Second play through, im now starting a Agility,Stealth and Archery focused character, I would recommend to get your first bow to find Hans capons camp in talmberg woods then go around that area killing hares, deer, also plenty of herbs scattered around… and if you’re a naughty boy… a few wayfarers wander past to pickpocket, and kill with your bow for an easy first shot…
Henry wants to ‘git gud’ or at least somewhat proficient as soon as possible, that’s why. Seems that’s in character for a teenager suddenly thrust into the world on his own.
That’s interesting about Uzhitz, I’ll give that a go next time. I also find the archery contest a great way to make coin. Granted, if you are at the point where you can walk into Talmberg, slaughter all the guards, and go fence all their gear, you will make more. But if you can get a consistent win in mastery you don’t have to worry about your merchants’ available coin either. I usually make around 2k per day of shooting. When it also brings my archery up it’s a nice routine.
It’s all about chumps on River. And of you score 18 hits or 19 I forget the guy teaches you a trick and that gives you something like 100 points or so in archery. I will run that game a few times and get my archery up between 7-10 and then move on. Money and XP and now can hunt or kill much easier with a bow
Yes, you can increase your skill by hunting, too. The bigger the animal, the more skill. But at the beginning its easier to hit the logs on the river 
Hunting animals
I dislike the archery in this game, it’s shit in my opinion. For hunting and target shooting it works but it sucks for combat.
In the current version of the game does anyone know if the different archery ranges provide different archery skill improvements? I’m noticing roughly ~10%/a day per level from pribyslavitz.
The l33t hardore no fire cursor thing is annoying and stupid because the bow itself is not in true first person. Pic related is what the archery sight picture should be in true first person. Anyone who shoots archery, especially traditional archery, is doubly pissed because it isn’t how it is in vidya or how it is in real life.
This makes what could be unique, actually being able to use point shooting in game, impossible. They should do a patch to add the dot back by default if they aren’t going to have the bows operate on a true first person.