Archers cant their bows to correct arrow drift. A vertical bow causes arrows to veer left or right due to the bow's geometry, but tilting it compensates and brings shots back toward center. A live demo shows the difference: vertical hold drifts left, canted hold groups tighter.
Chapters
So I don't know how many of you all watched the movie The Odyssey, but in that movie, in the shooting scenes, in the archery scenes when they're shooting the bows, if you're paying attention, you'll notice that the archers are canting their bow. And in the final scene, when Matt Damon is attacking the suitors, he's really canting it. If I were to shoot this bow and hold my bow perfectly, perfectly vertical, that arrow, even if I have a properly spined arrow, even if it's properly spined, it's going to want to go to the left. Or if I was right-handed, it's going to want to go to the right. Now, but if I cant it, well, guess what that does? That brings my arrow back into alignment. First shot we're going to do is vertical. Let's see what happens. Whoo! So that shot clear off to the left. Now I'm going to cant the bow. And you can see it immediately brings it to the right. Now that wasn't a very good shot, but it's night and day difference from holding it vertical on this style of bow. Let's try again. Brought it into the right some more. That's not exactly in the center of the target, but that's not the point of this. The point I was trying to show is what canting does for you. Um, you can bring that into alignment, move this out of your sight vision, and suddenly you can be nailing that spot on the target.
