A free, accurate bow sight tape generator built by a bowhunter who got tired of spending range time doing math instead of hunting. Based in Wānaka, New Zealand.
My name is Manuel. I live in Wānaka, in the South Island of New Zealand. I am surrounded by some of the best tahr, chamois, and red stag country in the world and all I want to do is be out in it.
I picked up a compound bow a couple of years ago. I shoot a PSE. I am still learning, but I have already spent way too many evenings at the range fiddling with sight marks instead of being in the hills where I actually want to be.
That frustration is exactly why I built this tool. I wanted to set up my sight tape once, trust it, and get back to hunting. Every hour I spent re-shooting distances and hand-drawing marks was an hour I wasn't scouting the flats above Wānaka or glassing for tahr in the Crown Range.
Single-pin slider sights are the most precise setup a bowhunter can use, but dialling one in the traditional way takes hours. You shoot at 20 yards, mark it. Shoot at 30 yards, mark it. Do that all the way to 60 or 80 yards. If anything changes (different arrow, different altitude, different temperature) you start over.
The better approach is a mathematically calculated sight tape: enter your bow's speed and sight radius, and every yardage mark is computed from physics, not from trial and error. Except the tools I found were either paid desktop apps, US-only in their assumptions, or printed tapes that weren't physically accurate at scale.
So I built the version I wanted. Browser-based, free, works on any device. It prints at exact physical scale as a PDF, or as a PNG sized for Brother and Epson label printers so you get a proper laminated tape. And it does density altitude correction. That matters if you are hunting above 1,000 metres, and in the Southern Alps almost all of the good hunting is above 1,000 metres.
Before season I run my PSE specs through the generator, print a tape on my label printer, and laminate it onto my sight housing. Then I verify it at the range at three distances: 20, 40, and 60 yards. If those three are on, I trust the rest and stop shooting at paper.
The altitude correction is the part I use most. Wānaka sits at about 300 metres, but tahr and chamois live at 1,500 to 2,000 metres. The thinner air up there means your arrows fly flatter than your tape expects. Without the correction, you are low at distance. The tool accounts for that.
Sight Tape Gen is a one-person project. I am a developer by trade and a bowhunter by obsession. The blog covers the things I am actually learning and thinking about: shot placement, arrow setup, tuning, hunting in New Zealand's high country. It is not a content farm. It is notes from someone who is figuring this out in the same hills you might be hunting.
Have a suggestion, found a bug, or want to say hi? Reach me at the contact page or support. I read everything.
Free, no account required. Works on any device.
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