over the next week or so I am going to look at sights for the trad recurve bowhunter. We are not talking about the beautifully egineered, ultra accurate olympics sights altough we will be borrowing a piece or two from them. who is this address to?? to the trad bowhunter who 3under/split finger that shoot 4" groups at 20 yds.....ah no we ain't tring to switch anyone from one style to another. I am just showing options that don't get discussed very much. many of them are very practical.
for example - I was hunt with a fellow (who is now in the Feild archery hall of fame but I won't give his name since he can't protect himself :) ) we were hunting sheep in a canyon in the panhandle of texas. we had glassed and walk mile in that red canyon tring to close the distance on an Audad (sp?). no deal. finally we found one across the canyon. it looked like he would be able to get about 60 yds from the sheep and still be hiden. He took out is bear custom recurve, put a 60 yd target. he got out a match from a penny match box and some plastic electic tape. he tape the match to the back of his sight window and proceed to zero in his sight for 60 yds. now this guy had been state chapion several time over shotting split finger. he didn't need no dang sight...but for this time it is understandable.
I stood on the far bank of the canyon with a spoting scope and directed him to the bedded sheep with hand signals. all worked out and he ended up 60 yds away from the sheep behind some rocks and he was undetected.
don't know exactly what happened but the ram stood up and he put a arrow thru the boiler room at 60 yds (btw he was shooting 72# the fingers)
i thought is was magic. he thought it was lucky. it was unbeliveable :)
rusty
Good story, thanks for sharing.
I am going to start with one of my favorite sights. the SRF designed by David Sosa and carried by 3Rivers.
this rig I call specops :) . it is a 48" 45# bear super mag 48. I use it for hunting 80# in pig tunnels and hunting swamp rabbits in the boggy bottoms.
http://sites.google.com/site/stringwalkerbowhunter/srfspecops
group was shot from my knees at 45'. with this rig we ain't talking about shooting 30 yds. the green thing on the belly side of the sight window is the SRF sight. over the next post or two, we'll look at how it is used and why it is so good.
got to go to work and pay for all this non-sense. stay tuned if the topic interests you.
rusty
I tell ya what, I have one of those SRF sights mounted on a Horne Recurve here at the house. I use it to introduce new guys to trad archery. You should see the smiles when there first arrow is in the kill zone on the pig in the front yard.
Now it's not for me. . had enough of sights with the compounds. But for the new guy or someone that is struggling. . .it could be the answer your looking for.
Mike
Rusty,
Check out the setup in this thread.
http://tradgang.com/noncgi/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=065561
Mike
Tell on, I'm very interested in this. Could see where this setup could come in handy.
I shoot Ok without sights, but have played around with an old cobra double slot on one of my bows. the pins are separate so you can adjust for cant. It will tell you if your forms off and also , you can put the pin on the spot instead of just looking at the spot. I'm not for or against them, just get bored with the same old 2" groups at 25yds. LOL. Db
Yep, that's my rig. I'll readily admit, it's quite a bit far away from the guys that can use nothing but instinctive and routinely put all their arrows in a 2" circle.
I am NOT one of those guys. I need help.
I want to make sure that I make every effort to harvest an animal with the best chance of allowing it's exit with a quick and clean fashion. To do this, I use a sight.
My confidence is increased, my groups are smaller, I trust in my equipment and my abilities. Sights may not be for everyone, but they are a great tool for me. Someday I hope to be able to shoot instinctively, but for right now I owe it to the animal I'm chasing to use the sight.
:thumbsup:
Wingnut I sure thinik a site can speed along the progress.
Wihii - I am proud looks like a mature doe (no easy task) you maybe an assesment of you ability. focused on the tools needed to do the jod cleanly and ethical. learned to use the tools and broght your plan home. Much much better than regestering a miss or worse a wound,
One of the stights I will look may be the modle you ae using. this sight is a Apex Gear single pin verticle, lighted by a screwed in battery.
please feel free to add any insights are altner views and ways of doing things
rusty
till the morrow.rusty
The sight in the picture is from Sword Acu-site, a Twilight Hunter. Definately overkill for this application, I used it because I just couldn't get used to a multipin sight on my wheelbows - it was laying around so I thought what the heck. On the wheel bows, the pins were too tight, and all I saw was a multicolored vertical line.
I took out a bunch of the pins, and the sight has fiberoptics and a light on the front beam.
Possibly the best thing on it I found was the 3rd Axis adjustment point. I've never needed one, but I can adjust the axis on the sight housing for my natural cant with the recurve, so when I tip the bow drawing it back the sight pins fall into alignment vertically.
Definately overkill though. My next one will be more along the lines of that SRF sight you have.
