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.