Back to the pendulum sight
Equipment
I have had very good luck using a pendulum sight in years past. Since I only hunt elevated, it makes sense. I don't quite know why I stopped using one. So I just ordered and received and mounted my new TG700. This one has a light which is going to make a huge difference for these ole tired eyes and with a Archery Specialty 5/16 Verifier for my peep. My max would be 30 yds. Any thing above 12 ft should allow the sight to work. Any body else out there using one. Comments please..
the original Keller pendulum sight. Love it
Lots of states that do not allow lighted sight to be used (Colorado I believe is one) so be careful to check state regs.
Did not even know they still made those things.
Most bows these days are good with one pin out to 30 so I really dont see the need. But, whatever works and you are comfortable with.
I agree with ^^^^ my old bowtec shooting 150 gr heads is 2" low @ 30yds when using my 20 yd pin. But if ya like the pendulum by all means go for it
I think the need for them is long past with anything made the last 20 years. I also think I’d jump out of my tree stand head first if the only way I hunted was whitetails elevated.
I think the value of a pendulum is at short range and steep angles; at 20-30 yards, JMO you can pretty much ignore 10 or 15 feet of vertical at one end or t’other. And if you can ignore 15 feet at 20 yards, you can ignore 22 1/2 feet at 30....
On the other hand, I was about 12’ up on a 4-5 yarder and (with a sight pin that was +/-3” out to 23 yards) and I hit a few inches too high, went over the top of the spine and topped the off lung, which could have turned into a really long night. Follow-up shot at about 20-25 was dead nuts.
They are a gimmick. Elevation means nothing when shooting a bow.
The hell it doesn’t mean anything when shooting a bow
The hell it does. Trajectory is only affected by horizontal flight distance. A shot is the same whether you are at ground level, twenty five feet up a tree or shooting up a hill. The perceived changes people see are a result of improper from.
Yeah but you still need to know the horizontal distance because if you're shooting down (or up) a steep incline and you range the hypotenuse of the triangle, or what us land surveyors call the slope distance, you'll shoot high because the slope distance is longer than the horizontal distance.
I believe the pendulum sights compensate for the difference between the horizontal and slope distances.
It matters to aim not to change flight of arrow. But elevation or declination matters a lot on accuracy and it matter more at longer ranges and steeper angles
Wrong. In extreme instances (a rifle shot that is covering hundreds of feet of elevation) there is a minor impact on trajectory. For a real world hunting shot, the only thing you need to account for is horizontal distance.
There is no way that a pendulum sight can account for the trigonometry of the hypotenuse vs. base, arrow speed and trajectory, peep to sight distance, peep to arrow distance, etc. for the infinite combinations of archers. There is a reason that you have to input all that data into sight tape calculators.
Well, whatever...
We're in agreement on the horizontal distance factor.
I'm not really sure what all a pendulum sight compensates for and I don't know if you have any real life experience with a pendulum sight but I do. I do know that a pendulum sight eliminates the need to know the yardage within the effective range of the sight.
Many years ago I had a girlfriend who bow hunted with me and she shot a very slow bow that I set up with 10 and 20 yard pins. I always set her tree stands to try to keep her shots at 20 yards or less. She shot very well when practicing but in the moment of truth when shooting at deer she had a hard time with yardages and knowing which pin to use. She missed several deer and emptied her quiver one afternoon. She was getting extremely frustrated. Then I discovered the Keller pendulum sight and put one on her bow. She was able to hold dead on from a tree stand on any deer from something like 3 to 25 yards and it was like magic for her. She didn't have to worry about yardage anymore or which pin to use, she just held dead on on any shot 25 yards or less. She killed the next deer she shot at. It was far from being a gimmick, it compensated for yardage and height difference and it really worked.
Mike and ‘bou are right. The pendulum sight was designed to be sighted in at a known distance on the ground. Locked and carried that way until you are in a tree. Where you unlock it and allow it to rotate. The closer to the tree you aimed, the farther it would roll up. Vice versa on the farther from the tree.
A pendulum isn’t a gimmick at all. I’m not a mathematician but I do know that using one meant a lot for my hunting success and confidence when I was younger. Surprised there aren’t a few still on the market.
Scientifically speaking, it's a gimmick. Well, maybe gimmick is the wrong word. It's a bandaid for poor form. It compensates for dropping your bow arm while keeping your torso more vertical than it's supposed to be while shooting at steep angles.
I put it in the same category as the deer-view mirror, the cough suppressor, doe decoys, scent-loc, tracking spiders, and next(30 years ago) level thinking.
probably worked great on an icy morning
If it overcomes bad form, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Killed a bunch with a savage pendulum.
It's NOT a gimmick and it has NOTHING to do with bad form!
I used one for about 8 yrs when I first started bowhunting. Range estimation was my biggest issue. Once I got it sighted in, it was good from 0-25y. Killed many deer with that set up. Then I got a much faster bow and started using a lazer range finder and overcame the yardage estimation problem. Still use a single pin, but it's not a pendulum.
One important point is it only works on relatively level ground. You can't use it on steep uphill or downhill shots. I forgot about that once and found out the hard way when I hunted a new spot. But on flat ground it works like a "charm!" ;-)
Yeah I didn't think it had anything to do with bad form either...
Bad from fix doesn't line up with hitting where the pin is. That wouldn't be bad form. That would be a good shot. Because when you use bad form, the arrow hits where the pin isn't. I believe you fellas saying it was a band-aid for bad form has got it backwards.
