how mounted archery is bringing my attention to my riding faults and I’m finally willing to do something about them. My fix is to stand with my feet perpendicular to the target like they would be in the saddle. I nock my arrow when I am pointed in the direction of my feet, I point up when I nock like I would on my horse and say out loud “Up, over, shoot”. The “over” is when I turn my torso to face the target, by saying “up” first I don’t collapse or lean. It’s working well on Joe who has stopped cutting to the left immediately after the target at the trot. If I want him to continue to stay straight a few strides out without the reins I have to remember to turn my torso back to center and shorten the number of seconds I’ve spend admiring my shot. 

Yesterday when I wanted to quit at 30 I pushed through and started pay attention to my stance to see what needed to be changed. I focused on keeping my weight on my back (right) foot. At shot 70 my groupings moved from the left to the middle of the target, they were high but in the center. By shot 100 I still had a variety of placements but a strong group of 10 arrows were in closer to the center, several almost on top of each other. If I had given up at 30 I wouldn’t have noticed I had shifted too much weight to my left foot and it may have taken several more days for me to keep weight on my right foot. I don’t know if 100 per practice is the right number, but for now it’s working for me.

December 1st 2019, still a bit all over the place.