Been a while...Part 2

Practice for me started out at 10yds and lasted two and a half hours. I shot to closing time at the local BPS and hardly realized it. The reason I had for shooting indoors were that it was temperature controlled and I would not have to deal with heat fatigue and that it was easier to recover my arrows, a big key to expediting progress. Having to search the ground for lost arrows flat out sucks. It takes time away from practicing and the grass/ground/leaves are hard on your fletchings. Over time I was able to keep more and more of my shots on the five spot target. Imagine a piece of paper with five 6 inch bullseyes on it say 12"x14". Now imagine a foam block 4'x4'. Now imagine missing both of those from ten yards at times. Indoors is the way to go if it's available. If it is cost prohibitive I recommend a large field where the grass is kept cut for a close second. So I guess a whole month or so rolled by before I even tried the twenty yard targets. As I came to shoot at the BPS more often a second advantage came to be realized: someone was always watching. Sometimes it was just employees, other times it was customers looking through the windows, and the best of all was other people coming to shoot their bows.  This was the first great thing to happen to my shooting ability, the ability to compete against other shooters. At first it was a given that everybody under the sun was better than I was, but then I started to get better and better. There is nothing like the feeling of shooting with another person and testing yourself against them and sharing the excitement and letdowns of the results downrange.