Gun aficionados are just plain nuts about ballistics because without understanding ballistics, you can’t be a great shooter.   I feel strongly that the understanding of ballistics is much, much more important to archers even than for those who shoot firearms.   With a high powered rifle, you can sight in at 50 yards and still expect to be pretty darned close to where you aim at 100 yards shooting exactly the same way without having to change a thing.  There will be a small difference, but it’s within a couple inches even for rounds with rather slow velocities.

For an archer, the parabola of the arrow flight starts immediately.  At 150 feet per second, there is an EIGHT INCH drop in trajectory at just TEN YARDS.  At 200 fps, there is still a five inch drop between zero and ten yards.

At 200 feet per second, which is a very respectable velocity for an arrow from a recurve or longbow, the drop from zero yards to 20 yards is 20 inches.  If  you’re shooting  a self bow with relatively heavy wood shafts that net you 150 feet per second, your arrow will drop a full 34 inches (nearly three feet) from zero to twenty yards.  

Many times I have heard archers state that with their bow, there isn’t any difference out 20 yards or so.  That reflects an ignorance (in a non pejorative sense) of ballistics that makes it impossible for an archer to shoot well at unmarked yardage – or even to know why they’re missing at targets of unmarked distance.  Hence a lot of archers feel that they just don’t shoot well at 3D because  lack of concentration, other people watching, trying too hard or some other reason that has nothing to do with the problems involved in accurately plotting the track of their arrow over a given distance.  This causes countless missed opportunities each fall when the archers take to the field for bowhunting.  

Many instinctive archers feel that they don’t judge distance and, although they may not perceive that distance in yards, which would make this a semantic argument, the fact is that if the shooter does not judge distance, it’s simply impossible to get an arrow to it’s target reliably.  Without knowing somehow and in some sense, the distance to the target, only pure luck will put an arrow in the bullseye even if the right and left deviation is ZERO (i.e. a perfect shot except for height).

 Getting the arrows to fly in the direct line you want to shoot is simply a matter of good form.  The aiming for straight line shooting is pretty simple.  Point the arrow in the right direction and it will cut the line with a good release and reasonable tune.  The absolute bane of archery accuracy is getting the arrow to impact at the right point on the vertical line (i.e. getting the elevation right).  If judging distance and ballistics weren’t an issue for archers, there would be no high and low misses that aren’t related to form issues like dropping the arm.  Instead, we all know that the most frequent and spectacular misses we all have are high and low and at unmarked yardage, it’s very rare to actually get it dead right because we’re just not accurate enough at judging distance to plot the parabolic course of our arrow to zero deviation.

Knowing your arrow velocity and knowing the arrow’s ballistics is vitally important.  Knowing that will give you a solid fundamental understanding of your arrow’s path and flight characteristics.   You’ll know how short drawing changes the velocity and how many inches that changed velocity can affect your shot at any given range.  You will know how much your arrow will drop between 20 and 25 yards.  You’ll know just how close you have to get in distance estimation to keep an arrow in “the kill”.  You will know how much an increase in velocity will buy you in terms of forgiveness for those elevation errors and you will know how much a drop in velocity will cost you in the same vein.  

Understanding the ballistics of archery will help you understand how shaft diameter, fletching height, fletching type, arrow weight and velocity all work together at varying distances for you.  You will understand how much velocity you will lose over the course of a given distance due to those factors.  Knowing your ballistics is the key to mastering your equipment.

To some degree, you can understand some of this intuitively but intuition alone isn’t enough to give you a full understanding of archery ballistics.  And the better you understand the ballistics, the better you will shoot.  If you don’t believe me, ask any top ranked archer.  No one ever became an excellent shooter by thinking his arrow flies flat out to 25 yards.

The Ballistics Calculator provided free online by BOWJACKSON.COM is an excellent tool.  Spending some time evaluating different variables will not be time wasted.  I promise.  J

http://home.att.net/~sajackson/archery.html