Archery Corner and Peep Sights
By: Jason Forck

During this years bear hunting trip I listened to a man tell the story of his first Elk he killed with a bow and arrow.  It happened to be his first Elk ever and it had been about a week before the bear hunting trip.  He had successfully shot a 5x5 Bull at around 10 yards.  You could hear the excitement in his voice and his actions and we knew he must have been shaking terribly at the moment of truth. 

He even blatantly told us he was shaking and that he his reason for shooting the satellite bull was because he did not think he could hit the Big Bull just 30 yards away.  One comment in particular gave me the idea for this article.  He stated right before he shot, he looked through his peep and at his pins, and saw that all his pins were on the elk so he released because it had to be a good shot.  He admits to be lucky for even hitting the elk let alone in the vitals.

Unfortunately the story above is probably far more common than we would all want to admit.  Some not ending as well.  Is there a way to ensure the same sight picture you see in practice is the same one you see in the field.

Before I get to the meat of the article there are a few things to check.  The first thing to check is which is your dominant eye.  The recommended practice is to shoot with whatever hand you are dominant with.  If you do not want to my recommendation is to only shoot with one eye open.  The other is to make sure you are looking through your peep in your natural shooting position.  The easiest test to close your eyes while you draw an anchor your bow.  When you open your eyes you should be looking right through your peep at your sights.

Most archery book will most likely tell you there are two ways to use a peep but I believe there is a third.  The common ways to sight using a peep are to either center the pin in the peep hole (Fig 1) or center the sight housing in the peep and place the correct pin on the target (Fig 2).  Both methods work well and great accuracy can be achieved using both methods.  The method I use is to place the pin on the bottom of the peep sight hole (Fig 3).

The method I use has several large advantages compared to the other two methods.  First because I use the bottom of the circle to aim I can quickly tell if my pin is off to one side or high since the two objects I am aligning are in close proximity.  With either of the two methods above the objects beings aimed are farther away and may be harder to judge differences between shots.  Had the gentleman in the story above been using the method he only would have seen one pin instead of all the pins and been able to better focus on his sights.

Any size peep sight can be used with this method because whether the peep is very small or larger it is easy to put at the bottom of the peep. This eliminates any need for having to drill out a peep to get the ideal hole size to fit around the pin guard. 

Now some may be thinking about the down side to this method of aiming and it is that a large portion of your target may be blocked out by the bottom of the peep.  This can be a large drawback but there are several solutions to help minimize the effect.  A large peep can help give you reference on the target because both sides are clearly visible.  Another solution would be to set the next pin lower on the bottom of the peep creating a clear picture for the current pin while maintaining a close reference point (Fig. 4).

One other potential problem is that I do not know how the method will work with a peep rectifier or a scope on a bow since I have not used either on my bow.  If you shoot either of these it may not work.

In the end there are many choices of what and how to shoot.  It can be a difficult quest to find a combination delivering accuracy each and every time you shoot.  If you have difficulty focusing on the same sight picture in the field and/or on the target give a new outlook on aiming a try.  Things might just look better through the other view.

Fig. 1 Displays centering
the pin in peep

Fig. 2 Displays centering
pin guard in peep.

Fig. 4 Displays using the 2nd pin
to bring the aiming pin up to see
under the pin.