Bryn : Can you click it? Yes you can!

Hi folks, I thought I'd put together some of my thoughts and experiences with clickers in the hope that some of you may find it useful.

A little background on me first though. I did a beginners course back in Feb/March 2012 at 2020 so have been shooting for about 10 months. After my beginners course I shot an 18lb club bow for a while before moving up to a 24lb for about a month then bought my own bow in June. I shot this for a few months and then added a clicker in September. I usually shoot three or four times a week.

Oh and here's the disclaimer. What follows is not rules or necessarily what coaches may teach about clickers, it's purely my own experiences and thoughts that have resulted from my own explorations and I continue to learn more with every session.

When to add a clicker

This is a matter of much debate and the argument rages on many archery forums. Some folks say to add a clicker straight away, while others say to let your draw and form stabilise first.

For me, as I mentioned above, I shot my bow for about 3 months before adding a clicker. Before I added a clicker I had gotten to a point where my draw and anchor were pretty stable and my arrows were grouping well horizontally. However, although I thought my execution was pretty repeatable I was having quite a few issues with vertical grouping due to differences in back tension on each shot. The logical solution was to add a clicker to regulate the draw length and the amount of power I was transferring to the arrow. W

I think if I'd have started with a clicker when I got my bow then it would probably have been more of a distraction than a help as there are so many other factors to work on at that stage.

The purpose of a clicker

Many a school teacher has stated, "That bell is not to tell you when you can leave it's to tell me when I can release you" or words to that effect. In my view the same goes for clickers and admittedly this can be seen as a matter of semantics but the key thing is about who's in charge here.

Before I added a clicker I spoke with a lot of club members and asked their view on clickers. I heard tales of people tending to release when not fully sighted on the target because their clicker had clicked. This set up a bit of a challenge to me to not be controlled by the clicker. So I gave myself a little mantra and an exercise to avoid this. I told myself that the clicker was to indicate when I had reached a certain repeatable draw length and not to tell me when to execute the shot.

And here's the exercise I went through to impress this on my subconscious:

1. Nock an arrow and come to full draw.

2. Ensure that the power was transferred to the back muscles.

3. Extend through the clicker and hold for a second, checking the arrow tip briefly to make sure there was no forward creep.

4. Don't release, come down, un-nock and relax.

5. Rinse and repeat.

Now whilst I obviously do release the moment my clicker clicks it's proactive rather than reactive when I'm behaving myself. Also if I click early in the shot cycle now more often than not I can hold the draw length and be sure I'm properly sighted before deciding to release.

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In the next post I'll be giving you a whistle stop tour of different clicker types and the benefits and woes of each from my own experience.

Until then - Good ends to all!

Posted in: Bryn