Hitting the mark

Attention to small details reaps rewards for archers

Archery deer season starts in 63 days, and it’s time to get ready.

When shooting targets or game, two of the world’s best archers say that tending to small details is the key to success.

As members of the Mathews pro staff, Jeff Hopkins and Jack Wallace have won multiple tournament championships, but they are also accomplished hunters. Their success comes from doing small things that maximize their opportunities.

Wallace, an Ohio native, said competitive archery appeals to him because you have to earn every point. Nobody has a physical advantage. He played high school football, but didn’t have the physical gifts to make a living at it. Archery was his portal into professional sports, but nothing he learned in football transferred to his new vocation.

“Everything in archery is learned,” Wallace said. “None of it is God-given. You don’t have to run the 40-yard dash in four seconds or dunk a basketball. Everything is learned, and that has driven me to learn more and to keep excelling.”

Wallace has been shooting competitively for 30 years. As a newcomer, Wallace said he was most impressed by the work, practice and preparation ethics of the veterans. To beat them, he knew he had to outwork them. That also means staying on the crest of the equipment wave. Wallace says it’s imperative to have the best gear.

“With more money and the possibility of big titles came more and more people willing to put in the effort to be competitive,” Wallace said. “Instead of a few guys that were awesome, there are 20 pros nowadays who are capable of taking any opentournament.”

Hopkins is the first professional archer to top $1 million in earnings. He agreed that equipment has improved dramatically, starting with its most basic element, the string.

“The Achilles heel was the string years ago,” Hopkins said. “The materials they use to make strings today are likegoing from a Yugo to a Cadillac.

“When I first started, in every tournament you’d hear somebody’s bow break,” he added. “You’d hear limbs or risers break. Aluminum risers were in their infancy stages. I haven’t heard anything break on the range this year. That used to happen a lot.”

Quality trumps quantity when it comes to practice, Hopkins said. He used to shoot 200 arrows a day. Now he shoots 50, but he gets the same benefit from fewer repetitions because he emphasizes details like visualizing the release, the flight arc and knowing the exact range of every target. His routine in tournaments is the same as it is in a deer stand.

“In archery, you get one shot,” Hopkins said. “There’s no room for error. My passion is hunting whitetailed deer. You might sit there all season - or seasons - waiting for a trophy deer to come by. When that moment finally arrives, you get one shot. It’s the same in 3D tournaments. Youhave to put everything into that one shot.”

That means perfecting your hand placement, your anchor point and yardage. Hopkins said you repeat the routine until it becomes instinctive. You’ve worked so hard in practice that the tournaments are actually easy.

“It’s the same in hunting,” Hopkins said. “You’ve put in hours cutting shooting lanes, getting up early and scouting. It’s the same principle that follows 3D tournament archery. You get one shot, and you give it 100 percent at all times.”

Official tournament targets never change, Wallace said, but a competitive shooter must account for the nuances of different venues.Different places influence depth perception with light, shadows and topography. You can’t win tournaments or hit live targets effectively by just guessing yardage.

“Trying to guess how far something is is the worst thing you can do,” Wallace said. “You need to learn the distance of your game.”

Wallace owns 70 3D animal targets. He uses them in every conceivable scenario so that when he’s shooting for money or meat, he’s never surprised.

“You really need to know those animals, to know where to shoot them and to recognize them at multiple distances,” Wallace said. “Take a 3D animal, set it at known distances. Study that animal. Stare at it. As you get better and better, you’ll get to the point where you’re trying to figure out yardage at half-yard increments.”

Although Wallace always uses a rangefinder while hunting, he said his practice ethic helps greatly in the deer woods. Sometimes an animal appears quickly from an unexpected direction. You might not have time to use a rangefinder.

Hopkins said he has a natural gift for judging yardage, but added, “As good as I am, there’s nothing like taking a rangefinder out of your pocket and checking the distance of trees and things around you. When a deer walks by, it’s not, ‘I think it’s 25 yards.’ You know it’s 25.”

Getting consistent results means always using the same equipment in your kit. That includes small and seemingly inconsequential components, like nocks. Changing one component can affect point of impact considerably.

“I don’t think a lot of hunters realize that minor changes can throw off point of impact in a huge way,” Wallace said. “Nocks can fit different. Tournament archers are fanatics about that stuff. I’ve seen hunters who have a quiver full of arrows that have different nocks. A lot of times a poor tune may be something as simple as anock that doesn’t fit right on a string. Sometimes people have arrows fletched with a helical offset, and they have arrows fletched straight, and they don’t understand why they don’t fly the same.”

Those are the small details that can separate a good outing from a great outing, Wallace added.

“When you start paying attention to stuff like that,” he said, “you’re probably going to figure out that you’re better than you realize.”

Sports, Pages 21 on 07/15/2012

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