I've been shooting a bow off and on since I was 12. Through all those decades, it's been the same bow. Like everything else around me that I treasure, I like vintage, and I refuse to upgrade.
There's something primal about archery. We seem to carry an ancient remembrance, some residual genetic memory of the bow. Place a bow and an arrow into most anyone's hands, and they will instinctively hold, draw, and release the arrow, more or less correctly.
While I'm no Robin Hood, I can hold my own. I know a Dude who constantly got requests from bow hunters to go deer hunting on his wooded acreage. He told me he always tested them by having them shoot 3 arrows at a paper plate from 30 yards. "If they can't put an arrow in that target", he explained, "they've got no business shooting a bow on my property." To my knowledge, he's never given anyone clearance to shoot on his land. One day I brought my bow over and asked him where this infamous target was. He pointed it out, and I stepped off 30 yards. With an arrow nocked, I raised the bow, drew back the bowstring, and took aim.
The archer who sold me my bow also taught me how to shoot. As I said, the mechanics are fairly straightforward, almost instinctive, and you can pick them up in minutes. But you can spend a lifetime mastering the multitude of details. It had been a few years since I'd drawn my bow, and decades since I'd gone shooting with the man, but his instruction was still crystal clear.
I became conscious of my left hand's grip on the bow, and made micro-adjustments to my wrist, searching for that sensation of muscle memory that told me I was locked in properly. The three middle fingers of my right hand held the bowstring taut with one finger above and two fingers below the nocked arrow. Through my sights, I saw my targeting pin and beyond it, the target itself. Aiming slightly above my mark, I slowly brought the pin down to an imaginary bulls-eye. At the same time, my breathing slowed. As the targeting pin found the center of the plate, I was at the end of a long, controlled exhale.
That's the golden moment. Everything felt right. Zen archery practioners would say, "You don't take the shot. The arrow takes the shot." When I first heard this as a youngster, I dismissed it as so much eccentric Eastern hokum. Nearly four decades later, I've had to reconsider. When you're in that "golden moment", your awareness is of yourself, the bow, and the target. Everything else fades into the background as a sort of tunnel vision kicks in. When you're at full draw and on target, you're in a perfect state of tension. To make the shot, there's no flipping a lever or pulling a trigger. You simply have to - relax.
Just as the Zen guys said, and seemingly of its own accord, my arrow flew from the bow, and with a hissing fwip, closed the distance instantly, striking with a resoundingly satisfying thunk. Dead center. My next two shots landed in close proximity to the first. I took a long, slow breath and surveyed the results. Looking over at Dude, I asked, "Well, do I pass the test?"
"Umm. Yeah. Good shooting."
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