I have an eyesight dilemma….56 year old eyes, wear glasses for near sightedness, with my glasses on I can see my target (typical 26” x 26” bag) just fine, the pins are a blur, green (20 yard) shows up and I can use it out to 25 yards hitting a tennis ball 10 out of 10 times, my red (30 yard) and yellow pin (40 yard) are none existent. I know part of the reason the red and yellow don’t show up is the color of my bag, it’s better on a 3D deer target (brown). Now I can take off my glasses and all my pins show up just fine, my target is a blob that I can aim at the center of and hit within a bowling out to 40 yards, just can’t see where I hit it. Would a verifier lens in my peep help? I’ve even considered contacts (or glasses) with a weaker prescription in my right/domainant eye for close up (focusing on my pins), and a normal prescription lens for my left eye for the distance. Any suggestions are welcome.
Have you considered a one-pin dial sight? I have never had eyesight problems but still get blurriness from looking at give pins. I shoot way better and am more confident using one pin.
Similar issue for me. Here's what I have learned. #1 Shooting through a peep, reduces vision. The smaller the peep, the worse the reduction. Make sure your peep is large enough. I use a 5/16 that I align with the ring of my sight and that really helps a lot. #2 I shot expert with the M-16 in the military. We were always taught to keep the sight pin clear and allow the target to blur out. Your eye will automatically center the mass of the target. I don't understand it but it seems to work that way. That is kind of normal... relax. #3 Multiple pins, can cause additional blurring, especially if they are close together. A single adjustable pin sight may be a great option. Make sure the color contrast is effective. Reds, yellows and greens disappear against bightly colored leaves. There's not much that is bright blue in nature except the sky, so that may be a good option. White is always the brightest in low light and against dark targets, especially with an added pin sight light... which definitely adds blurring to colored fiber optic pins #4 Shoot larger targets... You don't have an orange dot to aim at on a deer, you have a bowling ball. Learn to aim for the center of the larger target which is far more realistic. I like to shoot for the center of a paper plate attached to my "Block" You may be surprise how well you center the arrows at longer ranges. Try it. By the way, if you are a praying fellow... I am really fighting with this glaucoma... its under control but my pressures have been rather erratic lately.
Muzzy prayers your way for sure...and sound advice from the two posters, no point for me to say anything more other than I agree with the advice given.
Focus on the sight pin, the target should be blurry. I have bad eyesight to and I use the one pin sighting method. I find that only using one pin puts less strain on my eyes. All you have to do is take all but one pin off of your sight, sight the pin in at 25 yards and use KY windage for anything under 25 and past 25 yards. If you have a bow that shoots right at 300fps then you should be about an inch high at 10 yards and 3 inches low at 35 yards. It is very easy to hit your target using only one pin. Try it.
Guys I have the same problem,and my mostly red bag target gets hard to see the pins.So what has helped me was to take flat black spray paint and paint the your target spots on the bag.It's not 100% the pins are still fuzzy but I do much better at hitting the bag.Even out to 50 yards.Hope the helps.
Thanks for the input...My problem is that the target is very clear while the pins are blurry, I did a little experiment the night before last and found that with no glasses my pins were very clear while my target was blurry, so I shot at the "center of mass" and did quite well, a suggestion made from an earlier post. If iI can now work on maybe clearing up the target just a bit I'll be good. Thanks for the suggestions.
No offense meant to big_quillie, but you should absolutely not be focused on the pin. You should be focused on the target. Any good archery coach is going to recommend this. If the pins are a little blurry it's not a problem as you always want to stare at the point of impact as your main point of focus. If your pins are a lot blurry, now that's a problem and you can fix it with a Specialty Archery Verifier. http://www.bowhunting.com/shopping/search.aspx?keyword=verifier
From the Army training manual for small arms firing. You align your sight picture through the center of the peep. Aquire your target then focus on the front sight while allowing the target to blurr out. This is to keep the front sight small instead of appearing to grow as it blurs, making pinpoint shooting nearly impossible. Large groups with arrows are tyically caused by focusing on the target instead of the front sight. The human eye has the natural tendency to center the mass of the intended target. Remember the advice from Benjamin Martin AKA Francis Marion AKA "The Swamp Fox" from the movie "The Patriot." "Aim Small, Miss Small." With instinctive shooting, the opposite is true. You focus on the target and forget about everything else. The human body has a tendency to align everything with the line of sight. That is why we tend to drive off the road when we look to the side or get lost when we walk through the woods. http://www.armystudyguide.com/conte..._topics/m16a2/four-fundamentals-of-mark.shtml
I worked with a NFAA and NAA level 4 archery coach for over 4 years that has put kids into the junior olympics for archery, and has put multiple adults on the podium at the world, national, regional, and state level in several different venues. I was one of those guys on the podium a handful of times myself. I'm not telling you this to sound arrogant, but rather to validate my advice. In addition to my coach, locally I've got four buddies I've shot with for years that mentored me and I learned a lot from....one is a multiple NFAA Outdoor pro champ, Vegas winner, and likely the best indoor shooter that ever lived, the other won Silver on the US Archery compound team in 1995, one currently holds the NAA indoor 18m world record, and the other won IBO worlds in the Semi Pro class and took multiple top ten finishes in the pro class in both ASA and IBO. Absolutely no one in any archery venue that I know of that has been successful at a high level is going to recommend you focus on the pin vs. the target. Take my advice or leave it. To the original poster, if you need to clean up the sight picture a bit and bring those pins into focus try yourself a Verifier.
