Archery Store

And don’t forget in the midst of all the hustle and bustle, the gifts, and the food, that the real purpose is to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Christ Jesus. HE is the reason for the season. God bless you all! Gary

I’ve been practicing archery for most of my life, starting when I was, oh, I’d say ’bout five years old, when my uncle let me pick up a bow and found out I could draw it and hit a target instinctively. To say I’ve had a talent for archery is stretching it, but, I’m mostly self-taught, but, fairly proficient in the sport/art, still, even though I stopped shooting for 14 years, seeing as archery became too cost-prohibitive as I got into stronger and stronger bows. However, three years ago, I was re-introduced to archery when a friend bought me a Martin Lynx compound bow(#38-#65 draw, with a 29"), for my 19th birthday. I was hesitant with shooting a compound bow, as, I’m a die-hard Recurve and Long fan, and, I spent a good amount of my teenage years as an amateur boyer, making pretty decent bows before I would just throw, or give, away out of boredom and a lack of arrows, but, starting this year, I made a resolution to get into archery, and, since I have a hunting bow, fulfill one of my dreams of bow-hunting.
I’ve been shooting for my entire life, no matter how many times I’ve picked up a bow, always with finger-release. I do the ‘Legolas two-finger’ hold, with one above, and one below, the arrow nock, and, I’ve never had problems until this bow. I just had to adapt to a 3-finger under approach, and re-learn how to anchor and suddenly I went from shooting ones and fives, to shooting tens and twenties on ends of about 4-5 arrows(I use my own targets; in a nutshell, I went from 8" groups down to about the size of a baseball) at my practice distance of 20 yards. However, the different feel of the string from the compound versus a more ‘traditional’ bow brought to my attention that I have old nerve damage in my fingers, so, I recently bought a release. I do mean recently…I am writing this post not even 3 hours after purchasing the release, because I have absolutely no idea what to do.

My Martin bow is set down to roughly #45, seeing as anything higher than 50 and I’m overbowed due to my 14 year lapse of activity in the sport, and I am physically unable to draw my bow at all. I am not even kidding, I’ve searched and found one person who couldn’t draw on another website to his chin, but, he had a length problem. The length of my bow’s draw was just adjusted 1.5" down to support a possible decision to get a release, which I was told for my arm would be more than sufficient, almost regardless of what mechanism I purchased. So, I went out and bought a TruFire Hurricane Extreme Buckle mechanical release. Put the D-loop on no problem, made it a double turn for some added security with it(didn’t trust the minimum to hold.), nocked an arrow, plugged in, and tugged. And tugged. And tugged, wincing in pain the entire time.

I lowered the draw weight down as far as I could go, about #38, gave it another go, with the exact same result. When I switched to finger release, with my glove, I was able to draw it back, no problem at all, even up to the full #60 for my Martin, albeit highly overbowed and wobbling like crazy. Tried a similar length bow at #25 with the release, and the same excruciating pain in my shoulder appeared, and, I was unable to draw the bow back even an inch. It was as if I was trying to draw the release back, with it attached to a nail embedded in concrete. The string. Barely. Moved. What in the heck is going on here? Why can I draw like a pro with my fingers, but, suddenly, my bowstring is attached to Mjolnir(Thor’s Hammer) when I put the release on? I know it isn’t my bow, because somebody who’s been doing this a while was able to draw my bow no problem, so, I know it has to be me. I really need to know what’s going on, here, and how to fix it, because this is the most discouraging thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.
For anybody offering help, please, I cannot stress enough that I am on an extremely tight budget. Suggesting I purchase a bunch of bells and whistles is useless information, I need advice that will help me deal with this problem for real, using what I’ve got. I’ve spent 200 bucks on this bow, so far, just to get to this point and start failing. This isn’t an equipment problem, it’s a user malfunction, so, how do we fix the user?