Category: Bow Sight School

Learn about the different kinds of compound bow sights and how to use them.

How To Use Compound Bow Sights

How to sight in a compound bow for beginners

 

The archery marketplace today has many great archery sights available for compound bows. The sights vary greatly in the features that they offer, from catering to the competitive shooter to the die-hard hunter and everyone in between.

The sights also vary greatly in their price range as well. Once a shooter purchases a new sight, how to use compound bow sights and how to install them on the bow can often be foreign. Here, we’ll discuss how to get a new sight set up on the bow and how to adjust the sight to get it dialed in to a shooter’s preferred distances.

To start, when the new sight is purchased, it will be packaged with all components of the sight itself and any hardware needed to mount the site to the compound bow. After unpacking the new sight, the first step is to install the sight on the bow.

Modern compound bows have a spot on the riser to mount the sight to. The shooter will see the holes on the bow with the threads tapped into them where the sight gets mounted to. Included in the new sight package will be the screws that are required to mount the site. When mounting to the bow, it is important to tighten the screws as tight as possible to prevent any movement of the sight from the mount.

After the sight is mounted on the bow, most archery sights will require the new owner to adjust the housing of the sight. Most sights can be adjusted in distance from the eye, and it is up to the shooters preference on how to set this.

The general rule is that the closer the sight is to the shooters eye, the easier it will be to hold on target but will shoot less accurate. The further the sight head is from the shooters eye, the harder it will be to hold on target, but it will be more accurate.

Next, if the sight comes without the pins installed, the shooter can install them as directed. When lining them up for the first shot, the shooter can easily line up the head of the pin by looking down the arrow shaft while it is nocked and in the rest, adjust the head of the pin to be in line with the arrow and the string. This will provide a great starting point when sighting in.

When first sighting the new sight in, it is important to start close to the target to get the shortest distance pin dialed in. Around 10 yards is a good start. Once a couple of shots are fired, and if not true to aim, the rule is to follow your shot with the pins.

For example, if your shots are high compared to your aiming point, raising the site pin will lower the bow when shooting and bring the shot down. The same follow your shot with the pin rule is true for left and right adjustments as well.

The final step in learning how to use compound bow sights after getting the shortest distance pin set up is adding more pins for different yardages beyond the close-up pin.

When looking to add distance, the shooter needs to determine what distances they want to include with their available pins and work their way out to further distances with each pin. The close-up shot pin will be the top pin in the sight. Further distances will be the pins moving down from there.

With a little trial and error, you can catch on pretty quickly by observing your shot placement for the distance you want to set your pins to and making micro adjustments as needed.

For more information, you can check out another helpful post here.
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Pendulum Bow Sights

Pendulum site by TruGlo

 Archery is one of the oldest forms of trajectory ranged weapons, next to slings and spears. Unlike its companions, archery has continued to evolve over the years and has become a mix of technology, science and precision gear that bears little resemblance to its ancestors.
A major area of growth in archery is in the sights that we use to place our arrows on target. This article focuses on a particular sight designed to be used from a tree stand, The Pendulum bow sight. The Pendulum bow sight is designed to compensate for shooting in environments that involve major changes in elevation.
Examples of this would be hunting from a tree stand or shooting up from the bottom of a ravine. The puzzle of elevated shots lies in the science of gravity and angles. A shot with flat trajectory flies parallel to the earth, and thus, receives a consistent pull from gravitational forces along its entire trajectory.
An elevated shot however, receives much less influence from gravity when shooting down, and much higher influence from gravity when shooting up. Changes in elevation also affect the actual distance the arrow flies to hit a target, since we are now dealing with horizontal distance, as well as vertical distance.
Hitting a target with altered gravitation pull and distance has required much skill and guess work in the past. Pendulum bow sights compensate for both by the nature of their design and allow elevated shots to be placed, on target, with ease.
Pendulum Bow sights accomplish their niche application by self-adjusting a single, swiveling pendulum, with the assistance of gravity itself. Thus, if you raise the bow on the vertical plane, the sight automatically adjusts, increasing the range of the contact point, compensating for the increase in gravity. When the bow is lowered on the vertical plane, the sight adjusts to decrease the distance to avoid overshot, due to lower gravitational interference.
Most archers agree, that within 35 yards, a pendulum bow sight will bulls-eye your target, with no guess work. Due to advancements in archery, most bows shoot relatively flat at 30-40 yards. This has eliminated one of the puzzles that pendulum bow sights were created to solve.
Most compound bow sights are, as a result, capable of making accurate shots from elevated positions. The pendulum sight, however, still tackles the elusive elevated distance challenge that others sights neglect. While pendulum sights are less popular than they were back in the 90’s, they are still sought out by archers who intend on making accurate, elevated shots.
Pendulum sights, when used on level terrain, are inferior to other compound bow sights that are created for this environment. Pendulum sights can offer a flat trajectory sight by disabling the swiveling mechanism, if you ever find yourself with the need to do so. Most archers prefer to mount the type of sight that aligns with the terrain on which they hunt.
According to polls on public forums, the most popular pendulum compound bow sights are manufactured by Keller and TruGlo. Some archers preferring Keller’s sights for their robust build, choice materials and sleek finish. Others, however, prefer TruGlo for the quality of the sights themselves and the benefits that the fiber optics offer in low light situations.
The pendulum sight is a valuable asset for archers who are dealing with major changes in elevation. While this sight may not be the best option in every scenario, it offers superior accuracy in a niche market and should be considered, when the environment matches the need.
For more information on shooting a bow from a tree stand, you can check this article out here.