Use This Archery Tip in Your Practice Sessions

If you’ve shot a bow even a few times, you’re probably familiar with this topic. Target panic can affect everyone if the right conditions are there. It’s the sense that when you draw your bow back, you need to quickly get on target or you’ll lose your shot opportunity. While that could be true if you wait too long, just feeling that emotion causes some unfortunate things to happen with your archery form. That’s what makes this archery tip so important to use in your bow practice sessions. When everything’s on the table and you’re about to take the final shot of the competition or take the shot at an animal, you need to be confident in your compound bow archery form. Are you?

What Causes Target Panic?

Target panic is a result of mind games. It’s all psychological. When you start to lose faith in yourself or believe you might miss a shot unless you quickly touch off a shot on your Block® targets, your compound bow shooting form breaks down and your body unconsciously starts to shake. Just a little at first. But before you know it, your pin is wobbling all over the target, making a steady shot impossible. If left uncorrected, this feeling of anxiety and fear of poor shooting can spread to every time you draw your bow back. Say goodbye bullseyes and dead deer and hello sub-par groupings, embarrassment, and frustration. So what can you do to fix it before it gets to that stage? Check out the archery tip video below.

How To Fix Target Panic

As you can see, being an accurate archer isn’t all about quickly punching the release when your pin drifts over the middle of your target. While bow shot timing is important, good archery should also be about steady consistency. Here’s an archery tip for you to try out.

A great way to overcome this tendency (which is usually learned and built up over months or years) is to practice without shooting any arrows. During the offseason (i.e., summer), commit a couple weeks of your practice time to unlearn what you have learned by using this archery practice drill. Simply draw your Matthews® bow back, settle the pin on your target for as long as you can accurately do so. Do not touch the release and do not shoot the arrow. If the pin starts drifting all over, simply let the bow down and take a break. Take note of how long you can hold the pins steady so you can compare to later on. Repeat this process 50 to 60 times a day and for a few weeks if time allows. Your body will slowly start to get more comfortable with aiming when you don’t have the unspoken pressure of shooting. By the end of your archery practice session, you should notice that you can hold the pins steady much longer on dead center without as much drifting. Compare it to your first time to see how much of a difference it made.