Is the nocking point at the center of your bow?

No. And it never has been.

Most archers treat the berger hole as though it is a fundamental reference — the center of the bow, the point everything else is measured from. It is not. The berger hole is a manufactured mounting point on the riser. It usually sits above the bow's geometric center, not at it. The nocking point sits above the berger hole. By the time you get to the nocking point, you are well above the bow's actual center — by design, for good reason, and with no consistent universal measurement between bows.

Where is the geometric center?

It varies by bow. The riser geometry, limb lengths, and cam placement all affect where the ATA midpoint lands relative to the grip and the berger hole. On some designs it falls near the shelf. On others the geometry may place it higher. There is no universal standard. What the string evidence establishes is that the nocking point is offset from the geometric center — the exact degree of that offset depends on the specific bow.

On most bow designs, the nocking point sits above the geometric center. The arrow runs above center. The arrow running at or above center is what keeps the system stable. Whether a given bow is at center, above it, or slightly below it depends on how the manufacturer designed the riser.

Key fact.On most bows, the berger hole is not at the geometric center. On most bows, the nocking point is not at the geometric center. The string itself — offset from dead center — is the clearest evidence of this. How far off center depends on the bow.

No universal berger hole height

There is no standard that fixes the berger hole at a specific height above the geometric center or above the grip height. Different riser designs place it at different positions, and the variation between bows is meaningful — half an inch is not unusual. This is why the same archer may feel a different hold on two different bows at the same nominal nocking point setting. The starting geometry is not the same. The relationship between the pull point and the pivot changes with the bow.

Elite archers who have built enough sensitivity to detect 1/16" nocking point adjustments have to re-establish that calibration for every bow they shoot. The feel they developed on the last bow is a starting suggestion at best on the next one. The number does not travel.

Does the arrow go through the center of the berger hole?

This argument runs constantly online: should the arrow pass through the center of the berger hole, the top edge, or somewhere above it entirely? The answer starts with recognizing what the berger hole actually is.

The berger hole is not a generic mounting point that happens to be on the riser. It is a position selected by the manufacturer through engineering — bow geometry, riser design, cam placement, limb angles, and intended shooting characteristics all feed into where that hole gets drilled. A manufacturer making a hunting bow, a speed bow, and a target bow may place the berger hole at different heights on each because each bow is optimized differently. That height is the manufacturer's specification for where the arrow should sit on that bow. It is the result of deliberate engineering decisions, not a default that nobody thought carefully about.

The community convention that the nocking point should always be set above the berger hole is, in many cases, overriding manufacturer design intent without a specific tuning reason to do so. The correct starting position is the berger hole — the manufacturer's intended height.

What is not debatable is the floor. Setting the arrow below the berger hole center means the nocking point is below the manufacturer's intended position — working against gravity, against the bow's rotational tendency, and against cam nock travel. Below berger hole center is not a viable starting position. At or above it is the working range, with the manufacturer's intended position as the correct default.

These are not arbitrary positions. Bow manufacturers spend real engineering time on riser geometry. If moving the berger hole a quarter inch higher produced meaningfully better results across the board, they would have moved it. The hole is where it is on purpose.

The berger hole is the manufacturer's intended arrow height.Start there. Below it: you are working against every force in the system. Above it: when tuning demands it, or when an elite archer needs a feel adjustment — above is always the right direction if you are going to move at all. Going below is never the answer. The community habit of always running above the berger hole regardless of tuning result overrides an engineering decision without justification.

Starting position

Set the nocking point at level to 1/8" above level — nock end slightly elevated. Never below level.

The 1/8" magnitude comes from cam nock travel. As the cams rotate through the power stroke, the nocking point traces a slight downward arc over the roughly 15 milliseconds of the shot. Starting 1/8" above level accounts for that arc. It is an empirical rule that holds across most modern bow designs. This is the same cam-driven effect that creates vertical oscillations in arrow flight after the shot — and the reason spine selection matters. An arrow that is too stiff or too weak will oscillate differently through that arc, and nocking point height interacts with that.

Terminology note. "Nocking point height" and "nock high" are not the same thing. Elite archers saying they adjust their nocking point height mean the physical position on the string. A technician hearing "nock high" thinks of a paper tuning result — the nock end departing the bow above the point, a flight problem to fix. Same words, different conversation. This article uses "nocking point set above level" for the physical position and "nock-high tear" for the paper tuning result.

