Another early morning and another hearty breakfast.  With the two longest targets behind us we all looked forward to mid-range targets.  We were well warmed up when we came to the 73 yard moose target.  I managed to hit the orange on my second shot. 

The long distance disadvantage of the Bowhunter freestyle shooter:

The freestyle compound bow shooter has the luxury of being able to adjust his or her sight to hold the aiming point dead on what they want to hit at any distance. For us pin shooters in the bowhunter classes, we are limited to 5 fixed reference points.  For my setup that is five pins, each pin is set for 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 yards from top to bottom.  For target distances in between and beyond those points we have to calculate a holdover, or gap two pins.   For a 73 yard shot i have to hold my 60 yard pin above the target and find another visual reference to aim at.  This is called “stacking pins”

By the time we reached the 50 yard Dall sheep target, I felt in my groove.  my hold was steady, and I held my yellow pin on the orange spot and it was as steady as any shot I’d shot all day.  Problem was the yellow pin is my 40 yard pin, and my shot missed the entire animal, and landed in the backstop.  on the next shot, I corrected my hold and drilled the orange for a humbling 11 on the target.

Four targets later I stood in front of a  55 yard downhill shot and the nock broke upon my release.  The bow made a loud “POP” and my arrow fell about 30 feet from the bow.  It might not have been as humiliating had I not been in front of a number of nationally renowned shooters.  My first arrow on the next target went low, and I realized my peep had moved from the half dry -fire the target before.  We moved it back to it’s proper place, and I drilled an 11. 

The rest of the day I battled self doubt and made a good showing dropping a point or two but not making egregious errors. 

I finished the day with 990 points, and the knowledge that I had the skill to be well over 1000 if I got the mental portion of the archery game mastered.  I left over 30 points on the table by not paying attention.  It was a valuable lesson.