I'm no expert on field shooting but I do enjoy shooting long range quite a bit. Several years ago all my setups had point on distances somewhere in the 50-60 yard range and I felt confident in shooting anything out to 75-80 yards. Over the last few years I've setup my bows and adjusted my form to specialize in the short range 3D stuff. On the whole it's worked well but I feel like I've lost some of the skill and abilities for the long shooting. So this thread is great because I'm setting up a bow right now for field and I'm revisiting my old methods for aiming.
For longer shooting I always liked a fairly long point on. I hate aiming over stuff much, I'm not very good at it. If I can have point on somewhere in the 50-60 yard range I find I can shoot out to about 70 yards or so by using the wire on the rest on the target face. I'm not aiming off some imaginary point, I'm still using a hard reference so my pea brain can make that work. To accommodate the shorter stuff I always used to set a pre-draw gap. By doing this I was able to have two point on distances. A pre-draw point on and full draw point on. For example, with my old setup I had a 57 yard PO at full draw. If I set the tip on the target before drawing I had a shorter set of holds. My pre-draw PO was 40. So, I'd set my bow arm with the tip referenced on the face like a normal gap and draw straight back. At that point I only used the shaft for windage and trusted the elevation would remain constant. The beauty of the system for me was having easy to compartmentalize holds at most distances. I'd have to look at my old notes but I my pre-draw PO holds were all within 10" from 0-40 yards and past that I'd use a full draw holds to reference the target. It sounds more complicated than it really is but worked nicely for me. Not the best method for hunting or moving targets but for static situations I found it to be a solid method.
The other method I can see being a very valid aiming system is pick a point. I think most people see it as a means of aiming at longer stuff but it works great at close stuff too. If you have a long PO and huge close range gaps you can find references to pick points on the target for close targets. For example, if I shot with my current setup and put the point on the bull, like Rusty is doing above, at 20 yards my arrows will hit close to 2 ft over the bull. But, if I line up the plunger with the bull and look at the shelf than draw and move my arrow to that spot below the bull I'll be on the money. That's one other method I'm spending more time looking into. With practice a guy could get a reference for pretty much any distance. I believe Alan E. uses a similar method for field archery and we all know what kind of scores he's shot.
Chris