Becoming more personal with your Compound bow.

By NFAA Pro Bryan Helland

            Have you ever noticed how so many people have their grip on their bow doctored up?  I guess that would be so it feels good to them, right?  Well of course.  A bow has to feel good in your hand and since not all hands are the same, why should we expect all grips from one bow to work for everyone.  Well they don’t of course, and that is why we need to do certain things to our grips in order for them to fit us better.

            Now, bows are sold in all kinds of grip configurations. High wrist, low wrist, medium wrist, and even angled to the side grips.  So which one is right for you?  Well that will depend on how you like to hold a bow.  Now for most compound people a low wrist grip is preferred.  I think it’s the most easily achievable placement for most people that can be repeated over and over without much conscience thought.  A high wrist angle will require the proper angle on the riser or the grip in order for it to work with your hand placement over and over.  I think if you try to use a high wrist on a bow made for a low placement, you will probably struggle and find the bow to be very full of torque. There are a few bow models that offer a high wrist, and if you are a low wrist person, this will never feel quite right to you.  Both high and low wrist will work, you just need to figure our which one you are so that you can repeat it easily and without thought.

            So now that you have selected a bow, and are trying to get the hand wrist placement figured out on your grip. There is a way to customize your grip to you, without having to build some ad on out of Bondo. It’s in the limbs of the bow.  That’s right, the limbs, not the grip or you changing how you place your hand on the bow, it’s in the limbs.  You can adjust your limbs to make the grip of the bow feel a certain way.  This will help for the grip of the bow to lay in your hand with even pressure.  If you put your hand in the bow and you feel there is too much pressure on the throat of your hand, and not enough on the bottom of your palm.  You can simply take some turns off the top limb.  Or you can add some turns on the bottom limb in order for the bottom of the grip to come up into your hand, just that little bit more.  Now I have never found that moving the limb bolts more than a half a turn has ever really added to much to this theory. (but you will have to experiment on your own)  It seems that somewhere in the first half a turn you should find a spot that will help you get the desired feel you are looking for. Now you might want to pay attention to what this does to your nock point on the string of your bow.  It will move down in the fore mentioned scenario. Usually it does not move down enough in order to make a huge difference though.  Now you could obviously do the reverse to.  If there is not enough pressure in the grip, in the throat of the bow, simply put a half turn on the top, or take a half turn off the bottom. Once again, paying attention to where your nock point is.

            I have found this method of fine-tuning to be very important when it comes to achieving the same feeling, of my hand on the grip of the bow.  You can’t expect a bow to shoot the same if it doesn’t have the same feeling in your hand on every shot.  Most of the time the grip of the bow we have is close enough to what we like, but sometimes that little bit extra we can gain from the limbs is enough to keep a high score from becoming just another OK round.  Just remember, you are an individual and unique to yourself, your bow is not.