Expensive. If you've got your own gear, go to any archery range to shoot as many arrows as you want and you pay a fraction of the price.

After a few months of doing my homework on the sport, I decided in May to buy my own cheap Chinese hunting compound bow (I didn't have a good experience with recurves when I took the archery intro class at Malaya Archery... bloody painful) and a dozen decent Chinese carbon arrows to suit my draw length & draw poundage, and I paid for a private coach in Archer's Studio to teach me how to shoot properly for a month.

I found that to be a very pleasant, enjoyable and cost-effective way to get into the sport in a serious fashion. An indoor archery range that lets you shoot hundreds of arrows for RM10 per hour is perfect for this.

At this point, I think I'd like to move up into target compound archery next... so I hope to be able to build myself up to shoot at 45lbs next month onwards, work on my shooting form until I feel ready to move up to shoot outdoors beyond 20m... and be knowledgeable enough to know what gear to plonk the necessary cash on in order to shoot accurately at that distance.

Got a long way to go, but I'm enjoying the progress I'm making.

Nusensei is a good resource. He's into recurve archery so a lot of his material is for this discipline.

Although archery in general is all about shooting arrows, there are many distinctively different disciplines within this sport/hobby each with its own pros and cons. Fascinating and interesting but it can get very confusing very quickly for the uninitiated.

I have graduated from my dinky Kaimei Han hunting compound bow to a 40" compound target bow + Angel CPZ sights, Merlin 6x scope + Keeton hybrid release at the beginning of the year. Had started to shoot outdoors at 30m accurately enough to land all shots on a 40cm target face when the lockdown happened. Now I have to go back to the 18m indoor range to work my way up again coz after 3 months of sitting around in front of the PC day in, day out I have lost my form. Just drawing the bow feels weird now...

Shooting recurves is all about technique, in that sense it is as complex as shooting compound bows.

However, recurves are a little less complex mechanically... although that doesn't mean there isn't a learning curve.

Arguably the simplest of all (mechanically) is shooting traditional bows. Even then they have their own challenges and can go pretty deep into their respective cultural and philosophical aspects (such as the Japanese kyudo)... but therein lies the fun and satisfaction.

Due to the mechanical nature of compound bows, there's a steep learning curve that starts even before you pick up the bow for the first time. Once you understand how the various bits and bobs work together and how they affect your shots, eventually you'll know what specifications to look for, what adjustments to make and what you need to make those adjustments.

At the bare minimum, you must know how to adjust your scope. Everybody starts there. The next stage requires you to know how to set up your own bow - how to adjust the poundage by rotating the limb bolts, how to adjust the draw length if your bow has a rotating module, how to adjust the let-off, how to adjust the balance if you're using stabilizers and how to adjust your arrow rest so that you know you're shooting straight. All these you can easily manage by yourself at home with basic tools. But for stuff that requires a proper bow press (such as re-stringing, setting the cam timing), a specialized jig (re-stringing) or higher expertise (paper tuning), a reputable archery shop can help you... although not all archery shop are able to deal with compound bows.

Eventually you'll also learn how to build your own arrows that are tailor-made to suit just you. Assuming you can have them pre-cut to your draw length, you'll only need a heat gun and a fletching jig to work on arrows on your own.

This post has been edited by ZZR-Pilot: Jun 15 2020, 08:51 AM

I live in Ampang, so I go to Archers' Studio because they have a nice 18m indoor range with proper target butts that can handle high poundage compound bows. You pay RM100 for a piece of card that lets you come 11 times to shoot as much as you want. I received my coaching here.

There's a huge MSN outdoor archery range in Keramat that I can also go to, but I'll need to join one of the clubs there and pay a monthly membership fee to access it. They're particular about not allowing anything with camo... so If you've got a camo hunting bow or a camo quiver/bow bag, you're out of luck. They also don't allow casual jeans - archery attire only!

To cut cost, there's a deserted area in the hills near my home that allows me to shoot outdoors up to 70m for free, provided I rig up my own target butt. I bought 4 blocks of cheap 50cm x 5cm black EVA foam and glued them together to form a 20cm thick target butt. My arrows punched right through it like hot knife through butter at 30m and it was a royal pain in the arse. So now I'm waiting for my 80cm x 15cm dense straw target butts to ship. I bought 2, so that I can stack them to stop arrows from punching through.

Nice. Hoyt Pro Elite XT 35". 2010?

No such luck in my office as I don't own the biz, so I hv to go to the indoor range.

The shots from a compound bow will easily punch straight through the gypsumboard walls & plywood doors of the typical office... be careful!

Sometimes when you're tired, you draw a little sloppy and the arrow jumps off the blade rest.. then you get distracted by it & accidentally trigger the the release... the arrow goes blasting way off mark and buries itself on the wall 3 feet away from the target...




This post has been edited by ZZR-Pilot: Jun 15 2020, 10:35 PM

Back to shooting outdoors up in the hills near my house where nobody bothers me! I stacked 2x straw butts 15cm thick each, but my skinny 3.2mm ID arrows still punched thru. At least the arrows are a hell lot easier to pull out compared to cheap EVA foam.


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If you're shooting compound bows, sooner or later you're going to need to tinker with it. First you'll try to do it one handed while holding the bow with the other hand. It won't take long before you drop that thing and conclude that you can't run away from investing in a bow vise.

Here's a cheap hack if you need to bide some time before throwing a few hundred bucks in a bow vise. If you cycle & tinker with bikes at home, chances are you may have one of these bike stands. If it comes with a padded clamp, hey presto... you have an instant 2-axis bow vise!

That missing 3rd axis adjustment will sorely be missed under some circumstances, but overall it's a godsend for general tinkering.

For a fully functional 3-axis set-up, get a cheap yellow claw-style bow vise and bolt it down on a small block of wood. Then clamp that block of wood to the bike stand. Now you have a mobile sturdy vise that isn't stuck to a table.


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