"Hunting the Hard Way" Chapter 5 "How I Shoot a Bow"

It starts out with several pages about using a high anchor and tilting your head, using a heavy arrow and tilting the bow to reduce your gaps.

Then he explains split vision and picking a secondary point to place the tip of your arrow on and gapping.

Then he says: "If one does not use the method I have described, but aims purely instinctively, seeing nothing but the object to be hit, then he has no way of compensating on his second arrow, and so is likely to go on getting a series of misses, only because he has been forced to shoot all his arrows without having anything concrete to help him compensate for his mistakes."

Thus saith Howard.

One very important thing to remember when shooting split vision is that it's necessary to keep one's focus on the target and while the arrow is kept in one's peripheral vision, not the other way around, as a lot of gap shooters do it.

Been shooting split vision for a long time. Works for me.

Even The masters have a bad day.

Didn't mean to disparage gap shooters in my post above. It obviously works, too, just a little different process.

What you fail to realize it that he used that method when shooting tournament's. When he quit competing he shot purely instinctively. Even John Schulz said when Howard was teaching him to shoot he never mentioned the split-vision method.

Bob

That's some serious revisionist history....the whole book is about hunting. All the photos in that chapter are about split vision on a deer target. He learned how to shoot that way. Whether he taught it to John Schultz is another subject.

He goes on to say "I have used this Split Vision method of aiming in hunting for many years and have found it much faster and more accurate than either the sight method, the instinctive, or any other type of aiming. When one has mastered this method of aiming, it can be used as well on running game or flying birds as on still targets."

I SUCKED until I read that chapter in his book. I went out in the back yard and figured it out. Now I don't suck. But I have a pretty good idea of where my arrows are going :)

If Howard shot instinctively, it was later in his career, after mastering an aiming method. That seems like a natural progression.

They definitely ask AFTER their first shot :)

Runner the way that story came across to me was that Howard felt the reason he missed those birds was because he was shooting what he considered a sensitive bow.They are fine when you can shoot with perfect form. I go along with the book quote JustSomeDude added.I cant see any reason Hill would have abandoned the split vision method in favor of pure instinctive.At least not from what he wrote in HTHW.

I've never understood why thee is so much controversy over how he aimed when he spelled it out so clearly in his book.

Using the split vision and works for me. Some days better than others but that happens no matter how you shoot.

JRW...I wonder that SAME thing every time the subject comes up.

I myself shoot split vision, but I will say it is tough to beat someone who gaps and knows his gaps at all distances. I used to shoot a guy who gapped and if he missed the first shot(which was rare) he literally never missed his second. Shawn

On most days I have been confined to my backyard & I have had the opportunity to shoot at a stationary target 15-20 yds As much as I know that hunting archery and target archery are two entirely different zoo animals I have come to realize that a lot of my inconsistency with Archery is due to errors in form . I have grudgingly acknowledged that my accuracy has improved albeit with a standing target. G Fred I think once remarked that instinctive shooting is a "learned process.." As any wrestler ,karate ,or Judo enthusiast will tell you , repetition many times over breeds fluency . Becomes second nature . Call it what you want aiming , split vision whatever. I am homesick for the woods and stumps ..jeez!

"Thus saith Howard."

Been in a lot of these threads, and some of them have pulled out publications I had never head of. At the end of the day, dealing with different subjects and audiences, he described as appropriate pretty much every method, short of string walking. Nothing to be found by pulling on one or another quote.

Also, you don't draw the conclusion, but it is basically, or this is how it has been framed: Howard was a gap shooter. So where we are with that today is that if you shoot instinctive, you tend to miss a lot, and you should shoot gap, or some other aimed barebow to be more consistent. OK. I don't disagree in many circumstances, but that is not what he is talking about. He is talking about how to recover from misses. And that is not the modern situation.

Guys in his day could do stuff like... Brain shoot an elephant, just to see if it would fly, and they had to, or we wouldn't have known. He shot an elk at 160 yds, etc... If Howard did gap some shots, it wasn't so he could do a better job on vegas spots, or for tree stand chip shots. It was so he could recover from some of his hail Mary shots. So basically it is irrelevant to where we are as a sport today. The deal today is all about making stick shooting compound shooter friendly. There is a ton of dough in convincing compound shooters to shoot sticks. And Gap ILF can do that. It is the opposite of techniques required to Hunt the Hard Way.

Once secondary aiming is grooved in, an element of it remains, no matter how fluid or fast one shoots. That is what the straight back part of the draw is all about.

Bowlim,

In short...no.

And on page 28 paragraph 3 he states, "Instinctive shooting is a failure..."

Soooo, why did that go on for 200+ post when the master tells us it is?

Bowmania

I personally don't care how Howard did it. But after I read his advice in his book, my shooting improved because it gave me a foundation to work from. And now that I have a foundation, it will continue to improve.

" Bowlim,

In short...no"

Dude, copying the exact same piece into the thread, that you quoted, doesn't change my point at all, which was to say that he has stated many methods of aiming in different places.

Nowhere in the section you show, does he say this is his method of aiming. You do understand pronouns right?

Hill is coaching the new shooter, and giving him a point of reference, and a way to correct his shots. Hill shot aerial targets, moving targets, and sharks underwater while diving... He had any number of ways of getting the arrow on target. A point that he, and his students have repeatedly made.

