POI vs Arrow Position Under the Eye

[YosemiteSam]

Greetings, all.  I've been gone a few years.  I picked up a wheelie bow a couple years ago and am now getting rid of it.  Darned things just aren't as interesting to me.

Almost a year ago, I injured my arm/shoulder and am slowly working my way back into shooting again.  For the most part, shooting left handed is okay.  Right-handed, just depends on the day.  I'm mostly a right-handed shooter but occasionally shoot left handed just to even out the muscle tension in my neck.  At the moment, I'm mostly shooting left handed and may need to hunt left handed this coming turkey season, depending on what the Doc says.  It's going to take some practice, for sure.  I'm a decent shot right handed -- used to place or come very close in local comps 5+ years ago.  But I'm nowhere close to that left-handed.

When shooting left handed, with careful attention being paid to the arrow being under my eye and pointing straight toward the bullseye, I consistently shoot left.  This is the case regardless of arrow spine as I've tried several and have the same result.  I've not yet tried bareshaft...  But with fletched arrows, I have to intentionally get the rear of the arrow slightly off to the left (arrow pointing right) to get it to land straight.

What's your best guess?  Is this a form issue (plucking)?  Is this an eye issue with me shooting off my non-dominant eye (I don't really have one the way most people describe)?  Is it something that can be solved by building out the strike plate or would that risk changing the actual dynamic spine of the arrow & mess things up once I put broadheads on?

I welcome your thoughts.

[Pat B]

What is your shooting style. If you shoot instinctively eye dominance doesn't matter if you are right or left hand shooting. With both eyes open and the same anchor point the arrow should go where you are looking.

[McDave]

You can correct for eye dominance by squinting or closing your right eye.  Even if you don't want to do this all the time, it's a quick and easy check to see what's going on.

I've never had any doubt when I was plucking.  Plucking is something that happens if you are creeping, or collapsing, and try to save the shot by hauling back on the string with your biceps and fire off an uncontrolled shot.  Your string hand ends up waving to the crowd and the arrow ends up hitting the target to the far left or high left for a LH shooter.

If you're not plucking, and the arrow is under your left eye, then you may have an alignment issue.  The arrow usually goes in the direction your shoulders or string forearm is pointing.  Have someone place an arrow on your shoulder blades when you are at full draw.  It should be pointing at the target.  If not, rotate your shoulders around so you are in better alignment.  Your string forearm should be aligned with the arrow.  The usual error is to have the string forearm elbow outside of the arrow line.  You should be able to rotate your forearm around until it is aligned with the arrow.  This may take some work if you are not very flexible.

Rotating your shoulders into alignment should help you to get your string forearm into alignment, and vice versa.  The end result should be better bone on bone alignment, with the arrow closer to your body than before, like Terry's form clock, which you can find elsewhere in this section.