Starting point.Level to 1/8" above level at the nock end. Never below level — you are working against gravity, bow rotation, and cam nock travel simultaneously.

What the bow is actually feeling

The feel of the bow at full draw is determined by exactly two points: the grip and the nocking point. That is the entire system. The grip is where force is applied by the hand. The nocking point is where force is applied by the string. The bow does not know where the tip of the arrow is. It cannot feel it. The arrow's angle, the arrow's height, whether the arrow is level or not — none of this affects how the bow balances or holds at full draw. The tip of the arrow matters for tuning and flight. The hold is a two-point conversation between the grip and the nocking point, and nothing else.

This is why elite archers can detect 1/16" nocking point adjustments. When they raise the nocking point from an already-tuned bow, the pull point moves further above the pivot. The torque moment around the grip increases. At full draw, the bow has a slightly stronger tendency to rotate upward — the sight wants to climb. Lower the nocking point and it wants to drop. That is the hold characteristic being described. This is not a follow-through effect. The bow's forward rotation after the shot is driven by its mass distribution relative to the grip, not by nocking point height.

The arithmetic makes clear how small that signal is. If the arrow runs approximately 1.5 inches above the grip, a 1/16" nocking point change represents roughly a 4% shift in the pull-point-to-pivot distance. A 4% change in a small torque moment, detected through proprioceptive feedback, isolated from every other source of variation. Reaching that level of sensitivity requires 20,000 to 30,000 arrows and years of deliberate refinement. It is not available by description. It is earned through volume.

1/16 of an inch is a 4% change in the pull-point-to-pivot distance. An elite archer can feel that. An amateur archer is not yet quiet enough to hear it.

An experiment worth running

Tie a second D-loop one inch above your existing D-loop and draw to it and shoot. The arrow tip has not moved. The rest is unchanged. But the pull point is now one inch higher on the string, one inch further above the grip pivot. The bow will feel different: more forward-rotation pressure, a different hold balance. That is the two-point system responding to a change in one of its two inputs. The tip of the arrow has nothing to do with what you are feeling. That is the same mechanism elite archers are detecting at 1/16".

Which raises a logical question: why not just shoot it that way? Keep the nocking point hardware where it is for the arrow, tie the D-loop one inch higher, and shoot from there. The bow fires. The arrow flies. The arrow is driven forward by the string at the nocking point — not from the D-loop — so the arrow's flight path is determined by the same geometry it always was.

The only genuine mechanical question is what happens at the moment of release. The string was being pulled from one inch above the nocking point during the draw. When the shot fires, the string must redistribute through that one-inch section as it drives the arrow from the actual contact point. This creates a slightly different nock separation dynamic — a micro-disturbance that could introduce shot-to-shot variation in departure angle. The arrow still goes downrange. Whether the inconsistency is measurable in practice is unknown, because nobody has tested it seriously. The setup is unconventional. The logic is sound. The norm in archery equipment has been broken by less obvious ideas than this one.

The practical sequence

For any new setup, in this order:

  1. Set the arrow rest so the arrow center sits at the berger hole center — the manufacturer's intended arrow height.
  2. Set the nocking point at level to 1/8" above level, measured with a bow square.
  3. Confirm cam timing is correct on two-cam bows — vertical departure errors from cam timing look identical to nocking point errors.
  4. Paper tune at 9 to 12 feet. A nock-high tear means nocking point is high or rest is low. A nock-low tear means the opposite.
  5. Confirm with a bare shaft at 20 yards. The bare shaft shows departure error directly without fletching masking it.

Once those five steps produce a clean result, the nocking point is set. Elite fine-tuning — 1/16" increments, feeling the torque shift at the grip — is a conversation for after the bow is fully tuned, stable, and the archer has built the shot volume to isolate that signal. Not before.

Axial's position.The berger hole varies by bow — manufacturers set it at different heights, and that position is their intended arrow height for that bow. Start there. If tuning moves you above it, that is the correct direction. Elite archers chasing hold feel should move above the berger hole, not below. Below is never the answer. The arrow tells you more about your nocking point than your hold does — and it does not lie about the mechanism.

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Published 2026-09-03  ·  Axial Bowstrings