# Uphill/ Downhill Shooting



## nuts&bolts (Mar 25, 2005)

TimberGhost74 said:


> Again, I am gonna play the "new guy" card here. Wife and I started shooting in November of 16, and pretty much just sot spots all winter. Now that 3d season is here, we need to learn a few more things. Courses are pretty flat where we are, but we plan to shoot the Total Archery Challenge at Boyne Mtn this year, and we are also going to spend a weekend in Huntington, WV. Are there any good articles, or videos on uphill and downhill shooting? I have found a few, but looking for a few more before I start to put anything in to practice. Too many different opinions, lol. Thanks!


http://www.kingsmountainarchers.org/tips/angle-shots.html

Cutting yardage. Uphill shot, you must cut the yardage. Downhill shot AND Uphill shot, you must cut the yardage. WHY? If line of sight (imagine stretching a piece of string TIGHT from your sight to the 3d critter)...if LINE of sight distance is 20 yards...you MUST sight in for the horizontal distance between your feet and the spot you want to hit on the 3d critter. In the first diagram, the UPHILL shot is LINE of sight, 20 yards. BUT, the critter is 17.3 yards above you. The HORIZONTAL distance is only 10 yards. If you use your 20 yd pin, you will miss HIGH. The shot is a 10 yard shot, cuz you ALWAYS shoot the horizontal distance between you and the 3d critter.


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## TimberGhost74 (Nov 22, 2016)

Perfect, thank you.


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## pottergreg (Mar 20, 2015)

Another thing to be aware of is shooting up close. Start at 2 yards, find where your bow hits right on, then go to 3 yards, then 4 yards. write down the info. you are going to be amazed at the results! If a deer is under you at 3 yards horizontally from your tree, which pin do you shoot? I am guessing you will come in around the 50 yard mark. Why? your sight is probably 5" higher than your arrow and the arrow starts headed uphill (trajectory) it will cross the line of sight twice (once going up and once going down) so you would use the 50 yard pin on 5 yards and 50 yards, but every set up is a little different because of draw length, anchor point, arrow speed. etc. You must test to figure it out. Twice last year at 3 D shoots they placed targets in close and you should have heard all the whining! Be prepared! Have fun!


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## TimberGhost74 (Nov 22, 2016)

Just no way for the wife and I to practice this stuff. We do not hunt, so we do not own any treestands, nor do we really have any suitable trees on our property. The two local ranges we are members of do not have any elevated shots. I wonder if I could buy material for the new deck, and "accidentally" build it out back, elevated  I just wanna put the math to this, so when we do get a chance to practice, we are ready and make full use of it. Some of the clubs we shot at this winter have some nice ranges, so I am hoping when we hit their 3d ranges, we can shoot a little from the platforms. Hell, one place had a complete structure with platforms every five feet, up to 25 feet. It was impressive. 

I can shoot 150 yards here, but it is flatter than a pancake for as far as you can see.... LOL ....Just remembered, we are going to shoot a field target league this summer at a club I have not been to before. Who knows, maybe they will have something. 

Thanks for the input!


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## Supermag1 (Jun 11, 2009)

TimberGhost74 said:


> Just no way for the wife and I to practice this stuff. We do not hunt, so we do not own any treestands, nor do we really have any suitable trees on our property. The two local ranges we are members of do not have any elevated shots. I wonder if I could buy material for the new deck, and "accidentally" build it out back, elevated  I just wanna put the math to this, so when we do get a chance to practice, we are ready and make full use of it. Some of the clubs we shot at this winter have some nice ranges, so I am hoping when we hit their 3d ranges, we can shoot a little from the platforms. Hell, one place had a complete structure with platforms every five feet, up to 25 feet. It was impressive.
> 
> I can shoot 150 yards here, but it is flatter than a pancake for as far as you can see.... LOL ....Just remembered, we are going to shoot a field target league this summer at a club I have not been to before. Who knows, maybe they will have something.
> 
> Thanks for the input!


Get on your roof or shoot from a second story window


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## pottergreg (Mar 20, 2015)

You might want to invest in a good range finder with angle compensation. I use a Nikon 7i (700 yards + incline) which is Nikon's designation for the angle compensation. I like it because it is the cheapest fully waterproof range finder I could find. I would suggest that you take it with you often, walks in the woods, judge mailboxes and trash cans, anything. Take it to the 3D shoot with you and keep a log of the yardage you guessed and shot vs the actual distance and find your weakness so that you know what to practice, and weather it was a bad shot or misjudged yardage. Most of all, you and your wife have fun!


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## TimberGhost74 (Nov 22, 2016)

pottergreg said:


> You might want to invest in a good range finder with angle compensation. I use a Nikon 7i (700 yards + incline) which is Nikon's designation for the angle compensation. I like it because it is the cheapest fully waterproof range finder I could find. I would suggest that you take it with you often, walks in the woods, judge mailboxes and trash cans, anything. Take it to the 3D shoot with you and keep a log of the yardage you guessed and shot vs the actual distance and find your weakness so that you know what to practice, and weather it was a bad shot or misjudged yardage. Most of all, you and your wife have fun!


Oh ya, having a riot so far. We won a rangefinder, but it does not have the angle compensation built in. What got me thinking about this, was a couple we were shooting with last week, had one with angle compensation. Flat targets, we agreed on the distance. But the treestand shots, they were always a yard or two less. Even more on the shorter shots, but nothing more than 3 yards all day. (not any of the shots were over 25 yards or so, and none over maybe 8 to 10 feet is all) Yes, we are practicing. We always guess yardage, then rangefind it. We have till mid-June before the Total Archery Challenge, and plan to shoot at least one course every weekend all summer. We will get creative, and figure something out. Looking forward to the challenge. Thanks again.


