Return on Effort in Sport
I have found that after 25 years of fairly steady shooting
that there is an interesting threshold for accuracy that I
plan to respect from now on and thus decreases my worries
a lot.
Here it is…
With just a little practice, or practically speaking none, I can
shoot a paperplate with any arrow in any posture at 25 yds or closer.
If I shoot a half hour a day I can hit good at 30 yds.
An hour a day and I’m good at 40 yds. If I ever shoot
more than that as I did when a teen I’ll take a chance
at further. But I doubt I’ll do that or even want to.
Hey, guess what?! I think that what I’ll do is take it easy and
limit all my hunting to 25 yds or less. Anything further will be at
inanimate objects. Given the variables of hunting, it seems to me
that my natural accuracy range is 25 yds. After that it’s a steep curve
up. I have better things to do. Why bother? There, that’s settled!
I use barebow recurve.
Oh, and another thing. I have this 25 yds range of instant, easy,
confident, reliable, secure accuracy with a 50# bow. If I want to shoot 60#+
I have to take a lot of time, and train, and adapt my fingers. Why bother?
It’s like biking. It’s easy to ride 12mph all day. Takes very low
energy. Very low stress. It takes many times the effort, training,
risk, cost, food, sweat, stress to ride 17mph all day. So why bother?
Why not just plan your schedule around 12mph and GET GOING! : )
It’s all relative! But actually there are many things IN FAVOR of
the natural skill ranges of various activities. Going past such
high yield performance zones gets you often into the territory of
costs outweighing benefits even if one doesn’t notice the price
being paid.
So it’s not the speed, the distance, the yardage, the poundage
or even the practice that’s ever the problem. Those are just facts.
The problem is only ever in our expectations and our refusal to
accept the obvious.