:archer:
[all of the graphics and trajectory numbers are much more a representation than actual measurements but they are in the ball park
rusty]
the graphics illustrate the aiming points for 10yds (top), 15yds (middle), 25yds (bottom).
the idea of the sights seems to fit hand a glove with instinctive/gap shooting. what the
sight forces on you is the line. if you are holding for a lung shot misses left and right are
worse than missing high and low (within reason). the SRF forces the line. your eye automatically
center your spot to the center of the sight. now you have to adust the range.
look at it this way. a 200 fps arrow drops -5"@10yds, -18"@20yds, -31"@25yds, -43"@30yds. so the sight window
in this case (10yds to 25yds) 15 yds range in the window and -31" of drop. the drop takes care of itself
when you get the range correct. Well and yes it becomes very instinctive after some practice.
Now the hard part to explain is the string "sight" picture. your adaptibility to using a sight depends on
your anchor point, the structure of your face, and the design of the riser. An example would be, if you are
a three under shooter and you have a very very high anchor (like some of the indoor target specialist) you will
have such a narrow gap between your eye and the arrow shaft that there will not be enough clearence for the sight.
you will get arrow interference big time.
another example is an bowhunter (esp some of the old geezers) willanchor with their thumb around the back of
their neck and the anchor point pretty far back on their face. this will move the sight so far to the left there
you will run out of sight screw. well it can go on and on but MOST of us the sight picture is within our visual
range.
My sight picture is:- the string lines up just to the right of the inside line of the riser. because we anchor
pretty high and just a little out side our eye we can not line up the string even with the arrow tip and
wink the tip of the arrow like the olympic shooters do. it is easy to see the string line up with our
perpheral vision while we are lining up the spot in the SRF.
http://sites.google.com/site/stringwalkerbowhunter/srf
more tomorrow
rusty
wihill - LOL - oh no there is no such thing as over kill IMO. there is NOTHING i hate more than an 10 hr blood trail and what you may or may not find at the end.
Oh man I am glade to here about the 3ard axis. I have honestly never seen a sight that I thought worked very well for a canted bow. I'll have to find one and look it over.
rusty
I agree with wilhill. the multi-pin sights confuse me and with our somewhat limited range may not be the best choice (IM0). we are gonna look at two more types over the next few day. the single pin and its useful range and we are gonna barrow an olympic sigt bracket, using it somewhat like the SRF. we well also look at the olympic sight bracket with a post in it. sight bracket and post is a very good small game hunt'n rig.
rusty
Site on a trad bow?? My first thought was absolutly not. I've been shootin since april to get ready to use my first trad bow for deer. But after thinking about it why not. One could reason we owe it to the animal we are taking to use every advantage we can. You could shoot without it for most of the year for fun and then throw on the site when hunting.
I was just looking at these sights myself and wondering how easy they were to use. As I shoot off the shelf and cant my bow, I was wondering if the sight can be canted also to match?
Stephen - there are a lot of good reasons to shot a sight on a trad bow. I am a perfect example. Becasue of heart bypasses I had to start back over with much light draws than my life lone 60+ draw. with the light 44# draw I will not settle for the groups I was shooting, I now want to put the arrow in a 2" spot with fair consistance. Couple that fact with the fact that I pulled money shoulder out of shocket tring to hokd up a r1200r motocycle and can out in the anount of practice I did in past for 6 months (right during hunting season) I can stay as shapr as I feel I must to hunt with a trade bow.
PoppaW I shot with t verticle bow. that is by far the easistway to use the sight. I have seen two clever archers gludge together a bracket that holds the sight verticle with a canted bow.
rusty
Rusty 30yrs ago sights were common as you probably remember.
Some friends and I at that time use to shoot in a school gym one night a week.I remember taping a toothpick to my bow back then and shooting groups worth talking about.I may have to give that toothpick another try.
for me personally (not a great judge of distance the SRF (as well as the olympic sight breacket) acts as primitive range finder. if given the deer are the same size (more or less) and the sight is a fixed size, the sight kinda sets it's own distance after you shoot a few rounds of 3D targets.
now the bad part of sight shooting. a sight may let you shot smaller groups from the get go but you will not go from 12" groups to 2" groups at 20 yds by puting on of any kind. the only thing that will make you a good shot is your form. Form is what starts your accuracy and what stops your accuracy.
I beleive that a sight well take the aiming arrow away form you and you well then know when you have dropped your bwo arm, pluck the string, lots back pressure or creeped. the folks I have introduced to a sight have become good shoots much faster than those tha have not used sights.
when using the SRF specifically I think it helps teach you your exact gaps for instinctive shooting. to me the SRF fits had and glove with my instinctive style.
the last note about a sight in general is that just cause it is there is no reason ya can't shoot any style at the moment ya want to. For some reason there are many times I will string walk my hunting bow while I have a sight on it.
whe we look at the pin sight, I use it personally for the range the pin will give me by hold center lung. so that would be about 2" over (closer range) and 2" under (farther range). it is just a qurick with me. closer ranges with a single pin I gap the arrow point and the same with longer ranges (getting uo close to point one)
the very first deer I shoot was a doe in the panhandle of texas. I shot her at 42yds with a 50# Kodiac Special and a 8 wrap crawl. I did not know 40 yds was a long ways at the time. I jsut spent all summer long shooting field archery and the average shot was 40 yds. I though 40 yds was close :)
on to the pin in the next few days.
rusty
Ray - so true. I am not tring to change anyones style or converts to sight. Just tring to give a small glimpse at another traditional style not seen often BIMO underused as a traditionalk resouce
I hope Wihill we discuss the ends and out of put his sight on the bow and any form adjustmentshe had to make. I have not had experince with many of the new sights.
rusty
I shoot a BW with a homemade sight. Dad conceived it, sent it to a friend who machined several them out of aluminum. It's a ramp-style, and works with Black Widow's top limb bolt, and the guys at BW installed a factory insert for the bottom. I shoot a more olympic-style, and don't cant. I'll try to get a picture posted if anyone's interested.
