Aiming without aiming?

Ok so I went to the club on Sunday and tried out my old Winstar with the Tomcat limbs on it and it was fun.

The idea of instinctive shooting appeals to me and it is as far away from sighted target as you can get, with string/face walking and gaping you are still using a distance reference and adjusting to compensate for it. With instinctive the idea is to shoot at the target almost the same way you would throw a stone, with no conscious thought about adjusting for distance. This is not something that happens overnight, it is a case of shooting lots of arrows at a target and your body/brain should gradually learn where to aim.
 I recently had a chance to see some instinctive shooting at the club, our field archers asked if there is a way to have a classification system as there is in target so that they can gauge their progress. The solution that was put forwards is a set field course that will challenge even the most experienced archers and that we can setup again exactly the same any time we want to. A lot of thought went into how high a score would be needed for each classification and we needed as many archers shooing as many styles as possible to shoot the course to see if these were right. One the day I was shooing with my targeted recurve and just felt so out of my depth, each target is set at a different distance and height often partially obscured by leaves or long grass, all making it very hard to judge the distance. On most of the targets I was withing ten meters with my first guess and when my first arrow was high or low my second shot normally hit (usually not in the kill zone), but by the end of the round I was really feeling uncomfortable shooting  not knowing the distance. The three people I was shooting with were all shooting instinctive and all did much better than me.

Even though we have quite a few barebow archers at the club, I decided to just setup and see how I got on. So I set up a boss on the ten yard line over on the practice side of the field and had a go, just drew up focused on the gold and released....straight over the top of the boss, tired it again with the same results. OK so it looks like I need to aim a bit, or as it turns out find a sort of neutral position to start from. Once I worked that out I started putting nice groups of six arrows on the boss, well it was only ten yards and soon they were getting to close real arrow bashing stuff. So I pushed the boss out to twenty and then thirty yards, now things started to get a bit more interesting.

The first thing I noticed at the longer distance was that I kept looking for a sight or at least a reference point on my bow and had to really work  at just looking at the boss, the second was that as I relaxed and stopped looking for a reference my arrows started to group up again but as soon as I start to 'try' harder things went awry including arrows flying over the boss again. By the end of my little session my group was  moving in towards the gold almost of it's own accord. So not a bad start going to keep at it and see how I get on.

Back again

Hi all,

Sorry that I have not been very active over the last few months, had a few things going on and have been a bit huffy about some archery related stuff (not the shooting side of things).

So back to the blog. I have decided that it is time to actually give barebow a proper try so I was looking at risers. I could us my existing revo' but as it is the target version it has all the bits drilled out and is not legal for barebow, I a also going to use some thicker arrows and that is going to change the centre shot and as the bow is shooting so nicely I don't want to play with it. So what to do?

Well I could buy a barebow revo (yes yes do it do it!) which I would really like but I can't really spend much at the moment as my wife has given up work for a year to do her PGCE teacher training. So I have been looking at second hand stuff then I was sorting my office at home and came across my old KAP Winstar II riser and a pair of Kaya Tomcat carbon limbs (sounds like a starter kit to me), so I think I am going to get to the club on Sunday and see how they shoot together and go from there. The Tomcats are 34lb (6lb less than my EX-1s) so should be a bit easier to get used to a different anchor point.

Taking a break.............

Well just a quick note to let you know that I will be away for a bit, the last few weeks we have been getting ready for a cruise on the Queen Mary II following the coast of Norway right up into the arctic circle. It is a fifteen day trip and should be lots of fun but it has been taking up a bit of my time sorting out luggage clothing and the like.
We have another league match on the 3rd of August 2 days before we go and I will try and do a quick update on how that goes.

Wait? No bare bow weight .......no

Well got the bare bow weight fitted, it shot with it, hated it nuf' said .....well not really so watch this space for a longer explanation.......ha! I bet that will keep you on the edge of your seat!

How do you like it.........?

