Sight Alignment

legacy

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It's been about 15 years since I've owned a bow but now I'm back in the game and preparing to archery hunt in 2025. I took my bow out this past weekend to start shooting and in making adjustments, I realized my sight is just about maxed out to the left and not aligned with my string and rest at all. When I discovered this, I remembered that I may have had a similar issue with the last bow that I owned. I did some looking online and it sounds like that there could be myriad reasons why this could occur (bad form, torque, etc...). I'm just curious about your expert opinions on this matter and if anyone here has experienced something similar?

*After shooting a few dozen arrows, consistency and accuracy seemed somewhat reasonable for someone who hadn't shot in 15 years.
 
There could be a great number of issues. However, a couple of things come to mind. The first is that your center shot is so far off that you have to compensate by running your sight housing too far to the left. This might happen if your arrow is kicking tail-right (which pushes your point to the left).

If your center-shot is set, arrow stiffness could be at play. If I recall, for compound bows and a right-handed shooter using a release aid, an overspined arrow will impact left of your POA.

For Mathews bows, the default center-shot distance is 13/16" from the riser to the center of the arrow shaft when it is sitting on the rest. This is just a starting point and can move later when fine tuning.

Paper tuning (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) with fletched and bare shafts will reveal if your arrows are kicking left, right, up or down. The only gotcha is that your form and stance has to be impeccable when you do this, otherwise you will get false readings all day.

As far as the issue of running your sight all the way out to the left - most sights have a course adjustment where you loosen a bolt which allows you to run the sight as far as it will let you before it falls out of the housing. Before you do this, use the fine adjustment to move your sight to the middle. Either use the screw thread as a reference point or count the total number of clicks it takes to go from one extreme side to the other and then click it to the halfway point.

Once you do this, you can use the course adjustment to get you close and then move to the fine adjustment knob to get it to hit where you want it to. You should now have enough left and right adjustment clicks.

There's also top hat adjustments, nocking point, yoke tuning and cam shimming among others, but you need a bow vice and press to work on those items.

I would say start with center shot and verify arrow stiffness. Also make sure you are not getting shaft contact or vane contact with the cable guard, etc.

Of great importance as well is to ensure that your 1st, 2nd and 3rd axis adjustments are set correctly. This is another topic on its own but let me know if you have any questions. I'd be happy to help.
 
So after pulling my bow back out to see if I could see anything obvious, I found that the center shot was out by a long shot! I didn’t even have to measure and could tell that it was the issue (or much of the issue). I guess I just assumed that the bow shop would have set all this when they set the bow up. So I’ll make the adjustment with my rest and then see where that puts my sight. I’m betting it solves a lot of the problem.

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So after pulling my bow back out to see if I could see anything obvious, I found that the center shot was out by a long shot!
Thanks for the update. With the nock kicking so hard to the right, it's also possible that your vanes were making contact with the cable/cable guard.

Those vanes were working overtime trying to straighten the path of that arrow once it left your string. :D

I pulled out an old bow once and didn't bother to check my rest, and in my infinite wisdom decided to screw on a fixed-blade broadhead to use on the first shot.

That arrow veered so hard to the left, it zoomed by my target by at least 2 feet and slammed into my concrete wall.

I see you have a QAD drop-away rest. Good stuff. Easy to adjust.
 

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