I am having trouble shooting past 15 yards. I can shoot instictively 15 yards and in but anything longer I'm all over the place, getting frustrated with this.  I converted from the darkside and don't want to slip back but I want to be able to shoot at least 20 yards.  I plan on going to an archery shoot next weekend and don't want to spend all day looking for arrows.  Any suggestions welcome.

Jerrod.....how long have you been shooting?

I am new to traditional archery also.  I find shooting more than twenty yards much easier when I shoot with my brother, a compound shooter.  We make a game of shooting from various distances and my competitive fire makes a thirty yard shot feel like a ten yard shot.  Revel in the challenge!

Try not to allow ANY frustration to enter the process of learning to shoot at all. When you are short on having fun, the learning process slows, or even stops.

I have been an instinctive shooter for quite some time. I don`t pay ANY attention to the arrow
whatsoever when I shoot. I simply concentrate on a tiny spot I want to hit, draw, anchor and release. Through practice, the shot process is automatic.

For me, hitting the spot I want comes down to
concentrating on where I want my arrow to go. The farther away the target is the more difficult it is for me to accomplish this. I don`t shoot at a 3-D kill zone, I pick an arrow hole already where I want to hit. Good eyesight is a plus for true instinctive shooting.

I love to shoot a bow, and shoot year around.
I practice at long ranges of forty or fifty yards. My accuracy at these ranges is not usually very good. But this long range shooting has helped with my accuracy at tenty or twenty five yards. And in reality, when I`m hunting, twenty yards seems like a long shot.

Being honest, stretching my EFFECTIVE range from fifteen yards to twenty, took a long time. I did it on my own, without help, and I`m sure alot of mistakes could have been avoided if I had access to a website such as this one.

I remember that of all the hurdles I encountered, my frustration was the biggest. For me, the best thing I always did, was to have fun, shoot a comfortable bow, and pick a microscopic spot where I wanted my arrow to go, and shoot it.

Good luck.

Thanks for the replys, maybe I just need to give it more time.  I get frustrated easily.  I was just wondering if past twenty yards I need to aim a little higher or still point at the spot I want to hit.  I also found if I cant the bow more I shoot better at long ranges why is that?  Thanks everyone.  I watched your videos Terry, and you remember the song I wanna be like Mike? Well I want to be like Terry,  I know I have to put my time in though.

Yes...if you want to shoot farther, you have to raise the bow a tad....

Raise it up a tad and shoot, and shoot some more...it will come to ya....ya just gotta spend some time behind the bow.

Best of luck to ya, and do keep us posted.

Thanks Terry will do!

Sounds like maybe you are putting unreasonable expectations on yourself.  It takes time (months, maybe even years)to get this stuff down.

To me yardage is only useful as a distance to the target, not viewed as an effective range for a shot, if you get the nuance.  Eventually your eyes will see the sight picture that matches a distance and your brain will raise your bow hand to the correct elevation to put the arrow on the target.

If right now 15 yards is your max effective range,  shoot 15 yards and in until those shots come naturally.  Work on form and all the elements of a good shot until they are second nature.  Only when you have that distance down would I step back to 20, then 25, etc.

For the record, my max comfortable range is 25 yards (but I do play around out to 40), which covers my hunting shots nicely...

It takes time to be able to shoot at longer distance if you do it instinctively.  Probably, you are not able to focus on a small enough spot when you back up.  Get a small orange (or whatever color you see well) stick-on dot to aim at, then back up and see if the groups shrink.  It's all about how well you can shrink your focus down to a small spot, and you have to shoot at longer yardage regularly.  It will come with practice, don't give up!  Paul.

Instinctive aiming is the hardest aiming method to master...especially at longer distances because of the time it takes to engrain the correct sight picture within the subconscious.

People with better than average hand and eye coordination seem to pick up on it quicker.

Either way...learning to shoot a barebow isn't easy...it's going to take alot of time to master.

If an archer wants to seriously speed up the learning curve for long distance shooting...I personally would suggest learning a conscious aiming techinique such as Gap, Split Vision or Point of Aim.

As an archer masters their Gap techinique...it can become very instinctive like.

Ray  

THERE IS NO SAME IN AIMING

I think you need to remove the known yardage from your mind. Seems like that is a barrier to you. Sometimes the less you know the better off you are. I like to start pretty close to the target, shoot grab the arrow walk to a different spot, take a shot and keep doing that. I might be 5 yards or 25 yards, I don't know and I don't try to guess.

Killinstuff, ur so right on that one! my brother will only practice at 15 he has the same problem

Any idea how many gpi your arrow is at your actual draw weight of the bow?

I would say at whatever distance, make sure you did everything right, then take a second arrow, make corections, and see how close you are.  I think you need to make adjustments while the first shot is fresh in your mind.  Don't allow frustration to creep in.  Have fun.

Get a judo and walk around shooting pinecones and stumps...You will not be thinking of nothing but having fun and before you know it you`ll be hitting at longer ranges.
 I had a bale of hay when I first started and without knowing I "set" my own limits by someone telling me a trad bow was no good past 20 yards.So at 20 yards + on my hay I would be all over the bale and 2 or 3 steps in I could drive tacks.Thats what known shooting distance did to me. If you keep telling yourself that if you hold your form at longer distances if anything you may hit low and like Terry said raise the bow it`ll come.Frustration breeds defeat a fellow once told me,concentrate on how good you shoot at 15 yards and shoot low groups at twenty that are tight the elevation will get there.RC

I think sometimes (most of the time?) we focus on skill (and assume we're doing something wrong) rather than waiting for the hand-eye-brain to come together. When I first wore a progressive trifocal lens in my glasses, I looked at a page of print and the lines curved at the ends. The optician said it would go away, that my brain would convince my eye that the lines were straight. It worked. It takes time for this sort of learning to occur. When my daughter took riding lessons years ago, I know she learned more between lessons than in the lessons themselves. Be patient and shoot.
Richard

Im frustrated too. I have to hit a paper plate 9 out of 10 times at 20 yards before I can go hunting. Sometimes Ill miss completely, other times Im getting groupings right in the middle. Its soooo frustrating.

I'll tell you something right now: it is very hard to sit there and group arrows the way you would with a compound if you are shooting instinctively.  Your concentration level has to be exceptional to do it.  Your first arrow is all that counts, so I recommend shooting one, and pulling it.  Develop the ability to shoot one good shot, every time.  Paul.

I noticed that when I started shooting trad(only about 5 months now) I could shoot out to 20 yards. It was mostly because my little brother who is using a compound would want to play a game.(we would take a small piece of duct tape and see who could hit it first)
But since xmas break got over and I could only shoot in my basement, where the yardage was 10 yards.  I went home this weekend and could not get 20 regularly.  I think it just comes to form and practice, and im looking forward to the spring.