Aiming a pistol vs. aiming a bow

**Devil** · Posted On: 6/14/2006 9:46am

Originally Posted by MEGA JESUS-SAN

In Rick McKinney's The Simple Art of Winning, in the section on aiming, he contrasts aiming with a bow to aiming with a pistol.

All top level archers focus on the target and let their aperature or pin line itself up. McKinney claims that when aiming with a pistol, shooters focus most of their attention on the sights and less on the target.

Is McKinney erroneous, or otherwise, why to gun shooters focus on the sights moreso that the target? What's different?

When aiming a pistol or rifle with open sights, your vision should be focused on the front sight. The target and the rear sight should be somewhat blurry.

**Camus** · Posted On: 6/14/2006 2:42pm

Originally Posted by Don Gwinn

Yeah, well, I do hillbilly archery. I have it from my father, who had it from his father, who had it from. . . . you get the idea.

So what do you use? At the Cub Scout camp this weekend, they were telling the boys to use their ears. I've heard of people coming back to their eyes. I have to touch my finger to something, or I have no trust that I'm at my index.

Even then, it seems to me that your head would have to be at a consistent angle and position every time.

Well, I'm no olympic shooter, just referencing what I had heard.

If I give a damn about accuracy (rare occurence) I use a clicker for consistent draw, so the anchor point becomes slighty less important. At the moment, I'm in a transition in terms of my shooting stance. But generally, I used three finger under the arrow, so I'm experimenting with using my inside wrist bone at the bottom of my ear. At the very least, this strategy is getting me to use a more appropriate angle on my arm pulling back the bowstring and has made my release a helluva lot smoother.

**MEGA JESUS-SAMA** · Posted On: 6/14/2006 3:32pm

Originally Posted by devil

When aiming a pistol or rifle with open sights, your vision should be focused on the front sight. The target and the rear sight should be somewhat blurry.

Thanks for repeating what Don Gwinn and Anthony have said, but that still doesn't tell me why the two should be different.

**MEGA JESUS-SAMA** · Posted On: 6/14/2006 3:39pm

Originally Posted by Camus

But generally, I used three finger under the arrow, so I'm experimenting with using my inside wrist bone at the bottom of my ear. At the very least, this strategy is getting me to use a more appropriate angle on my arm pulling back the bowstring and has made my release a helluva lot smoother.

That's the point of coming slightly to one side, instead of directly under the chin. It helps get everything in line, and makes it easier to come into the back, which is the closely guarded secret behind a good release.

**Don Gwinn** · Posted On: 6/14/2006 7:53pm

The pistol has a much shorter sight radius. The bow doesn't really have a "sight radius" if you don't have a rear sight (and most people don't, although they make peep sights you put into the cables on a compound bow now.) So it doesn't technically have a sight radius, but it does have a measurable distance between the nock of the arrow at full draw and the sights (or the tip of the arrow, or whatever you use.) That distance is several times as long as the distance on the longest pistol slide in common use.

You may have heard that it's harder to shoot a short barrel accurately than it is a long one. This is actually NOT because the longer barrel is more accurate; often the opposite is true. But on a longer barrel, the sights can be placed farther apart. When the sights are close together (a short sight radius) a deviation of, say, .1 centimeter left or right translates into more degrees of deviation measured as an angle. When the distance between the two is longer, the same .1 centimeter off means fewer degrees of angle off from the perfect shot--so for a human being, sighting with eyes, a shorter sight radius makes it more difficult and that much more important to focus on the sight.

Again, I have no hard data to give you, but I'd say the lack of a rear sight on the bow is the difference. The pistol generally does have a rear sight, and the "modern technique" was developed by men who started from the assumption that the rear sight was necessary. Perhaps complete focus on the target did not allow for sufficient attention to the rear sight. If the rear sight gets, say, 5% to 10% of your attention using the modern technique, maybe they found that would drop closer to 0% if you focused all the way out to the target.

This would not mean that they were correct to emphasize the front sight, but it might explain why they did it that way. I haven't read everything Cooper wrote about modern technique, but I've read quite a bit of him and don't recall an explanation as to why the focus on the front sight. It does seem to work. But there are people who swear by no rear sights at all, others who advocate not using the sights, and others who remove the factory sights because they consider them a "distraction."

The front-sight focus is by no means the only way to shoot a pistol. It works for me, by which I mean that I have not yet shot a young child by mistake. My expectations may be low.

And that brings up another question--is it really ubiquitous in archery to shoot with total focus at the target, or is that just how you were taught? I was not taught such, but again, we are a backward and clodhopping race.

**Don Gwinn** · Posted On: 6/14/2006 8:04pm

The ear is too far back, the string will slap their faces.

That's exactly what I thought, but I didn't see it happen all weekend. Can't really explain why, because they were leaving red lines on their forearms all day.

**MEGA JESUS-SAMA** · Posted On: 6/14/2006 9:45pm

Originally Posted by Don Gwinn

And that brings up another question--is it really ubiquitous in archery to shoot with total focus at the target, or is that just how you were taught? I was not taught such, but again, we are a backward and clodhopping race.

It's not the only method, but it is the method used by all the top Olympic shooters. Generally, the people using different methods aren't as successful.

Originally Posted by Don Gwinn

Again, I have no hard data to give you, but I'd say the lack of a rear sight on the bow is the difference.

Does the string not constitute a rear sight? At full draw, the string is a blur in the peripheral vision, and should be lined up with a point on the bow; that's another reason Olympic archers come to their face, to keep the string in sight.

**Don Gwinn** · Posted On: 6/15/2006 6:56pm

Dear Sirs:
WTF? Seriously.
Boris,
London

I never knew archers used the string as any kind of "sight" at all (used in the strictest sense, meaning you use your eye to see it and aid your alignment.) I thought the peeps and such were a new innovation. I've never had any consciousness of seeing the rear sight at all. That may be why I'm so bad.

Also, what in the world is Mediterranean style and how does it differ from the Western style? And how do the strings differ?

**Camus** · Posted On: 6/16/2006 2:58am

I can't hardly remember the last time I had to fire from horseback. . .

**CMack11** · Posted On: 6/16/2006 3:50pm

I'm fairly new to archery, but have been gun hunting for quite some time. I'd say the way that I use a shotgun when duck/dove hunting is very similar to how I shoot my bow. I focus on the target and let my sights line themselves up with it. I focus on the sights when I target shoot a pistol, but I'm a horrible shot so I try and make sure they are aligned before I start throwing rounds out there.