Cool... so I went back and checked a few additional articles that are not related to small arms but archery. I found this article which I thought was very interesting. Though I did find some saying a blurry target was better, the conclusion of the author in the article linked agrees with your words of wisdom. So my question is this: If the correct aiming of a firearm with a peep and a front sight is clear front sight with a blurry target and if the correct aiming of a bow with a rear peep and a front pin is clear target, blurry pin. Why the difference? Is it because of the different mechanics involved or is the firearm aiming technique described wrong also? Its certainly hard to argue with your credentials. http://www.fieldandstream.com/node/57335
I don't understand why the military teaches differently to be honest. It seems as if the two would be the same. With that said, I can try to explain why most believe in the archery space what I described above...........it's because everyones pin floats. If you just trust the pin float, and focus on clean shot setup and execution while staring at the X.....the arrow will find it's way to the X. Your subconscious will align the pin with the X. 99% of people (myself included) can't relax and trust the pin float if they are staring at the pin. I went through an exercise with my coach at one point where we taped a laser pointer to my stabilizer. The actual laser was on a part of the target I couldn't see when at full draw, but he recorded with video so I could review what was happening. We did this to show me concrete evidence of what I suggested above......trusting the pin float and staring at the X. When I stared at the X and allowed my subconscious keep the pin aligned........the laser movement decreased in size and speed. When I focused on the pin and attempted to control it's movement, you could tell I would start to try and make it slow down and it's like trying to herd cats at that point. If you can relax and focus on the X and perfect shot execution, the pin will just align itself, the eye will naturally center it and keep it centered. You would be shocked how often if you do this that the arrow will hit the X even if you know subconsiously that the pin wasn't over the X when the shot broke. It doesn't make sense on paper but it's how it works when the rubber meets the road.
Bro in any style of shooting you should always focus on your front sight not your target. I had to qualify at distances up to 500 yards in the Marines and this method was how I was taught and it worked every time. It also works in archery because your eye can only physically focus on one object at a time, therefore if you focus on your pins, you have a smaller wabble zone than if you focus on your target. Have you ever heard of the saying "aim small miss small"?
Trust me the military has a lot more experience in teaching marksmanship than some archery teacher. They have to train 1000's of raw recruits every year to become expert marksman. Besides I'm a police firearms instructor myself and I have always taught this method and had no problem.
When I would start to get into bad habits of trying to control pin float (the beginning stages of target panic) my coach would have me stop shooting vegas targets at the normal 20 yard regulation distance, and do a week of shooting them at 10 yards. More room to float in the 10 ring, easier to relax and trust the float, and builds confidence when you know what it's like and can get comfortable knowing you can knock the middle out of the target. A lot of my best indoor games came after a week of this type of training including the one outlined below.
Okay one more question... we have completely hijacked this thread haven't we? Sorry OP. I was questioning the foot position as mentioned in the article being "perpendicular" to the target. Is he saying perpendicular to the flat target face with the bow arm at a 90 degree angle from the feet?
Yes, that's what they are outlining regarding foot position. With that said, a lot of guys at the top of the game in archery will have varying opinions on foot position. That's not something (like focusing on target vs. pin) that everyone generally agrees on. I've seen some fanstastic shooters with an open foot stance (slightly facing target), and some with a completely perpendicular stance. I think most coaches would teach to be perpendicular, but some people just aren't comfortable that way and can still shoot very well.
Could there possibly be a dynamics issue with archery versus firearms? We aren't really under muscle strain with a firearm as we are with archery. I am just wondering if muscles fighting against each other may be more of an issue for archers. I have been pretty successful in archery hunting but I sure have room for improvement and for learning something new, especially with my eyesight issues. If I can stop fighting for close vision acuity, that would be a very welcome change.
