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John's Journal... Entry 160, Day 4

THE DISTANCE TO SUCCESS

Using A Range Finder To Judge Distance

EDITOR'S NOTE: Many hunters prepare for hunting season by shooting 3D archery. Several critical elements will help you win 3-D archery tournaments, including your bow's ability to perform flawlessly, skill at holding the bow steady through the shot, control over your nerves and emotions in the face of high-pressure competition and the ability to judge your distance from the target. 3-D tournament archers often find judging distance the one chink in their armor. Misreading the distance even by 1/2 to 1 yard can determine whether you hit the 12 ring or the 8 ring. Most of the nation's best 3-D archers utilize more than one technique to judge distance to a target. Here are some of their secrets.

Shannon Caudle of Wellington, Alabama, has won the Indoor World Championship, the 1994 ASA World Classic and the Outdoor Buckmasters Championship in years past.

"I believe the best way to judge distance is by looking at the size of the animal target you're trying to shoot," Caudle explained. "The terrain, the light conditions and the foliage all can cause you to misjudge distance if you use any other system. But the size of the animal and how big you perceive that animal to be at different distances will always be the same. The only way to learn to judge distance consistently is to look at the different targets you have to shoot at a tournament and learn what they look like at various distances. The closer a target is to you, the larger it will appear. The further it is from you, the smaller it will appear.

"After I make my first estimation, I look at the ground between me and the target. I try and judge either 10, 20 or 30 yards in front of the target. Then once I've established a yardage in front of the target, I judge the ground in 5-yard increments to the target. I always start with the distance I'm confident I know in front of the target and then get into closer yardage estimates from that known distance. I have a range at my home with 20 McKenzie targets. I'll take my range finder out, judge those targets and check my guess with my range finder. I'll also walk through the woods and judge the distance I am from trees. Then I'll check that distance with my range finder. Using this system, I not only learn how big the target should appear at different distances on a range and/or level ground, I also learn distances in the woods at varying ranges under different light and terrain conditions by guessing the distance to the trees. Then I mesh what I've learned with my two methods of practicing into one system of judging yardage.

"At a Buckmasters tournament, you can misread the yardage by 5 yards on a target out to 50 yards and still hit in the pad on the target. With targets at 30 yards or less, you can misjudge the distance by 6 or 7 yards and still hit the pad. Now, don't misunderstand what I'm saying. You can't misjudge the target by 6 yards and hit the pad, but you can misjudge the yardage 3 1/2-yards further than it appears or 3 1/2-yards closer than it appears and still hit the target. In a Buckmasters tournament, before the targets come up, I look at each of the scenes and try to determine how far the stand we're shooting from is to the scene where the target will pop up. Then when the target does pop up, I can make my final calculations quickly. By the time you make it to the finals of the Buckmasters, all the competitors know the distances they are from each target. Often the winner is determined by the archer who can shoot best under crowd pressure."

TOMORROW: USE MULTIPLE SYSTEMS TO DETERMINE DISTANCE

 

 

Check back each day this week for more THE DISTANCE TO SUCCESS ...

Day 1 - Judging Distance
Day 2 - Study Target Size
Day 3 - Stepps' Methods For Judging Distance
Day 4 - Using A Range Finder To Judge Distance
Day 5 - Use Multiple Systems To Determine Distance


John's Journal