Just a few thought s today, I was thinking about last Wednesday when I was last at the club. There were a few things going on with my bow that I have mentioned, but I didn't really say much about the truly awful round I shot, so here goes.

Now most of you will know that I don't shoot with a clicker and my reasons for this, but if not then briefly it is just that I feel the more aids you use on a bow the farther away you get from the shot, I think that makes sense. I often talk about how alive or dead a bow is, in an effort to describe how they feel when shot.

One extreme would be a one piece wooden bow with no stabalisaton or dampening of any kind, which will move with every twitch of your arm or gust of wind and in turn transmit back to your bow hand every vibration when shot and will feel "alive".
 Of course the other extreme would be a target recurve bow with a long rod, v-bars and limb savers This bow will have a lot of inertia from the weights on the long rod and v-bars and so will resist any movement to the extent that it will actually hold your bow arm still. There may also quite a lot a dampening from the long rod and some from of limb savers. This will all add up to a bow that will weight a lot more but will be much more stable and will feel "dead".
 To be honest if you are going for the highest score and to be as consistent as possible you want the latter, it will let you hold the pin steady on the gold and coupled with a clicker enable you to shoot as well as you possibly can. If (and it's big one) you have good form and a well executed shot cycle, because no matter how good and well tuned your setup is, you are still the one who has to make the shot and each subsequent shot the same as the last.
But for me, I prefer the former, I like to feel that I am making the shot, not just providing the power for a well engineered machine. I will not get the same level of consistency, my bow is less stable and no matter how much I practice, my draw will vary. Maybe by only a few millimeters 90% of the time, but it is the other 10% (where a clicker would let me know that I have not reached full draw or that I had pulled too far) that will probably keep me from getting my bowman classification ( I am going to try for it next season). I do use a long
I am not knocking people who shoot with aids and not preaching that you should shoot without, you shoot the way that you enjoy in order to reach the goals that you have set yourself.

Wow gonna need to make another post the cover the original topic which was "Have you ever had one of those days?".

Loose screws and funny sizes

Grr a bit of a frustrating day yesterday, first off I could not shoot straight to save my life, really I was missing at 60 yards and even shooting over the boss!

Secondly and what might have put me in a fowl mood, I received my bare bow weight from AS Spigarelli on Tuesday, not bad as I only ordered it on Friday from the factory in Italy, which I did because all the UK stockists were quoting four week plus for a special order. So yesterday morning I thought I would fi it before I went to the club and then see how it effected the bow, I would have put it on the evening before but I had to do a quick repair on our shower, which the wife thought was more important than my bow?
Any way Wednesday morning I got all ready to fit the weight to my bow but then found that I didn't have an allen key to fit the bolts, it turns out that they will be an AF size as are the threads on the stabiliser bushings. So after going through every allen key in my house and shed I gave up and will have to get a set of AF keys.

The next fun thing happened at the club, after fitting my limbs and stringing my bow I gave the string a little twang and to my surprise the bow had quite a rattle, the same rattle that I usually tell people is my sight....hmmm. After a bit of twanging while holding the rest still and listening to various areas of the bow I narrowed the source of the noise to the top half of the riser. Now I was a little bit concerned so quickly unstrung my bow and got out my tools and started checking nuts and bolts. Well what I found was that after about three years of shooting it the top three fixings were loose. That's the nut and bolt type at the very top and the next two, the riser was not coming apart an the loosest (the one at the end) was still more than finger tight but they had moved. The easiest way to see how tight they should be done up is to check the to see how far in the others are done up. So a quick few turns and everything was back as it should be and  guess what?.........My sight doesn't rattle any more. 

One form Laurie

Laurie has sent in some images of his Revo' in response to my request, it looks like a sweet setup in the traditional Italian colours very nice. 

Thanks Laurie 

Obviously the Revolution

SF Carbon /Wood Limbs

Cartel longrod

Shibuya button

Spigarelli Clicker and rest

Decut sight with orange ring

Wrist sling

Arrows, both Easton ACC and ACE

All the best,

Laurie

Long rod back on for one round and a bit of string walking.

