In competition I'm very much 'middle of the pack' but have found my engineering approach has helped me progress quickly and hope it could help others. I've seen a few rangefinding tips on the web that I thought were real attempts to help the newcomer. However most people seem to keep quiet about their rangefinding methods. One of the standard warnings when going round a field target course is to ignore the quiet comment about the 'range to target' from your fellow archers. The first archer, having shot his first arrow, will know.
Arrows fly very slowly, even carbon arrows from a compound hand bow.
In fixed range target archery this is unimportant and the significance of accurate ranging may be lost on a target archer. So, for ranges beyond about 25 yards, accurate rangefinding is seemingly essential to accurately hit the target with that first arrow. Indeed, that is the case for medium velocity bows fitted with sights. But read on. This involves using a bow with no sights, typically a longbow or a recurve bow.