ReallY? Did you actually look at it?

How about the title of the chapter "HOW I SHOOT A BOW"? I'd say that was pretty clear.

How about "I have used this Split Vision method of aiming in hunting for many years and have found it much faster and more accurate than either the sight method, the instinctive, or any other type of aiming. When one has mastered this method of aiming, it can be used as well on running game or flying birds as on still targets."?

Here's a few more pronouns

What difference does it make how Howard Hill shot? I'm not Howard.....it worked for him....Fred Bear snap shot...I'm not Fred..worked for him....Fred Asbell and Barry Wensel and others shoot instinctively, works for them. I would imagine they all would agree to pick a style that works for each individual and practice that style, like they did.....

If people spent as much time adopting and practicing a style of shooting that works for them as they do arguing and debating them, there would be a whole lot better shooters out there at shoots and in the woods...

How many of you have written a "how to" article that was published in a magazine or book. If you have, you know that you have to boil down the actual doing or method to a framework that can be attempted or copied.

And sometimes, that method is more formal or detailed than the way we actually do a thing.

If I hold at full draw (it's easy for me) think about arrow alignment and gap, I can shoot all my arrows in a paper plate at 20 yards--and they will be all over it.

If I draw while staring at a ping pong ball at 20 yards and release as soon as it feels like my bow hand is pointing at it, I'll hit or move the ping pong ball 4 out of six times--and the other two shots could go way off, because I let something break my concentration (it can be a stray snow flake, a buzzard gliding by or the cat emerging from behind my backstop.

Some of you can't close your eyes and toss an apple from one hand to the other without dropping it. I can do that behind my back with my eyes closed.

It's NOT INSTINCTIVE in the narrow sense of the word. It is learned, but it is without visual reference.

I would also say Howard was not the end all in shots either. Was he incredible? Yes no doubt but there have been plenty of other shooters as good or better, they just did not write books about it. Hell our very own Ron Laclair is one of the better shots around and a friend of mine both on targets and game is one of the best but you do not hear a lot about Curt Cabrera(instinctive) yet he is awesome, Keith Barbour(gap shooter) is another and the list goes on and on! Shawn

I am in NO WAY saying that Instinctive shooting can't be done. I AM SAYING that I suspect the best way to get there is by developing and confirming good form by having a reference (which is what Howard said).

This morning, I kept hitting left by 3-4" from 25 yards and it was driving me crazy. I figured out that I was pushing my my bow shoulder forward knocking me out of line. I was able to correct it and then tried to memorize that feeling so I do it automatically.

Without that frame of reference combined with THE EXPECTATION OF HITTING MY TARGET from 25 yards, I would have just thought it was 'good enough for hunting' (it was) and just tried to 'burn a hole' harder.

What I would like is for someone to tell me how Otzie aimed and how Ishi aimed, and their people. How did they all aim. seems like they knew how to shoot a bow. No one argues that.

Like this

I'm gonna make a 60#@20" Selfbow and see how long it takes for a new shooting class to be created :)

This thread made me reread Bob Wesley's small book "Indirect Aiming for Bowhunting". I could never pick a secondary spot quickly so I didn't spend enough time practicing his method to get good at it. He does explain an aiming system that could be similar or the same as Howard Hill's. He also has a method to find your secondary aiming spot.

As Bob W told me before his book was published, once that secondary aiming is grooved in, it becomes almost an automatic response. Remember Hill states very clearly that the secondary spot is imaginary. It can be done very quickly and in process. for example, you do not want to pick an exact thing to lay the arrow on and then bend and kneel while drawing into a lower position and expect that your placement will be the same. for me on level ground, from a distance of 20 to over 30 yards the visual placement of the arrow with my normal stance puts the crown of the back of the head behind the front foot of the deer. If I am canting more than normalI know what needs to look different because of the practice shot that I have taken in that position and make the adjustments as I am drawing and am on target by the time anchor is reached. As Bob stated, it becomes an automatic reflex with practice, but some acknowledgement of the sight picture whether it is the bow/arrow or knuckle or whatever that familiar picture is still the basis of an aimed shot. Hill's explanation may seem very literal, but it is pretty much what your on board computer can do if one can visualize and acknowledge all of the input that the senses provide. Many seem to ignore that Hill talked a lot about shot timing, he shot the way he did because he wanted to be accurate and fast. Quite a different philosophy from the target tempo crowd. With the Hill method I can dump 12 arrows into a 6" group in less than two minutes. With my target bows, I could dump five arrows into a silver dollar sized group, but you could watch mold grow in the process. Different strokes for different purposes.

Here's a good Bob Wesley link...I like this guy

https://weshood.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/indirect-instinctive-aiming/

Anyone ever notice Howard Hill does not have any children? I wonder if it is true he did make a deal with Satan, where by in exchange for great shooting skills,lack of an heir, Howard would do Satan's chore of making otherwise good Christian people break the first commandment.

Archercreg, that remark is a bit off. In several if his books Mr. Hill stated that he and his wife (only wife) always longed for and wanted children, but she was unable to bear chuldren.

Your remark iis out of line, even if meant to be funny, it is not

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