Why one sight setting doesn't cover every distance, and how to build and maintain a full set of indoor and outdoor sight marks systematically.
“My sight is dialed in perfectly at 18 meters — why am I missing completely at 70?” Because a sight never has "one" setting — it needs a separate one for every distance. That distance-specific pin position is called a sight mark — a number you log that tells you exactly where your pin needs to sit at a given range.
How many marks you need depends on the format: the Olympic ranking round from Guide 7 now runs over a single distance, 70 meters. Older, still widely shot formats like the 1440 round, on the other hand, demand four completely different distances — 90, 70, 50 and 30 meters for men, 70, 60, 50 and 30 meters for women. Add the entirely separate indoor season at 18 meters, and you quickly end up with five or more values to keep straight — in your head, or better, in a logbook.
Train Smart. Play Hard. — a well-kept sight mark system doesn't replace technique, but it saves you from re-zeroing the same distance from scratch every single time.
Every distance gets its own number on the sight scale. Start at your shortest training distance, zero in cleanly (procedure from Guide 3), and log the value once your group sits consistently on center.
Work your way up from 18 through 30, 50 to 70 meters — never the other way around. Start every new distance from your most recently logged mark as a rough starting point — that saves you several zeroing arrows at every step.
Your 18-meter indoor mark and your 70-meter outdoor mark never belong on the same line. Different lighting, no wind indoors, often different arrows — carrying values from one season into the other almost always causes misses on day one of the new season.
Log conditions like wind or temperature alongside the number itself — your outdoor marks shift slightly with the weather, while indoor marks stay noticeably more stable. That way you can later tell whether a deviation was the weather or you.
If your mark for a familiar distance suddenly shifts noticeably with no change in weather or gear, that's rarely coincidence — it usually points to form drift in stance or anchor (Guides 3, 6) or a needed re-adjustment after a limb swap (Guide 5). The number warns you before your whole group falls apart.
Always adjust your sight at the shooting line with the bow pointed safely at the target, never with an arrow nocked while facing another direction — the same rule as your first zeroing session in Guide 3. If you're logging marks in changing weather, keep extra distance from neighboring archers on windy days, since arrows can drift sideways more than usual.
Keep your sight mark logbook digitally, but also print a compact card with all current values before competitions. Under competition nerves, archers surprisingly often blank on numbers they've known for months — a card in your bow bag is cheap insurance against exactly that moment.
Because your arrow's trajectory gets steeper with distance — the same pin position that hits at 18 meters lands far off at 70. That's why every distance needs its own logged mark.
Indoor runs consistently at 18 meters with no wind, outdoor reaches up to 70 meters and shifts additionally with weather conditions. Keeping both sets separate prevents mix-ups at the season change.
Barely, with stable technique and unchanged gear. After a limb swap (Guide 2), new arrows, or a bigger form change, you should recheck every mark.
Start again at your shortest distance and work your way up systematically — exactly like the first time. A well-kept logbook prevents this scenario going forward.
They use techniques like gap shooting or string walking — the arrow tip or the finger position on the string replaces the missing sight pin. The underlying principle of "one fixed reference per distance" stays the same as a sight mark, though.
Recurve: What Really Defines the Olympic Bow