Hi,

Well I was up at the club yesterday and had about an hour to kill before assessing a couple of junior archers so I thought I would have a play and see if I could hit 100 yards. Well yes I can but only aiming at the top of the white with my sight all the way in and as low as possible. After a few ends shooting as I have been with no long rod I decided to pop it back on just to see what difference it made and I could out a reasonable group on the boss. So that is something to pursue maybe next season.

Then I had a pair or young arches to assess and they were surprisingly good, I don't really have anything to do with teaching/coaching at the moment and so had not see these two shoot before. They both had nice forms and took notice of everything, I have assessed adults before and managed to take two steps over the shooting line before being spotted and someone calling fast, but this time I have barely put a foot over when they caught me.  Needless to say they both passed so well done them and well done their teachers.

After a bit of a chat and a cup of 'something' warm, I went back out onto the line and as my long rod was still on decided to shoot an albion with it (I know a week early but just once won't hurt). Well I don't know if it was from shooting with out the long rod but I shot my best ever 80 yards with 238 for three dozen. That's 32 more than when I shot my last personal best, so the game was on. The problem was at 60 yards the whole thing just fell apart and I ended up with 232, less that I scored at 80! (I had 268 with my last PB), then at 50 I pulled it back a bit with 288 (against 278) and ended up on 758 a new PB by 6 points but It really should have been nearer 790 grrr!

Then I had a bit of fun, Dennis our club chairman and awesome bare bow archer was shooting next to me and as he knows I have an interest trying bare bow gave me a little taster. I used his Bernadini Nilo and for the first time shot a bow that felt similar to my revolution. I also had my first taste of the mystique art of string walking, which is weird but quite fun and while I tried out his toy Dennis shot a couple of ends with mine and was quite surprised at how well it shot even compared to his Bernadini. So an interesting day all round,  my bare bow weight should arrive from AS Spigarelli  any day and then we'll see what that does. I will talk a bit more about bare bow in my next post but that's about it for now.

Let's see your Revos'

Just thought it would be interesting see see what setups we have.......if you cannot post images then you can email them to me and I will post them.

Also has anyone got anything they want to discuss or questions that they would like answers to?

First class unstableised

Yes folks I did it, yesterday I managed to shoot a 706 albion without the long rod, and I still have one and a half weeks to go before I put it back on, so I might even equal my PB of 752. I am still really feeling like it is hard work for my bow arm by the end of the round which is another thing to keep an eye on when I put the long rod back on. This is also effecting my score at 50 yards, the last round I had 267 at 60 but only 256 at 50 and with the long rod on I almost always beat my 60yrd score at 50.
I started the round thinking that I would really pay attention to my release after it had been pointed out how inconsistent it had become, but as I shot things went from bad to worse. The more I tried to keep my release clean the bigger my groups got. By the last end I had given up and just shot normally and of course everything came right back. I carried on for the rest of the round and you know how it ended.

What can I say I just love shooting this bow naked....err... the bow not me....hmm

Bad Habits

Gosh really......not me....surely not!

Oh yes!

Oh no!

Well what do you know?
There I was on Wednesday afternoon happily plonking arrows into the boss at 80 yards still not using a long rod and happy to be scoring 70/dozen. When Dennis, shooting on the next boss (who really does know what he is talking about) said after one shot, "I didn't see where that landed but it should have missed!". When I asked why, he came over and said "shall I show you?", he then waited for me to draw up and then held his lite cigarette about an inch from the back of my hand holding the string, the message was clear, if that hand comes away from your face it's gonna get burned!
He did not hold his hand there while I shot but after I released he said, " Wow that was perfect, your hand came straight back under your ear without me asking, I have never seen someone go from such a dead release to that in one shot before."
 Well to me the that pretty much said it all, I do know how to shoot properly and it may sound big headed but my form is pretty near as good as it can be, but I can still forget it all and shoot like a noob in about 30 seconds flat. The end result of Dennis pointing out my transgression was an intimidate increase of about 5 points per dozen, enough said.  

