Beginner Traditional Archery Lesson - Teaching My Wife to Shoot a Bow

All right, guys. We're going to try something different this morning. I'm going to try to teach my wife how to shoot a traditional bow. Now, this would be like me trying to learn how to bake a cake from scratch or ballet dance. She's never shot one of these things before, and this may be a total disaster. I don't know. She might like it. If she does, we'll get her her own setup and get her a bow and arrows at her spine. This little bow here, I made this about 30 years ago. It's a 56-inch bow. It's 41 pounds at 28 inches. It's the smallest bow I've got. It's a little stout for her, I think, but it's all we've got. We're going to give this a try. Let me just walk her through this. I've got a video on shooting the Gap Stinctive. I've taught a lot of people how to shoot who were interested in learning how to shoot. Men, this will be the first woman I have ever taught how to shoot. We'll see how this goes. I'm confident she can do it. It's just a matter of does she want to bad enough. Follow along. If this takes, we'll do a series on this as she progresses and gets a new bow. We'll move back from further distances. Remember, she's never shot a bow before, any kind of bow, not even a compound. This is a first for everything. I just want to show you guys that pretty much anybody can learn to shoot a traditional bow if they've got any interest. The most important thing about this is making this fun. I'm not going to try to teach her right now to pull with her back muscles and work on a good follow through smooth release and 10 jillion other things. All I want to do right now is get her, see if she can even pull this thing back and hit the bale of hay five yards. All that stuff is going to come later. If it's not fun and she's not enjoying this, it's not really going to matter. She's not going to do it. If she likes it, we'll get into all that stuff later. Let's just start out and see how this goes. Now stick this hand straight out. We don't want to grip this like a hammer. Let's take our fingertips and put our fingertips right down the front of that. You can tuck these two by putting our first two here. This odd feather is called a cock feather. That goes out away from the bow. We're going to put that right on the knot. Now we're going to knock three fingers under the air. I did tell her, basically instruct her a while ago how to hold this. We're going to do three fingers under. We're going to knock. We're going to anchor right under her eye. Now look right on this eye socket, there's a hole right here. You're going to take this top finger. We're going to rest it on the top. We're going to rest this middle finger right there on the edge. So we're going to just try to get the same anchor every time. When you shoot, just pull that elbow straight back. I'm just going to drag straight back. Okay. Now let's cant the bow just a little like that. Cant means we're going to angle the bow over. Just bring this straight back to your eye. Pull straight back through. All right, good. Yeah, it's good you followed through. You've seen me doing that. What is follow through? You did it. So when you shoot, after you shoot, you just want to hold that position. All right. Straight arm. Just kind of look down that shaft for now. Just just kind of eyeball it right down the top of it. Yeah, close your left eye or squint it. Pull straight back. Good. Like when I shoot a gun, close my eye? Yeah, just close that left for right now. You can close that left eye. Straight back to your eye. Anchor and pull through. Good. That's good. Did I hit it? So canning, this is up and down. This is canning. I would can it just a little bit. Get that arrow right under your eye and just look right down on the top of it. Over the top. Look over the top of it. So for now, once you really learn how to shoot, we're not going to get into this. But what I'm trying to say is you don't want to air this way or this way. You want to get the arrow. You just look at it and call it gun barrel right down the top of that. That's a pretty good start. Well, all right. This is our first time to ever try this. And we're at five yards. And my goal for her today was just to hit the bale of hay. You know, sometimes people actually can get where they can hit this little spot every time at five yards. And if she likes it, I have no doubt if she sticks with it, we'll be there real quick. This bow is a little strong for her. Does it feel like it's, I noticed you can't come all the way back with it. Probably need a little weaker bow. Yeah, it feels a little strong. And then I think that, I don't know, like something, like I feel like I might have like some red spots. I feel like it's slapping me in the face. That's probably something I'm doing wrong. Just, it all feels real awkward right now because you've never done it, but just doing it, it's going to start feeling less awkward. It is more fun than I thought it would be. Yeah. The main thing with this, guys, is to have fun. I don't care how good you are. Nobody really cares. The whole point of this thing is to have fun. And if you're not having fun, it doesn't really matter. So it doesn't matter how many animals you kill, what kind of scores you shoot in competition. The whole point is to enjoy it and have fun. And we're at five yards and I'll talk to her and we might practice this another time or two. And if she's interested, we're going to stick with this and you guys are going to be amazed how good she gets. We'll see y'all next time. Bye.