Archery n.17 - and a Happy 2026

Total shots 260.

30 of them at 20m hit and only 16 on target.

The wife got us for Christmas a new target that is a little smaller than the box we were using, but my crappy performance was mostly due to once again trying to “aim” instead of just shooting instinctively.

The best part though is I tried to shoot from 50m and hit it the first time I shot almost in the bullseye.

1st shot at 50m

I should have stopped there. But of course I fired another 11 arrows for a total of 12 at 50m and including the one above 3 were on target and frankly quite a few were pretty close, as you can see below.

So, all in all, I’m pretty pleased even if two things are obvious:

1. As with any similar skill, if you stop practicing for a bit, which I did if you look at the last archery post, your skill will degrade and you will need to catch up again. It’s a fairly quick process but it’s how it is.

2. Shooting instinctively is definitely better for me, and I need to introduce any sort of aiming only very gradually and “imprecisely” mostly only for elevation due to distance.

It also appears my posture needs to be a bit more “tall” for better accuracy.

The wife also is enjoying her bow, and after a bit of prompting from me tried it at 50m and came fairly close to the target too, which considering her bow is only a 30lbs compared to my 60lbs is pretty decent since her arrow drop is a lot more than mine, making the difficulty higher, much as shooting a lower powder but same calibre bullet makes it harder to hit a target at a set distance (eg .308 rifle vs .300 WM rifle).

If I don’t post again before it, Happy 2026 to you all.