You know your arrow weight to the grain. You know your spine deflection number. You know your draw length to a quarter inch and your peak weight to within a pound. You have a chronograph. You have a draw board. You might have a digital level on your riser.
But do you know what one click on your sight actually does to your point of impact at 40 yards?
Come on. Basic mastery level stuff here.
A seasoned pro at a 3D shoot will dial his sight by a specific number of clicks rather than use holdover, because he knows what each click costs him in inches at that distance. Not approximately. Exactly. It's a 30-second calculation you do once, write down, and carry with you forever. And yet the vast majority of compound archers who own $800 sights with 40 detents per rotation have never done it.
Let's fix that.
What MOA actually is
Minute of Angle is a unit of angular measurement. One degree is divided into 60 minutes; one minute of angle is 1/60th of a degree. Rifle shooters live in MOA because scopes are rated by it — "1/4 MOA per click" means the manufacturer built the adjustment to move your point of impact a quarter-minute of angle per detent.
The practical number: 1 MOA equals 1.047 inches at 100 yards. Close enough to one inch at 100 yards that most people round it and move on. At 50 yards it's half that — about 0.52 inches. At 20 yards it's about 0.21 inches. MOA scales linearly with distance because it's an angle — double the distance, double the inches.
That's it. That's MOA.
Why your archery sight is not labeled in MOA (and why it doesn't matter)
Your scope is labeled in clicks, not MOA, because compound sight manufacturers don't publish angular movement per click. They publish the mechanical movement at the pin — fractions of an inch the pin physically travels per detent. Different sight radii convert that pin movement into different angles, which means the same click on the same sight means different things in MOA depending on how far your peep is from your pin.
This sounds like a complexity. It is actually an opportunity, because you're going to measure yours directly and own a more accurate number than any spec sheet would give you.
The two numbers you need
Sight radius: the distance from your peep to your front sight pin, measured along the bowstring axis when you're at anchor. On a typical compound setup this runs 28 to 40 inches depending on your riser, sight arm, and draw length. Measure it — tape measure, inches, written on an index card.
Inches per click at a known distance: measured empirically, which takes about fifteen minutes and produces better data than looking it up.
You do not need to know your click's MOA value to use this. But if you want it — and it's satisfying to have — the formula is:
MOA per click = (pin travel per click ÷ sight radius) × 3,438
Where 3,438 is the number of MOA in one radian. Don't worry about where that comes from. Just know that for most setups with a sight radius around 32 inches and a click around 1/64 inch, you land somewhere near 1.5 MOA per click. Probably. Measure it and find out.
The measurement protocol
Set up at exactly 20 yards. Measured, not stepped off. Tape measure, rangefinder, measured.
Step 1. Shoot a three-arrow group. Mark the center of the group on the target (sticker, pen mark, tape — whatever stays put).
Step 2. Dial exactly 20 clicks in one direction. Up or down, doesn't matter, just pick one and don't lose count.
Step 3. Shoot another three-arrow group without touching anything else.
Step 4. Measure the distance in inches between the two group centers.
Step 5. Divide by 20.
That's your inches per click at 20 yards. Now fill in the rest of the table:
| Distance | Your inches per click |
|---|---|
| 20 yards | [measured] |
| 30 yards | × 1.5 |
| 40 yards | × 2.0 |
| 50 yards | × 2.5 |
| 50 meters (54.7 yd) | × 2.74 |
| 60 yards | × 3.0 |
The scaling is exactly linear because you're measuring an angle. If one click moves your POI 0.3 inches at 20 yards, it moves it 0.6 inches at 40 yards. Every time. No exceptions, no fudge factors.
This is the part where "archery has too many variables" turns out to be wrong — for this specific calculation, there are essentially no variables. Arrow speed doesn't factor in. Arrow trajectory doesn't factor in. The arc the arrow flies doesn't change what angle you're aiming at. The only thing that matters is the geometry of your peep, your pin, and the target distance, and those relationships are clean.
How to use it
For 3D and field: Here's the actual problem.
You're standing at the stake looking at a foam deer in a shadow. The 12 ring is roughly… there. Somewhere behind the front leg, you think. You can't see it clearly. Traditional holdover means you aim your pin at a spot in the air near where you believe the 12 ring is, based on experience and a guess, and hope your "aim at nothing in particular, but left of the neck" muscle memory is calibrated today. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't.
Now your buddy's arrow is sticking in the neck. Bright orange nock. You can see it perfectly.
Your eye wants to aim at that nock. That's exactly what you should do — except the nock is three inches right and two inches high of the 12. Which, if you know what a click is, is not a problem. Two inches high is 3 clicks down. Three inches right is 5 clicks left. Dial it. Aim directly at the orange nock. Your eye locks on something real and distinct instead of a vague imaginary spot. Hit the 12.
The bright shiny thing is the feature, not the bug. Give your eye something to actually aim at.
Just don't lose your zero. With modern sights, vertical is usually handled — you have a sight tape and your distance work is already done. What you're tracking carefully is windage. Count your clicks. Write it on your scorecard. When that shot is over, dial back before you forget.
For Olympic recurve at 50 meters: Wind hold in clicks instead of aiming off. You're not aiming at a blank spot in the air and hoping the muscle memory of "aim left" is calibrated today. You're dialing a number you own. Your click value at 50 meters is in the table. Use it.
For tournament prep: Run this check at the start of a season and after any adjustment to peep height, sight arm position, or draw length. Any of those changes your sight radius and breaks the calibration.
Write it down
The card goes in your bow case. Three columns: distance, inches per click, clicks per inch. Not in your head, not in your phone — in the bow case, where it is when you need it at a shoot at 7:45 a.m. before your brain has agreed to function.
One measurement. Fifteen minutes. Permanent.
Published 2026-09-02 · Axial Bowstrings