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## jdicenhour (Feb 23, 2012)

Make sure your sight has a third axis adjustment it's a must when shooting up an down hills 

Sent from my Moto G Play using Tapatalk


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## TimberGhost74 (Nov 22, 2016)

pottergreg said:


> Another thing to be aware of is shooting up close. Start at 2 yards, find where your bow hits right on, then go to 3 yards, then 4 yards. write down the info. you are going to be amazed at the results! If a deer is under you at 3 yards horizontally from your tree, which pin do you shoot? I am guessing you will come in around the 50 yard mark. Why? your sight is probably 5" higher than your arrow and the arrow starts headed uphill (trajectory) it will cross the line of sight twice (once going up and once going down) so you would use the 50 yard pin on 5 yards and 50 yards, but every set up is a little different because of draw length, anchor point, arrow speed. etc. You must test to figure it out. Twice last year at 3 D shoots they placed targets in close and you should have heard all the whining! Be prepared! Have fun!


Actually, we had to learn this as we joined an NFAA field target league. The 20 ft shots, we were hitting low, so I am shooting my 20 yard mark. As the where my 35 feet, I am using a 10 yard mark. My wife on the other hand, she is shooting her 20 yard pin, even a little high at 20 feet.


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## TimberGhost74 (Nov 22, 2016)

OK, we shot the Total Archery Challenge at Boyne Mountain. We had a blast. Shot 4 of the 5 courses. Sorry, but we skipped the kids course! (it did look like fun, they had all the neat targets :sad: ) After 87 targets, and over 14 miles of hiking, we each lost one arrow. Mine was because I bumped the trigger, and went about 3 feet over the back of a target that was on top of a hill. Might still be flying..... Her, she just shot low, and I saw the arrow skip in to tall grass. I think we could have found it, but I did not want to hold the group up behind us, plus if we were behind the target looking, I am not sure they could have seen us. 

With that said. Does arrow speed make a difference in this equation? She is only shooting about 200 fps, and her sights max her out at 45 yards. That is as low as we can move the scope housing before it interferes with her arrow. (new bow coming soon!) But, if we both shoot the same 40 yard target, below our feet, it seems that she has to take off more yardage than I do to hit the same spot. If I was shooting 40 yards, and took away 2 yards to compensate for a decent angel, my wife would do the same, and still hit high. If I shoot 25 yards below my feet, dead on, my wife hits high. She would always take what I told her I did, then still aim low. She got to be pretty decent at it, but it just seemed she always had to aim lower than I did. 





nuts&bolts said:


> http://www.kingsmountainarchers.org/tips/angle-shots.html
> 
> Cutting yardage. Uphill shot, you must cut the yardage. Downhill shot AND Uphill shot, you must cut the yardage. WHY? If line of sight (imagine stretching a piece of string TIGHT from your sight to the 3d critter)...if LINE of sight distance is 20 yards...you MUST sight in for the horizontal distance between your feet and the spot you want to hit on the 3d critter. In the first diagram, the UPHILL shot is LINE of sight, 20 yards. BUT, the critter is 17.3 yards above you. The HORIZONTAL distance is only 10 yards. If you use your 20 yd pin, you will miss HIGH. The shot is a 10 yard shot, cuz you ALWAYS shoot the horizontal distance between you and the 3d critter.


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## rhath (Feb 11, 2016)

So one thing I don't see mentioned here is to bend at the waist (notice the archer in the drawing above). I see too many shooters trying to lower (or raise) their arms to compensate for the difference in height. Your draw must always be even across your shoulders and you bend at the waist to get the pins on the target. If you lower (or raise) your arm you will change the draw length and that will cause your shot to be off. That may explain what is happening with your wife


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## Squirrel619 (Sep 18, 2019)

Hello,

I have seen many questions like this and many different responses quoting physical laws. Unfortunately, Pythagorean theorem is not sufficient to capture what is happening here. This can be modelled with a two-dimensional system of linear first-order differential equations. I will attach a graph that I generated from such equations which shows relative launch angle as a function of distance and slope of the hill for a particular drag coefficient, arrow mass and velocity. It is NOT the case that yardage is ALWAYS cut. For uphill shots to a certain angle (depending on the parameters entered into the equations), there is a slight increase in "yardage" that you would set your sight for (compared to flat) before cutting is necessary. It IS the case that DOWNHILL shots will require strictly cutting yardage.

I hope you find this figure helpful.


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## Ebennett2014 (Feb 5, 2018)

Bend at waist. Practice elevated shots regularly


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## Gc265 (Aug 4, 2019)

As the graph demonstrates, there's a lot to this...nice work Squirrel!

Easiest way for me to digest this (way oversimplified!): angle increases (up or down), gravity decreases.

The tips here on HOW to execute the shot are really helpful.


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## 5BtoSB (Sep 26, 2019)

Great info here, very helpful, thanks.


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## Joe N (Sep 9, 2019)

Ebennett2014 said:


> Bend at waist. Practice elevated shots regularly


very good advice


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## jonhays70 (Nov 29, 2013)

Great information


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## Hunter83246 (Mar 26, 2018)

more of a question versus a reply on up hill shooting about how high to hold and uphill and down hill shooting ..


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