Two years ago I got hot and heavy into USPSA Shooting. Wanting to track my progress and improve from match to match, I began keeping records of my personal stats. Taking a couple of minutes after each match to plug numbers into a spreadsheet proved to be very beneficial.
Ever since I’ve gotten back into the sport of Archery, I’ve been wanting to do the same with personal stats. I ran into some trouble with plugging in the numbers to generate useful data. There was too much variation from shoot to shoot and this created a bit of confusion. Without consistency, how would the numbers ever be useful? The last thing I wanted to do was create a separate spreadsheet for Outdoor 3D (30 Targets), Indoor 3D (32 Targets), and Thursday Night 3D at Hamburg (15 Targets).
It wasn’t until Troy Ross commented on my results from the January Indoor 3D Shoot at Stowe that I got an idea. If I focused on the percentage of points shot, I could account for varying target counts.
Troy Ross:
448 points max, so 336 = 75%. We use this as a gauge on how we are shooting. So take your score of 321 divide by max (448) equals 72% rounded up. The higher the points per target 14 versus 12 or 11 affects the math. If you don’t shoot for the 14 ring and never take that as a score then 384 is the max (12 ring) and your average would be 84% rounded again in your favor. Keeping record of this is part of an archers way of tracking improvement. Start a journal if you haven’t already, and weight in some variables like weather (outdoors) and average yardage and some of the items your spoke about before.
Tracking results in this manner means using the honor system. Going forward I’ll only be shooting for 12 points per target. I don’t think there is such a thing as an Easy 14 but if one ever pops up, I’m going to have to ignore it. For my system to work, if I accidentally shoot a 14 I’ll have to forfeit the shot and take the lower score.
Ultimately, I suppose I could tweak my spreadsheet to be more fluid, allowing me to choose a 12 or 14 point max per shoot, but I like the idea of creating a system and sticking to it.
Over the weekend I whipped up a simple spreadsheet and began inputting my scores. My goal for the year is to shoot at least 80% of available points (maximum 12 points per target). I was surprised to see that with the exception of my first Indoor 3D Shoot at French Creek (73%), I’ve been hovering in the low 80% range.
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Wait until you start inputting scores from a field course (112 arrows, 5 point max). That will give a firm reality to results and show your improvement over time. The first time at a new shooting event is weighted and skew results, as French Creeks did yours. That is good to see improvement but distorts your average. Knowing this you can look beyond it, but when I use it to track youth shooters I generally drop the high and low score.