Watch your form all the time and when you think that you have it all sorted and it is easy watch it even closer because that is when you will start to let things go.

A better perspective.

Just a quick one today thinking about Mike's bow being a bit buzzy and not a quiet as he expected it to be.

While I was shooting on Sunday one of our newer members commented on my "Professional" bow, I explained about the reasons for the strange design of the Revolution and asked if he would like to try a few shots with it. He is a beginner who started shooting in October last year and his current bow is an SF with 24# limbs, he had also spent the last hour consistently shooting four and five gold ends at fifty and sixty yards.
So after I had finished shooting my round I pulled the boss into thirty yards and let him loose, the two things I noticed were that he shot six arrows into a group about six inches across (you know how sometimes you just hate people), the second was that my bow sounded much quieter than when I am shooting it. Just being four feet away made such a difference.

An unstable day.........

Well I was thinking to myself that as I had shot quite well without a long rod last week, I went to the club yesterday  with the intention of shooting an albion with no stabalisation.
So off I went to the club and got setup and things started pretty well at 80 yards I scored 202 with three dozen arrows which is not too bad with my best end pictured below.

(Oh and I think I had forgotten just how nice my Revo' feels when it is bare.....)

At 60 yards I scored 244 and at 50 yards 250, for a total of 696 (only 4 points off a first class score). The only distance I was a bit disappointed with was the 50 yards , as I know I can shoot close to 280 even without a long rod at that distance. 

The only thing that stands out is that by the time I got down to 50 yards my bow arm was really starting to feel tired. Now this is not a problem I normally have shooing even long rounds, so all I can think is that I was  feeling the extra work I was having to do to keep the bow still with no long rod. If that is the case then one of my reasons for shooting with no stabs' (to strengthen the muscles that give fine control) would seem to be working.

My theory is that although it is fairly easy to build strength into the  big muscle groups that do all the hard work such as lifting the bow and drawing the string, it is much harder to build strength into the smaller muscle groups that control the fine movements. But if you take yours stabs' off and shoot with a sighted bare bow you will have to use these very muscles to hold the bow steady, then when you put your stabs back on you should notice a difference.....in theory. 

The other interesting thing was I scored 10 golds in total at 80 yards compared with 9 when I shot a PB on Sunday in the league match. Now this is a one off so far but I am going to shoot for the next three weeks with no stabs and see how my scores go and then put my long rod back on and see how it effects things. 

  

Great weekend

We had a league match against West Essex last Sunday (15th June), after not being able to field a full team  for last months match I was just hoping for a good day and getting five archers on the line so we would have a fighting chance. On the day we did not have the minimum five archers but six! So a good start, four of us were quite experienced with one of the others shooting in their second and one their first ever league match and only the second time they had shot at 80 yards!
The weather was kind with almost no wind, cloud cover to keep the sun off and a comfortable temperature if a little on the cool side. I was shooting with two great guys from West Essex, Brian and Sean and we had a really good time (well I did and think they did too). The long and the short of it was we won by 192 points, of our top five scores (you field a team of up to eight and then the top five scores count), the lowest was Peter who was shooting in only his second league match and scored just over 400, I think he came along thinking he was just making up numbers, but on the day without his score we would have lost, so well done Peter. Our other novice Sheila was shooting with such a low poundage bow that even with the sight reversed at 80 yards she was aiming at the tree tops behind the boss, she had the option  to shoot along side at a shorter distance but decided that she would like to shoot with the team so another well done.
As for me after my last round I was not expecting much but ended up on a personal best of 752, it was just one of those days when things clicked (or didn't) for me. Not much else to add except to say that West Essex as usual were great hosts and I expect the tea afterwards was up to their usual high standards, but I had to scoot off straight away and catch a train to Norwich for an urgent meeting in a bar with two old school friends, which led to a really good couple of days during which we ate far too much drank just about enough and did some things that some people think we are getting too old for....but that's a whole other story.

