Total Archery Challenge (Southeast) 2026

I shot TAC again this weekend. Been a super busy year this year, and I haven’t shot my bow at all since last year’s TAC (literally … I know, really sad), so I had no idea what to expect of my shooting, but figured I’d give it a shot (haha, see what I did there??) anyway.

Regardless of how I shoot, it’s always fun hanging out with the Harvest Archery crew. They always know how to make this a fun event. It’s also a privilege to shoot with such fantastic shooters too. Huge shoutout to Parker for the field tune gettin’ my bow straightened out on the Nock On (it’ll always be Sitka to me) course yesterday.

I shot the Prime course on Friday with the Ostranders. Great guys, super nice and fun to shoot with. I didn’t discover til I was already at the first target of the course that my range finder battery was dead, so I had to piggy back off of their range finders for the entire course. It’s kind of amazing how much confidence you get in your own gear, and how critical every piece of it is to your shooting success. I did OK overall, but I was never truly confident in my shot for the entirety of this course. Despite that, I only missed three targets and lost two arrows. I felt pretty OK with that given the circumstances.

Yesterday I got to shoot the Nock On course with Parker, Austin, Jake, Landon and another guy that came along with us. Most of these guys work at Harvest Archery. This has always been (IMHO) the most challenging course at this venue, and I don’t think that was any different this year. I entered the course yesterday morning with four arrows, and I came home with two of them. I had quite a few shots on Friday that seemed to be pulling to the left a bit. My first instinct was that, having not shot in so long, that some bad habits had crept back into my shooting form and that it was just me. I had Parker watch my shooting form a couple of times and he didn’t notice anything that seemed obviously off. He took a closer look at my bow and noticed that my sight’s third axis had drifted slightly. He squared that up and made one other tweak to my sight’s setup, and my shots started hitting much closer to where I was expecting them to again. I had two shaky targets near the middle of the course around the adjustments that he made, and then used the same arrow for the rest of the day. Wasn’t shooting lights out by any stretch of the imagination, but I was finding foam the rest of the way out. That felt really good.

I’m badly out of physical shape, and the Nock On course reminded me of that yesterday. I’m a little sore today. It was a good kind of reminder though. Maybe this will finally be the push that I need to find a way to make room for some regular exercise in my schedule. I really need to do that.

TAC is always a fun weekend, and this one was no exception. I hope I’m able to continue enjoying it for many years to come.