Archie - I love to see a pic if ya can get one to post. I am always interested in the work of the inventive bunch that make up trad archery. thre is a bunch of clever folks out there
rusty
I would like to see it also, Archie!
I'd be happy to talk a bit about my sight, Rusty.
The newer sights that are on the market are mostly designed for wheelbows. The natural center of adjustment is based around the offset of the cutout on the riser, which is much father over than on a traditional bow. A rest on them can be as much as 11/16 over, which is why they need such a large amount of adjustment.
The riser shelf on my Gamemaster is cut very closely to what a wooden traditional bow would be, so because of it I had to move the sight housing all the way to the right just to get the pins centered with my shooting style.
I also have a low anchor point. With a mechanical release, my anchor is at the back of my jawbone. With fingers the closest approximate I could find was with the tip of my index finger at the corner of my mouth on release. Becuase of this I had to move the sight housing down to have enough elevation for longer yardage.
On the subject of pins, my pins are all space equi-distant, with the top most pin set for 10 yrds, then twenty, 25, and 30. The only thing shot at 30 and beyond is paper. Even 25yrds is pushing my luck IMO, but it's always nice to have a reference.
The 3rd axis adjustment is nice to adjust for cant, but I hold my bow almost vertical on the shot. There's only a minimum of adjustment with the 3rd Axis, perhaps only 3-5deg, possibly less! A nice addition in the sight housing a bubble level, it help me know I'm holding the bow correctly.
The hardest thing to think about, for me anyway, is to not focus down on that pin as a given point of impact. I'd like it to be, but I'm also not holding back a given drawlength on a solid wall, with 80% letoff and three points to hold a solid anchor. I don't have time for that at full draw, so instead I just use the pins as a reference, as a guide to tell me about where I should be lifting the bow. The SRF looks to do the same thing with it's distinctive shape but decided lack of pins. I think this is just as effective, and possibly more so becuase it allows you to have a complete view of the sight picture and still have a visual reference for yardage.
My next adventure will be with an SRF, I just need to decide on what size.
In the northeast area during the late 60's and into the 70's, sights were common on hunting recurves....it was the odd guy out that didn't have one on his bow. That's why you see so ,many used bows with holes drilled in them. They aren't their for looks 8^).
Fellas, you are talking sights not sites. Sorry, but I read so many threads that confuse the two that I just had to respond.
Having said that, and probably piss@@@ some one off,
good shooting using your "sights" !!
I'll post a pick of our homemade sight as soon as Photobucket fixes a problem they're having with my account. I can't log in!
Ia LOL thanks we'd have never guessed but I have always tried to decided. do you site a sight or do you sight a sight :)
if you do site (verb trasnitive) a sight (noun) is the resulting mental image named after the verb (site picture) or the noun (sight picture). seems like the metal picture is not a picture of the sight (that would be in a catalog) but a picture of the act of using the sight thus a site picture :) ????
rusty
Sights can be a good thing. Was a feller up here that made one from lighweight gas welding rod. Made up in a "V" shape and tuned on a target of given width for vitals of game intended.
The "V" was squeezed together so that it curved to provice a sight picture that would plunk the arrow into the center of the vitals at any range (outside edges of V bracket kill zone at all yardages. Took any guesswork out of rangefinding, provided fast and accurate shooting and was pretty foolproof once set up.
He used it on a wheelbow but would work just fine on a trad setup. I seem to remember that he used an 18" wide target to set up with...chest cavity of moose, body lenght of fox, three grouse width.
Watching thread with interest. Shoulder problems and Line Haul driving keeping me from shooting as much as is necessary to be confident.
Thanks,
Scotty
Aye, Scotty, there is a place for sights in the recurve world i think.
I was going to try to get this psoting done by Wednesday but Wingnut came up with a hunt and I have got my 2009 kit ready. going to have to beg off a week and get back on it week after next. I;ll have some more interesting stuff coming in form vendor we mightg want to look at.
I got to get arrow made and start tuning, wash my camo and find my binkie.
rusty
find the binkie first Rusty...other stuff will take care of itself.
Good Huntin.
Scotty
Scotty, I spent 20 years growing up in Fairbanks. Sure miss it up there!
Myself and many others hunted with sights back in the early 70s and never gave a second thought to drilling holes in the riser to mount them or to mount a small stabilizer...PR