A common question among a lot of bow hunters, veteran or noobs, is what is the correct technique to draw a bow, and surprisingly there is no 1 size fits all answer. Everybody is unique and every-bodies draw style will differ a little, however one thing that can be agreed upon is that their are a few rules that never differ.
So if your ready to learn how to draw a compound bow, then read on.
CONTENTS
Rule 1:- The bow always leads
The very first part in the cycle of drawing your compound bow is to place the bow out in-front of you. As if you were read to shoot, but without the string pulled back.
We do this for a couple of reasons. One is that by placing the bow in front, you are naturally aligning your self to the target. Regardless of stance or any the other fundamentals, when you place your bow in front of you, you will sub consciously make tiny movements to better prepare you for taking a sight picture.
And two, the bow needs some sort of anchor to be able to sufficiently put enough energy through the string, into the cams, and load the limbs up. You will find that with your arm somewhat in front of you, serves as a strong anchor to aid in the process of drawing the compound bow string.
Rule 2:- Clip the Release on
When the bow is out in front of you, the next step is to clip the release on (or if a finger bow, wrap your fingers around). Now, make sure your D-loop is tied on tight and properly, because that’s what your release connects to. That means that that little D-loop is responsible for holding the equivalent of whatever your bows draw weight is, so if that D-loop gives way, then you’ll get a nice little surprise.
Rule 3:- Get ready to draw
At this stage your left arm will have a slight bend at the elbow, and your right arm and hand will have the release attached. The bow should be in front of you, and you should be anticipating the draw.
What do I mean anticipating the draw?
You should be starting to tense through the right arm and through the shoulder, rear delts, and traps. The left arm will ever so slightly straighten to provide a little bit of leverage.
At this stage you would be starting the draw cycle, if not even half way through it, but you get the picture.
Rule 4:- Complete the draw
All of the steps mentioned above, are basically one movement. I’ve just broken it down for ease of explanation.
As you go through he phases of the draw cycle, you should be conscious of drawing your right hand straight back to the nose/cheek area. There’s a couple of reasons for that and the first is because of safety.
You should always draw straight out in front of you, because this way if you accidentally loose an arrow then it will fire towards the intended target. Sometimes you’ll see people drawing from the ground up, or from the sky down. This is BAD PRACTICE, and is usually because there ego is in the way and they are drawing a bow far to heavy fro them. Hence the reason their draw looks all screwed up, because their trying to get extra leverage to complete the cycle.
The second reason is that by drawing back to that same point every time, provides a consistent anchor point, and consistency is the key to accuracy my friend.
Now, back to completing the draw cycle.
Once the draw cycle is completed, you will now be at the let off phase, where by you have the opportunity to aim your bow with out to much strain. You then fire, and repeat the process, and that is exactly the good practices that apply to drawing a compound bow.
Wrapping things up…
So there you have it, that’s how to draw a compound bow the correct way. Pretty straight forward really isn’t it.
Remember, all these steps are really just one big step, and while it’s hard to try and explain it through a blog post, once you start practicing it will all make sense. It all becomes one big smooth step.
The other point to remember as well, is to never ever, draw your bow from the ground up, or from the sky down. Like I said, it’s just bad practice. If your doing that, then you’ve got to check your ego and go a little lighter. If you need to go to a lighter poundage, dont let that worry you.
A well placed shot from a 50lbs bow is much better then a person struggling to pull back a 70lbs bow.
So till next time’,
Happy Bow hunting,
Redneck Salvation.
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