Sight settings for archers shooting up and down hills.

This article focuses on the accuracy of sight settings in field archery when shooting at targets located on slopes, such as uphill or downhill angles, compared to flat ground. It evaluates common methods, including the widely used "rifleman's rule"—setting the sight to the horizontal distance to the target—and finds them insufficient for achieving top-level scores due to factors like parallax and differing gravitational effects on arrow trajectory. The study models arrow flight for both compound and recurve bows, demonstrating that sight settings must generally be higher on slopes than on flat ground, with specific corrections depending on slope angle and target distance. It recommends using fixed or linear "cut distances" for uphill slopes up to 30° and more detailed approximations for steeper slopes and downhill shots, emphasizing that simple horizontal distance adjustments do not provide the precision needed for competitive accuracy.