Ensuring the best chance of hitting your target. there are two things an archer must constantly be on guard against.
1/ Keeping at full draw until release
2/ Releasing consistently in the correct way.
Lets look at these in a little detail. First the Draw. "Creeping," is the term used to describe any forward movement of the arrow prior to your releasing it. You must guard constantly against creeping. The inclination to let the drawing hand move forward to relieve the strain. This is caused many times by an Archer wanting to use a more powerful bow than they can currently draw easily.
Creeping develops a loss of initial speed of varying amounts from shot to shot as less power is used than what is available from the bow you are using. The only way to consistently know how to allow for arrow fall over different distances is to consistently pull the bow to full stretch each an every time.
If you don't, your arrows will fall low on the target.
Fatigue will often cause you to ease up on the tension even if you initially pull the bow to full stretch. The energy needed to keep the tension correct is more than most beginners realise. Therefore you hopefully can see the need to always only use a bow of pulling power that you can easily draw and hold.
If you don't keep the bow at full draw, the arrow will creep forward just prior, or during the release. It is imperative that each arrow be released, in the same way, and from exactly the same draw position, in order to hit your target consistently.
Lets now look at the release. Most beginners find this difficult to master. If released incorrectly, it is almost impossible to hit your target. However, by learning the correct procedure at the start, no bad habits will creep into your sport.
The arrow is loosed by relaxing the tension in the first joints of the drawing fingers. This allows the bow string to slip smoothly from the fingers.
As you can imagine, if you let the bow string go at an angle, the arrow can not possible go where you have pointed it. What happens to the beginner is that they hurt their fingers, often burning them, as they let go. To stop this happening again they pull their fingers out of the way sideways, thereby sending the arrow off in the wrong direction.
This is what you should do. When the tension is released the drawing hand should move directly to the rear, along the projection of the line of flight of the arrow. By reason of physical limitations, this movement cannot amount to more than a couple of inches. If you want, you can purchase a release device, that takes away any chance of hurting your fingers and ensures a clean release every time.
Staff writer at http://archerynews.info. Archery news is a site strictly for Archers, with informative articles updated regularly