34 PETERSENÕS BOWHUNTING 09 • 20 19
Peep Sweet Spot
S POT-ON BY CABE JOHNSON
P
eep location dictates an-
chor point. If you just eye-
ball the peep’s height on
your bow, your anchor point
will probably be uncomfort-
able, and if it’s uncomfortable,
it will probably hurt your ac-
curacy. Thankfully, we here at
Spot Hogg have a great way to
set peep height. We don’t just
eyeball the setup and call it
good; we have a recipe.
When we set up a bow, we rough-
ly sight it in at 20 yards. We first
draw the bow with our eyes closed
and find an anchor point that’s com-
fortable and repeatable. Then we
open our aiming eye, and if we can’t
see the sight housing through the
peep sight, we let down and adjust
the peep height. We continue draw-
ing the bow with our eyes closed
and adjusting the peep height un-
til we can open our aiming eye and
see the pin guard through the peep
sight without having to readjust our
anchor point. (We always check this
again once we’re completely sighted
in, as moving the pin housing affects
the peep sweet spot.)
This technique works great on
fixed-pin sights, but when we start-
ed shooting movable sights (multi-
pin or single-pin), we began having
problems. When we adjusted the
movable sight to shoot for different
distances, our anchor point had to
shift as well. If not, we couldn’t see
the sight housing through the peep.
The problem? We had set the peep
sweet spot for 20 yards. This worked
just fine when we were shooting
at closer distances, but we were un-
comfortable when shooting at longer
distances (80 yards). To be able to see
the housing at 80 yards, our anchor
point had to be set much lower —
like down by our neck and no longer
on our cheek lower.
This lower anchor point made it
harder for us to keep the peep sight
and housing aligned, which, in turn,
made our groups really open up at
those longer distances. A misalign-
ment at 20 yards might mean a miss
by one inch, but a misalignment
at 80 yards might mean a miss by
eight inches. So, we decided that we
should average out where the peep
should be set.
We settled on 40 yards, as it was
halfway to our longest shot of 80
yards. We then set the peep, with
our eyes closed, for 40 yards in-
stead of 20 yards. The results: 40
felt very comfortable, 20 was a little
scrunched (higher anchor) and 80
floated (lower anchor), but it was
a much better feel. As a result, our
groups tightened up significantly at
longer distances.
This was our recipe for many
years until one of us visited with a
top archer. The archer mentioned
that longer distances are much
harder to shoot, and that he need-
ed to be comfortable when shooting
them much more than when he was
shooting the closer distances. If he
misaligned when shooting the closer
ones, he would still catch the spot,
but if he misaligned at the longer
distances, he would miss.
To get the best overall perfor-
mance, the archer said he usually
set his peep sweet spot at 75 percent
of the longest distance he would be
shooting at. For example, if he was
shooting out to 80 yards, he would
set his peep sweet spot for 60 yards.
He definitely felt scrunched when
he shot at 20 yards, but it was man-
ageable. When he shot anything at
longer distances, though, he was su-
per comfortable, giving him an edge.
This made a lot of sense, so we
tried and loved it. When we set up
our bows nowadays, we try to set
our peep sweet spot for about 75
percent of the longest distance we
plan on shooting. This gives us an
advantage on long shots, and we
still manage the short ones just fine.
Strongly consider making this ad-
justment to your bowhunting rig; it
could mean the difference between
success and failure!
