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 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.
The string proves it
When a bowstring is built, the center serving — the reinforced section where the nocking point will sit — is not placed at the true center of the string. It is offset toward the top by approximately one inch. This is not a mistake and not a preference. The string is built to match the bow. The berger hole is not at the bow's geometric center, so the center serving is not at the string's center either. String makers have built this offset into every compound string because the geometry of the bow demands it.
That one-inch offset is direct evidence: the nocking point lands approximately one inch above wherever the bow's true geometric center falls.
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.
What is not in question: the nocking point is above it. The arrow is above the bow's geometric center. This is not a tuning decision — it is the design of the system. If the nocking point were pulled down to the actual center of the bow, the bow's mass above the grip would rotate the riser forward aggressively at the shot with nothing to counterbalance it. The arrow runs above center because that is the only configuration where the system holds steady.
No universal berger hole height
There is no standard that fixes the berger hole at a specific height above the geometric center. 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. From there, a paper tune and bare shaft tell you whether the arrow needs to move. If the bare shaft says to move it, move it. If not, the manufacturer's position is where it belongs.
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.
The practical ceiling is wherever the rest can still physically support the arrow. The rest mounts on the berger hole, and the vertical adjustment range on most rests is limited — typically somewhere between half an inch and three quarters of an inch of travel depending on the rest. Once that adjustment is exhausted, you are done. The ceiling is the hardware, not arrow flight.
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.
A note on recurve — three fingers under
The same geometry shows up in recurve. On a recurve, the arrow sits above the grip on a shelf or rest. The draw force applied by the fingers determines the effective pull point relative to the bow's center.
Mediterranean draw — one finger above the nock, two below — centers the draw force at approximately the arrow. Three-under — all three fingers below the nock — shifts the draw force downward, closer to the grip pivot, reducing the torque asymmetry at the shot. Recurve archers discovered this through feel. The compound bow solves the same problem by construction.
Starting position
A terminology note. When elite archers say they are adjusting their "nocking point height," they mean the physical position of the nocking point on the string — which changes where the arrow sits on the bow. When a technician hears "nock high," they think of a paper tuning result: the nock end of the arrow departing the bow higher than the point, a flight problem to correct. These are two completely different things with overlapping language, and most online discussion about nocking point height is incoherent because people are answering different questions. This article uses "nocking point set above level" for the physical position and "nock-high tear" for the paper tuning result, and keeps them separate.
Given that the arrow is already above the bow's geometric center, and given that gravity begins acting on the arrow tip the instant the string releases — pulling the heavier front end downward before the arrow clears the rest — the starting position should always be level or with the nock end of the arrow slightly elevated. Never set the nocking point below level.
The direction and the magnitude have different explanations. The direction — nock end up, not down — is explained by gravity acting on the arrow tip during the shot, and by the bow's own rotation: the grip is the pivot, the mass above it wants to rotate the riser forward at the shot, and a slightly elevated nocking point works with that tendency rather than against it. The magnitude — why 1/8" specifically — is explained by cam nock travel. As the cams rotate through the power stroke, the nock traces a slight arc that moves it downward over the 12–15 milliseconds of the shot. Starting 1/8" above level means the nock arrives at approximately the correct departure height as the arrow clears the rest. The 1/8" is an empirical starting rule derived from cam geometry, not from the gravitational forces alone.
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.
An experiment worth running
Tie a second D-loop one inch above your existing D-loop and draw to it — just feel the bow at full draw, don't 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:
- Set the arrow rest so the arrow center sits at the berger hole center — the manufacturer's intended arrow height.
- Set the nocking point at level to 1/8" above level, measured with a bow square.
- Confirm cam timing is correct on two-cam bows — vertical departure errors from cam timing look identical to nocking point errors.
- 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.
- 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.
Published 2026-09-03 · Axial Bowstrings