Bowhunt America

Article Topics

Shooting Stance

1 review

Strive to duplicate your shooting stance prior to every shot.

By Michael Corrigan

Picking apart your shooting form and working on individual form elements will make you a better shot.

If you don’t have a buddy to practice with and to help critique your shooting form, consider videotaping yourself. Reviewing video footage of your practice sessions is a great way to analyze your own shooting form. Once you identify a weakness, you can use various practice drills to focus on any specific form element.

Drills reinforce good shooting habits and correct bad ones. Want to learn how to aim better? No problem. There is a drill for that (see the November 2008 issue of this magazine). Some days you are spot-on while others you tend to miss mostly left or mostly right. While there are a couple of things that can cause this to happen, poor shooting stance could be one of them and a shooting-stance drill might just be the cure.

Shooting stance is often overlooked by bowhunters as a key shooting-form element, although its importance cannot be denied. Shooting stance can be compared to the foundation of a building. Raise a skyscraper over a weak foundation and the rest of the construction matters little. The orientation of your feet and legs relative to the target and to various parts of your body, such as your hips and shoulders, can have vast implications in the realm of shot-to-shot accuracy. A simple shooting-stance drill can be used to determine what works best for you, and using the drill periodically will help reinforce good shooting habits.

Shooting stance is a relatively personal thing and varies from one person to another, but there is a proper shooting stance for everyone. Defining good shooting stance as it relates to you is the first goal of the drill. The second goal is to reproduce the stance to the best of your ability every time you shoot.

To establish a repeatable shooting stance, stand 20 to 30 yards from a target and place an arrow on the ground. Make sure that it is perpendicular to the target. Back up another 10 yards and eye the arrow to be sure that it is pointing directly at the target. Next, position your feet with your toes almost touching the arrow and orient your head and torso relative to the target as you normally would when readying for a shot. Your feet and legs should be about shoulder-width apart. Standing with your legs at shoulder-width provides the most stability with the least amount of effort. Any closer together and you will feel top heavy and prone to swaying at full draw. Any wider requires conscious solicitation of leg muscles to maintain stability. Conscious effort is reserved solely for aiming, so shoulder-width apart is about right.

Now that you have a solid stance with an arrow on the ground to serve as a reference for foot position, draw your bow. Find your anchor point and aim at the bull’s-eye. Next, close your eyes and visualize aiming at the bull’s-eye for another five to ten seconds. Try to maintain your upper body form but don’t fight it. Your shoulders and torso should be square to your hips. Twisting your torso requires the solicitation of muscles and is less repeatable than standing erect with your shoulders square to your hips. The orientation of your upper body to the target should be dictated by the position of your legs and feet––your shooting stance. Keep your shoulders square to your hips and you will be more relaxed and steady while aiming. The goal here is to see if your stance and overall upper body form is to the liking of your body’s natural tendency. If you are unknowingly twisting at the waist, the muscles used to maintain this position will relax once your eyes close and the point of visual reference is removed.

After five to ten seconds, open your eyes and see if your sight pin has drifted to the left or right of the target. Don’t worry if you drifted upward or more likely downward. Drift in the left or right direction is what we are concerned about. Ideally you should be within a few inches of the target relative to right and left. Chances are your arrow will be pointing a foot or more to the right of the target when you open your eyes (for right-handed shooters). The opposite is usually the case for left-handed shooters. This is typical of a square stance, one in which the toes of both feet crowd the perpendicular line to the target.

More than likely you will be able to stay on target if you now try the drill with an open stance. To set an open stance, slide the foot closest to the target about three inches back from the arrow on the ground. Since the orientation of your torso should be dictated by the position of your feet and legs, your chest will face more toward the target as compared to the square stance. With your shoulders squared to your hips, they will be in the neighborhood of seventy degrees to the target face as opposed to ninety degrees in the case of the square stance. An open stance tends to be quite practical for bowhunters since, when used with a proper grip orientation, it increases bowstring clearance and eliminates the possibility of contact between the bowstring and a bulky jacket sleeve.

Try this drill yourself and see if your shooting stance conforms to your body’s natural tendency. Remember, move your target-side foot in the opposite direction of the observed drift and repeat the drill until you are on target. After a few weeks, you will no longer need an arrow on the ground as a reference for foot position. Addressing the target and setting your shooting stance will become second nature. Strive to duplicate your shooting stance prior to every shot. Don’t take this form element for granted, and use the shooting stance drill periodically to reinforce good shooting habits.

Enjoy this article? Share it!