Many feel that going to all the trouble of trying to get the bow forgiving for a varying draw length is too much bother. For many bow hunters that may be true. By practicing to shoot off the wall and being careful to not pull over the wall, the chances are good that when making a shot on the animal that it will still end up in the freezer. The difference between where the arrow will impact with a varied draw length is only a couple inches high at twenty yards. This is well within the kill zone. 

However, when a person is shooting on a competitive level, one arrow that goes a little bit high can mean the difference between winning and losing. Although most shots are flawless, there are always a few that are less than perfect. The worst, are the ones that seem to be perfect but didn’t hit where the sight said they were suppose to hit. 

We found that the number of unexplained “high and low” arrows went down when we had adjusted the bow to be forgiving of a varying draw length. I will be honest and admit I do not creep (not that anybody that watches me shoot for any length of time will agree to that). I pull against the wall and hold it there. I just do not creep. I am a true believer in the wall. So of course I never creep, I’m consistent every time. Yeah right! 

I suspect that there must be more to this creep tuning than a varying draw because I saw improvements in my accuracy, (and, of course, I don’t have a varying draw length problem). But, I have noticed that those that have a varying draw length definitely have shown a substantial improvement in their scores. So, just in case, I always shoot a bow that is adjusted so that the arrow will hit where the sight says it’s going to hit even if I do creep away from the wall (why lose a point). 

Of course, we don’t shoot any bows that aren’t pretty darn forgiving. We have learned to make just about any bow more forgiving for shooter errors. But, there are limits. 

Not to long ago, we ran across a bow that was awesome. It wasn’t all that fast (about 270), but according to our video camera (we use a high speed video camera for research and development) it showed the straightest nock travel that we have ever encountered. The up and down nock travel was truly straight as an arrow. The left and right nock travel was darn near perfect. The best we have ever seen. 

This bow had already shot a perfect score of 300 in competition at the Vegas Money Shoot in Las Vegas. The big fat indoor arrows looked good on the camera. But, the true test was to see how straight the skinny fast arrows would travel. When the lighter arrows were tuned, we took some video pictures and validated that we truly had the straightest nock travel we had ever seen. However… 

When we tried to creep tune the skinny arrows, they hit about ¾ of an inch apart. The short drawn arrow was about ¾ of an inch higher than the long drawn arrow, at 20 yards. (When we varied the draw with the fat arrows, we used the same hole at 20 yards). So we adjusted the top limb bolt a 1/3 of a turn. The short and long results were the same. So we gave the top limb 2 full turns different than the bottom limb. (We wanted to make a change happen.) But there was no change. The short drawn arrow still hit higher than the long drawn arrow. So we adjusted the bottom limb. We tried virtually every possibility to get different results. Nothing seemed to affect it.

So, we put the tiller back to even and extended the sight an additional 2 inches. (The sight was already extended 6 inches.) After all, we do know that sight location does affect arrow impact when creep tuning. Now, when we vary the draw, the difference between the impact of the arrows is only half a shaft. Maybe that’s why some of the top shooters have their sights extended so far. They couldn’t creep tune their bows so they compensated with sight extension. 

PS. The additional 2” extension is giving the shooter a very shaky sight picture. He is considering moving the sight back that 2” and trade the forgiveness of a varying draw length for a steadier sight picture. Besides, he seldom creeps anyway (I have watched him shoot).