5 ways to overcome target panic and ensure a successful bowhunt

Do you suffer from target panic? It’s the term archers use for subconsciously anticipating the explosive action of releasing an arrow. This anxious response can lead to costly errors on a hunt, such as punching the trigger too soon or moving the pin off the intended point of impact ever-so-slightly before the release. Here’s how to avoid it.

#1  STAY CALM

Your mental state plays a significant role in determining how well you shoot on any given day, and it can play an even bigger role when you’re hunting. Knowing that, I’ve developed my own methods over the last four decades to stay calm when I’m shooting at the range or, more importantly, delivering a broadhead-tipped shaft for a kill shot. Big or small, shot anxiety is real, and staying calm is the first step to overcoming it.

#2  DEVELOP MUSCLE MEMORY

Repetitive shooting establishes muscle memory, allowing you to hold steady on target, which in turn helps offset target panic. The idea is to ensure your shot cycle feels natural, rather than conscious and mechanical. When you haven’t shot for a while and your muscles strain, on the other hand, drawing your bow can feel a bit uncomfortable. You may even shake and feel the urgent need to release the arrow too early, or the sight pins will bounce as you struggle to hold on target.

#3  STAY FOCUSED

When you’re calm and you’ve trained your muscles to support drawing and holding on target, the next—and many suggest most critical—aspect of overcoming target panic is focus and concentration. Without concentration, it’s next to impossible to deliver arrows with consistency.

To start, you need to recognize that your pin will float over and around your desired point of impact. If you don’t acknowledge this movement, it can introduce mental chaos and ultimately some degree of panic. At this point, it’s all about freezing the moment in time to lock your sight pin on target and hold it in place, then releasing only when there’s as little movement as possible.

Ask 10 different archers how they concentrate to overcome target panic, and you may hear 10 different answers. Some suggest drilling a visual hole in your target exactly where you want the arrow to hit, then allow your sight pin to migrate to that spot. Others suggest drawing from a low to high position, as opposed to the opposite. While neither may be technically perfect, some archers do employ those strategies.

One of the most common mistakes involves locking in high and allowing the pin to drift through the target, then attempting to time the release, or doing the same thing from low to high. Those errors are both forms of target panic and should be avoided.

#4  FIX BAD HABITS

We can all develop bad habits over time that result in target panic and inaccuracy. If that happens, it can be helpful to go back to the basics and fully acknowledge, then implement, all the critical steps needed to execute technically consistent shots. A simple, but practical exercise to help do this involves shooting at a larger circle or square target, such as a piece of white tape the size of a baseball. Regain confidence grouping as tight as possible inside the target, then gradually shrink the target until it’s the size of dime.

#5  KNOW WHAT WORKS

Form, and understanding the mechanics of your own shot cycle, are both critical. As with all precision-shooting sports, the key lies not necessarily in implementing technically perfect steps, but in developing your own ability to repeat what works best for you. Keep in mind all the factors that play a key role in downrange accuracy: your draw, where you anchor, how you aim and focus on the target, and how you use back tension to initiate the controlled release process and follow-through (without peaking or dropping your bow arm). You also want to be able to quickly acquire your target and hold, knowing fatigue will eventually affect accuracy. In the end, learning to beat target panic is about retraining your body and your brain to concentrate and execute each shot with pinpoint accuracy.