Bullseye

Aaron Spuler is a firearms enthusiast and recreational shooter. Follow more or his work at The Weapon Blog

I’ve been working with the recurve bow I picked up on September 7. After lots of trial and error, I’m finally starting to get the hang of it. I managed to achieve a goal Saturday that had eluded me for the past month.

At first, I was unable to draw the string back to full position (50 pound draw weight). I’ve now built up enough shoulder strength to do so, and have drastically decreased the hits to my support arm from the string.

Initially, I used a 2/1 finger grip (two fingers under, one finger over) with the arrow resting underneath the nock. I switched to a 3 finger under grip with the arrow above the nock and found that worked better for me.

I finally got a bullseye on the target that did not touch the border ring. I had technically hit the bullseye three times in the past 28 days, but I also hit the green border line those three times.

Not only did I manage to fully clear the bullseye, I did it twice in the same session!

Oddly enough, I managed to hit the exact same point in the bullseye both times, so there is just one hole in the fabric for the center ring.

The bullseye ring is marginally larger than a quarter, and my distance was 30 feet.

My groupings are starting to tighten up quite a bit. I still need to bring them together more, but I am noticing significant progress. Last time I shot a bow prior to this was in summer camp some 15-20 years ago.