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Practice distance?

I'm sure most of us limit our shot distance at game, but I wonder what distance you shoot in practice prior to the season? I can only shoot 20-25 yards in my backyard but have spent more time in the last few years shooting out to 40 yards at a range close to home.

I can shoot 30 yards at home. I split time shooting from 15 to 30. I would like to shoot 40 but have to go stump shooting for that and where I live it’s hard to get away from hikers. I shoot as far as I can as much as possible because it makes the 20 yards shots simple. Plus I love watching the arrow fly.

Various distances

I shoot most of the time at 20 and 30. But shoot some at 40. I can shoot 60 or 70 in my yard but haven’t shot that far in years. (Since my last western hunt) Will start shooting longer distances now that I will be hunting out west in a couple years.............

20-70 is what I have set up in the backyard.

Same as Jethro!

Rut means Clarion County. LOL.

There is a lot of benefit to shooting 40 yards and I used to do it a lot. It makes me concentrate. At 70, I have trouble seeing the bulls eye beyond my pins. Somewhere in my yard there is a 50 yard marker brick and its 60 yards to the driveway. Haven't done that in a long time. The most fun is going out in the fields in winter and seeing how far my various long bows would shoot. Remember the water melon shoots we had at Muldoon's?

LOL Art! Yeah, I hunt out west every year now! ;-)

LOVED the watermelon shoots!

I'm enjoying the challenge of practicing at the farther distance. Like a couple of you have said, it makes the shorter shots seem easier.

My ability to shoot better increased dramatically when a champion archer invited me to his home years ago. He could shoot out to 80 yards and had a big enough backstop to encourage me to step back farther without the fear of losing or damaging arrows. I was in college at the time and my resources were very limited so that was a big deal. That big backstop is the key for building confidence to practice at greater distances. Once you have the confidence to practice at distance you learn to identify problems in shooting form and follow through because distance magnifies mistakes. Once you deal with your flaws, you can’t help but shoot consistently better at all ranges.

I can shoot 40 in my yard/driveway but shoot out to 80 usually once a week at the local club.

It sounds like I should keep trying to stretch my distance. I have already learned, at just 40 yards, "problems in shooting form and follow through...magnifies mistakes".

I like to shoot far while roving or goofing around. Love to watch an arrow arc across the sky. And yep, shooting farther reveals form flaws that might go by unnoticed otherwise, and it makes the shots within my effective hunting distance seem easy by comparison.

'Far' is relative to the weapon used. When I shot a compound keeping all arrows in the vitals of a target at 40 yards was a piece of cake, though I never shot a deer over 30 with one. But with a selfbow and wooden arrows the distance where it's easy to be consistently, comparitively accurate is cut in half, at least. The farthest I've taken a deer with a selfbow was 26 yards, and that was an exception. Dead center double lung btw. But I like them to be well under 20... actually I would like every animal I shoot to be about 3 to 5 yards, from the ground, just for the intimacy factor. That's where it's at man.

Longer distances will reveal flaws in your form that will not necessarily be evident at shorter distances. I would start with distances that you are comfortable with and then keep increasing that distance until your groups significantly open up. Then I would shoot at that distance until you get comfortable and your groups start to consistently close up. Then keep moving farther back. You won't get better if you only shoot at 20 or 30 yards. I am speaking of course to compound shooters and not Trad shooters!

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