I have been a finger shooter. I wear mittens or insulated gloves during fall-winter hunting. And I can remove either from my drawing hand with my teeth.
I just invested in my first compound bow. It can be set for finger shooting, and release aid. Though some company shooters use fingers, the manufacturer recommends using a release aid. So I'm strongly considering a change.
Because any modern release aid affords a less disruptive release than finger draw, minutiae pertaining to how release aid holds and releasess the bowstring is irrelevant for my query.
***
I saw an archer shooting a relax-to-release aid -- a Winn Archery C-12. I was impressed because much of the way I now finger-shoot migrates to hand-draw C-12's relax-to-release. This is especially true when comparing with a conventionally triggered release aid.
The C-12 is placed in the palm of your hand. This allows it to yield a draw essentially of identical length as finger draw -- that is, you don't need to draw your arm farther to the rear to achieve correct draw length.
So long as you grasp the release aid in your hand to draw the bow, it appears that any method to secure ANY release aid to your hand or wrist seems acceptable. I took a brief look at some catalogs and identified several relax-to-release aids that are hand drawn and stay secured to your hand or wrist.
***
Now to the query.
To use a relax-to-release aid when hunting, I imagine one additional step to draw the bow when compared with finger draw.
1. Arrow is taken from quiver, placed on riser (held by riser-hand's index finger), nocked. This is same as finger shooting.
2. Assume your three-fingered grip and draw bow. Neat, simple, quick, intuitive. You don't need to look at the bow. But with release aid --
2-A. Flip or twist or move release aid into palm of hand and secure it to bowstring. Unless this movement is rock solid and repeatable, this is the unintuitive place where using a release aid becomes unpleasant.
2-B. I've ruled out any release aid that's not secured because of the excessive clumsiness of reloading another arrow.
3. How can release aid be retained on hand/wrist/arms while allowing you to move it aside to permit normal hand activity? Part-and-parcel with this is your ability to get the release aid back to where you need it to draw the bow.
4. In the universe of relax-to-release aids ONLY, if you use the device for hunting, which is the most intuitive to use, eyes-off the bow? Please briefly explain why.