Unstable

Hi all, I got to the club yesterday in the end (or rather the beginning) nice and early to get in a last practice round before our next league match, against West Essex on Sunday. It did not go well, so not well that after the first two ends at eighty yards I decided that I was not going to get any kind of reasonable score so I might as well just enjoy myself. Off came my long rod and I shot with just the sight on the bow. Now the first thing lots of people will tell you is that without the long rod your gonna get hit by your bow as after the shot it will rotate backwards instead of forwards as modern bows are made to be shot with a long rod on them (if I was cynical I would say that is an excuse for making a badly balanced bow in the first place). But they will then be proved wrong as even with just a sight on it the Revo' (well mine anyway) stays vertical after you release, I also find that my sight marks are much better without the long rod pulling the bow down. To cut a long  story short I ended up shooting 673 for an albion, which I didn't think was too bad with no stabilization (well not after the first dozen which I only scored 53 with) against a personal best of 748.

Once again the thing that really hit me was just how much I like shooting my bow without the long rod on it, I think next year I am going to have a serious look  at doing some bare bow work.

The start of another week and just had another weekend that I did not get to the club to shoot, good reasons though. Went to go to a friends new babies dedication at their church, yarn bombed a library (don't ask ....really just don't) and finally finished sorting out our son's bedroom reshuffle that he wanted. Not going to shoot on Wednesday (my day off in the week) as an engineer is calling to (hopefully) sort out our hot water or lack off, so I thought I would take the opportunity to rub down and re-oil the kitchen work tops. Then this Sunday we are off to Hastings for a nice lunch with my brother in-law, which will be great, really but I won't get down to the club (well if we are heading down late morning/early afternoon on I might be able to get a quick round in). Then it will be another week and I bet there is something that needs doing on the Wednesday and then on the 15th June we have our next league match against West Essex!

Do you ever get the feeling that you are in a time machine and each year some bugger racks up the speed another notch, I swear every year I have less and less time to do more and more things. I cannot believe that in less than two weeks we have our second league match of the season ( that means we will be half way through June, that's six months since my last Birthday, that means it's only six months till my next one......aaaghh!). But so far it has not been too bad a season, even with the elbow thing I have already shot three first class scores this season and set a new personal best. Now I just have to try and get at least five people for each of the remaining league matches this season and try to find some time to get a training schedule to bring on some of our newer members for next season.

Ouch II

OK so i didn't shoot for seven weeks while on some major anti-inflammatory pills and then came the weekend of the 11th May and the first of this years Summer League matches what to do?

Well the Friday before I had an appointment to see the Doc' and see where to go from there, my elbow felt about 85% back to normal so it was decided that an injection into the joint, which would have made it effectively unusable for two to three days was not warranted. I asked what the are implications for me shooting without it fully healed and his reply was.
 "Well it's going to aggravate it again and most likely put you back a bit on complete recovery, but having said that if it was me a few years ago and I had an important rugby match then I know I would have played. So there you are"

Well of course I shot and in the words of my thirteen year old son I shot  "Meh!", 634 is hardly something to shout about. The effect on my elbow was OUCH!, by the end of the round I was really struggling to hold at full draw and not just let go, but it did seems to ease off quite quickly even without taking anything. Shooting again three days later felt pretty good up to the last one and a half dozen, with a score of 666. I then followed that four days later with a 734 and then three days after that with a 748, so that's two first class scores for this season and I really feel that there is better to come.

This was my first end and while not the highest scoring end it was my best group I had at 80 yrds.

 Over these last two weeks what I have noticed is that my elbow seems to be standing up better each time I shoot and it is taking less time to recover after each session, so it seems that Laurie's advise was the best.

