Archery Hunting and the Methow with the Top Focal Prescription Shooting glasses BY SSP Eyewear
I found Mike, Owner of SSP Eyewear, by accident actually. Through frustration of yet another $400 plus dollar failure from the shooting glasses I ordered a few weeks earlier, I was yet again searching the web and found SSP Eyewear. As I was reading the normal list of highlights, the ‘Chat Now’ bubble opened up, so I thought, what the hell, I'll ask my question and see what they have to offer. After and bunch of back-and-forth texts (I hate texting), my phone rang, and it was Mike. We discussed, in great detail of my frustration trying to find a pair of shooting designed for the archer/bowhunter that would allow me to see both the target and my sights. I explained about my need for bi-focal glasses and the frustration I faced. Either the pin was super blurry, and the target was clear or vice-versa.
Mike let me ramble on and have my own private bitch session and then he explained the Methow with Top Focal he invented. I will admit, I was skeptical as hell. After more conversation I ended up ordering a pair. This is where it gets interesting.
I shoot with a 3X lens and a clarifier as part of my hunting setup. Blurry pin and clear target were as good as I could ever get. When I switched the clarifier for a verifier, the result was a clear pin and blurry target. Then SSP Eyewear glasses arrived. They looked great, felt great but the proof was yet to be seen. My first attempt at shooting with the Methow Glasses with the RX Top Focal https://sspeyewear.com/products/methow-6-a-eye-lens-kit was a miserable failure. Now I was seeing two pins (I shoot a single pin sight) and still had a blurry target.
I do not give up easily or admit defeat without fighting back, so I began to experiment with the glasses and how they fit to my face, lenses ranging from 2X to 5X and 4 each of various powers of clarifiers and verifiers.
Overall, here's what I found: Remove the clarifier, remove the verifier and just use the Methow glasses with custom archery Top Focal prescription.
1 – Double Pins: Caused by too much glass. The double vision was a direct result of the bi-focal vs verifier/clarifier vs lens magnification. The higher in relative power, the worse the result. Solution – Remove the clarifier or verifier and shoot with just a peep, NO GLASS OF ANY TYPE. Keep the lens power as low as you are comfortable with. For me, I went with a 3X lens.
2 – Incorrect alignment on my face: I shoot with a heads-up stance, so I had tipped my head down slightly to achieve the full use of the Top-focal. To minimize the tilt, I pushed the nose pieces far apart, so the glasses fit as low as possible. For me, alignment solved.
3 – Glasses not staying in the same place every shot. Do yourself a favor, buy the $5.00 head strap SSP Eyewear sells. Available here https://sspeyewear.com/products/methow-lanyard?_pos=3&_psq=methow&_ss=e&_v=1.0 It has the perfect amount of tension to keep the glasses in position. I found if the frame just barely touches my eyebrows, the alignment for me is always perfect. Conversely, when I made the mistake of wearing the glasses, so they pushed up against my eyebrows, Instant fogging problem. Do not do that.
The end result is this. Perfect pin clarity, very mild fuzziness of the target. I am a bow hunter of forty-four seasons, not a target guy. The above setup works amazingly well for me. I hope I saved you a few steps, but you are still going to have to find a setup that works for you. Hopefully, my experimentation saved you a bunch of steps and a lot of frustration.
-Matt Stark, Avid Archer and SSP Methow Customer.
If you wear prescription glasses or readers, please feel free to reach out to us directly to see if we can help you improve your archery experience.
