i just put up a thread about lowering the shelf on my recurve.

i'm wondering how high above your bow hand is your shelf?
just curious as to whether i should bother altering it or not.

I shoot right off my hand. I have the feather cuts on my finger to prove it.

my black widows are very close to the hand and my ACS/CX is right off the hand. My personal preferance is the closer the better.

The piece of skin between my thumb and forefinger is pretty much level with the top of the shelf.

It varies from bow to bow, however, on a typical TD recurve like my Silvertip and Bighorn TD's the shelf is approx. 1" above the throat of the handle.  On my GN Ghost recurve and my longbows with a bulged or straight grip, my hand placement puts the shelf right at my bow hand; right where I want it.  The closer your hand is to the arrow the more it lends itself to "instinctive shooting".  The arrow is where your hand is.  G Fred talks about this in his first book.  It is personal preference though, you can still shoot instinctively with an elevated rest, but when you cant the bow, your arrow radiuses away from your line of sight.  It's very marginal though and like anything, you'll compensate.

Good luck, Kris

I should add, that with the TD's I describe above, I am still shooting the arrow off my hand.  A person with smaller hands (my wife may not be able to do the same with my bows, it depends on your hand size and how you grip the bow and your preference.