Ouch!

OK so everything has been going smoothly so far this year, I got my new limbs and have been building up to longer rounds with the extra weight and my scores are coming back, to where they were at the end of last season, and then..... medial epicondylitis or golfers elbow.....really? an archer who has never swung a club suffering from golfers elbow.

Well it would seem to be a fairly common affliction for archers, it is basically a tear/damage to the point at which the muscle group the works your fingers is anchored on the inside edge of your elbow (right about where the string hits if you fluff a release but on the drawing arm not the bow arm. In this case it is a result of the strain from holding the string on your fingers. So I'll have to get to the quack and get it checked out ( self diagnosis so far which is never a good idea) and see what is to be done, it can be a 6-9 month recovery, but hopefully it will not be that bad. Then just to hammer the nail in I can off my bike (push not motor) a fortnight again and managed to land on my left elbow so I am completely crippled at the moment. I am not going to try shooting anymore until I have had my right elbow looked at, just in case I aggravate it. But I am going to have to wait ten days to get an appointment, by which time my bashed elbow will most likely be better  and hopefully it will be good new and I can maybe wear a splint and keep shooting because I really do not want to take the whole of this season off.

Look what I found

Just a quick one saw this today on ebay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SPIGARELLI-REVOLUTION-RISER-/231178580163

European Archery Festival

Hi all, just a quick note to let you know that I did go and had a great time but I have come down with a stinking cold so as soon as I feel a bit better I will give you the details.

Just a little post to show off our new indoor range, which some of our members have built, the whole of the right hand side can be removed to allow shooting from under cover. 

While I am on here I will update on my new limbs as well. I shot them on Sunday in a frostbite and I still like them a lot, I also had the first chance I have had to weight them on the bow and I got a bit of a surprise. My Kaya Tomcats were rated as 34 lb @ 28" and with them fully wound in I had weighed them at 37.5 lb, now the Uuhkas are rated at 40 lb @ 28" so with them wound out I was expecting a small overall increase in weight, what I got was 42.7 lb nearly five pounds more, no wonder they feel like hard work! Guess I need to spend more time building up my strength. I will have to see if there are any funky training aids at the European Festival on Saturday.

Grip results,

On Saturday evening I sat down and took the grip off my Riser to see how the Sugru had set and if the fix worked and I must say I was pretty impressed with the results.

The grip came off nicely thanks to the cling film and that peeled easily off the Sugru, leaving a perfect impression of the underside of the grip. I refitted the grip and it felt nice and firm with possibly just a little bit of give but none of the movement it had before. The Sugru sets just like a layer of rubber and should give a nice seating for the grip.

I got up to the club yesterday (Sunday) and shot a Portsmouth and everything felt really nice with the grip no longer rocking and I managed a respectable (for me) 516. I am starting to feel more comfortable with the extra weight from the new limbs so soon it will be time to start winding them up a bit ...MORE POWER!!! (If you used to watch Home Improvements you'll get it).   

Feed back

OK guys been doing this blog for a while now and I know people out there are reading it but I am not getting much feed back. So either I am covering everything and getting it all right first time or I am really failing. I will publish all comments as long as they are suitable for my son to read and not blatant commercial adverts. So come on lets have some input, even if it just to say "your blog stinks I hate it". 

OK lets sort out this grip (Part One)

So let's see if this works, the first thing I did was remove the grip by undoing the single screw that holds it on, I then cleaned the area of the risers under the grip to remove any grease. I then applied a layer of Sugru about 2mm think over the area.

Next I covered the area with a layer of cling film to stop the handle sticking to the Sugru (it is fairly easy to get of non porous material but can be a real pain on wood the like) so that I can still remove it when I want. Next I put the grip back on and pressed in down firmly to form the layer of Sugru and line up the fixing screw, which I then put back in.

So in theory that's it job done, the Sugru will normally take about twenty four hours to cure (2 mm thickness if it was thicker it would take longer) and will then be like a layer of rubber firmly fixed to the riser. Well I did that last night so tonight when I get in from work I can have a look and see how it is doing, I am expecting it to take a bit longer to cure because it is tucked away under the clingfilm and the grip but we will see and I will report back. 

That ********** grip!

Ok so as the title says I am going to have a look at the grip on my Revo', it is one of the things that bugs a lot of owners as they always seem to have quite a bit of movement. Well I have been thinking about it for a while and have now decided to do something about it and my solution is Sugru. If you have not heard of it, it is a bit like silicon but comes in small sachets and can be used for lots of thing. What I will do is take off my grip apply a layer of sugru then put some cling film over it and refit the grip. The idea is that when the grip goes back on it will form the sugru to the correct shape to take up the gaps and stop the grip moving but as it stays flexible it should act as a cushion, the cling film is to stop the grip sticking on and will be removed once it has cured. I will post some images as I do it and report back on how well it works. 

I got them and they are..................

OK so Christmas has been and gone and  have my nice new shiny Uuhka EX-1s. With the filthy weather and the need to be sociable over the festive season, it was not until the 31st of December that I managed to get up to the club and have a proper got with them. I did have a rather stupid go in the back garden on Christmas day (yes I know I always so don't do it unless you have a proper safe area to shoot), I just wanted to try them so shot two arrows into the lawn, or that's what I meant to do (you know it's not going to go well don't you), the first one was fine and felt nice the second one went a bit further up the garden and embedded itself in one of the sleepers we have setup in front of the throwing board (my son has no interest in archery but instead throws knives and now axes) it is only about twenty feet away and you heard the shaft fracture as it hit, when I tried  to pull it the pile and about one and a half inches of shaft stayed in the sleeper and the rest came away.
Anyway I did get to the club, had my first go in our new indoor range and shot my first indoor round. I had done a bit of setting up before hand and as I have gone up fair bit in weight from my 34lb Tomcats to the 40lb EX-1s I moved the limb bolts from all the way in to all the way out ( I am planning on getting the at least halfway back in by the time the summer season starts......where are those bands), so at 28" I would in theory be going from about 36lb to 38lb. Spigarelli recommend an 8-9" brace height and Uuhka say about 9" on a 68" bow for the EX-1s, when I first strung it up it was at 8.75" so I started there. The limbs are a little bit tight on the limb bolts so it is hard to settle them before you shoot and my first shot had a nice loud crack to it as did my second, third and forth, hmm that string is slapping on those limbs (they really do have an impressive recurve on them), time to look at that brace height. I took it up to 8 and seven eighths and it was a bit better but still there so up it went a bit more and a bit more until it hit a sweet spot at 9 1/8".

  On to shooting and how they feel, well my first impression once the brace height was sorted is that they feel quite a bit heavier than the Tomcats, after just two and a half dozen arrows I felt just about done, they also feel faster than the Tomcats with more of a snap to the shot. But of course all of this is very subjective, I don't normally analyze how my bow feels I just shoot it so when I am looking for a difference I'm going to find one even if it is not there and until I weight the bow and maybe see if I can borrow a chrono I can't really confirm anything. One thing I can say is that they feel very smooth through the draw and seem very stable to shoot even if it did seem harder to hold at full draw while settling on the gold.  I shot a Bray, my first indoor round and my first round with my new limbs, I scored 205, no records there but no too bad as that included working out a sight mark and then 2 days later shot a 220 so heading in the right direction.

  One thing I have noticed on the limbs is cracking on the decals on the back of them obviously due to the outside edge stretching as they bow is drawn and something I have seen mention by others. I did try a few shots outside from 30yrds out to 80yrds and even wound in there is a big improvement in sight marks, they went up when I changed from Skyart Sapphires to my ACGs but are now better then they were wih the Skyarts, whether I can hit 100yrds will have to wait until I work up to getting them wound back in and we have some better weather.