I live in a suburb of Detroit.  A city mostly of 50s era houses.  Neighbors houses an arms length away and yards about the size of a decent sized swimming pool!  I've wanted to get into archery mainly for hunting but there's no way I could practice safely here at home.  This issue has always kept me from getting into bow hunting.  Am I mistaken on this?

Thanks for any help!

Shoot in your basement or garage.

Or a local indoor range.

I live in an apt. complex, but luckily, I have a garage.   I do my paper/bareshaft tuning, work out bugs and work on my shooting form in there.  You can also get a rough sight in too.  (30 yard pin hits dead on at about 12-15 feet).   Shoot at tiny dots and you can practice.

I'm also lucky enough to have an outdoor archery range within a 10 minute drive but I do most of my troubleshooting from the garage.

If you have a boat and can find an out of the way creek or something where it's legal to shoot, that is another option.  Arrows will float with the vanes bobbing out of the water if you miss your target block.  

 

My plan is to shoot from my driveway into my garage.

I'd be careful about that.  You should check your city ordinances to see what they say.

For example, mine says I can shoot on land under 20 acres if I have a 6'x8' back stop and something to warn people that I'm shooting.

The inside-the-garage idea sounds good to me.

Yeah, it might seem like nothing can go wrong, but things happen, like the release aid set-screw might become loose and decide to let go early, or your d-loop might break, and send and arrow off into the wrong direction, through somebody's window or something.  Also, sometimes you get a brain fart and release the arrow early completely missing the target and all kinds of stuff.  Sometimes the arrow zips right through the target as it gets worn out.  I have a couple holes in the drywall I need to patch up.    The wall stops the arrow, but I have since put up a plywood backstop.

There ya guys go ruining my ideas.

If you get a decent arrow block/stop you can do a lot of work on your form, especially your release, in a small space like a garage.

Hate to bring up an old thread, but here's the second story siding after I had the genius idea of shooting into my garage.  It was pretty funny and all of my wife's (bow fam) enjoyed the text message picture.  They got the text before she found out and I got caught ....worth it.




 

How much of a distance do you need to practice?

In the winter I shoot in my house, I can get 15yds if I shoot from the back of the living room, through the kitchen, and to the back of the rec room. I have yet to put a hole in the wall in the rec room, but the gun/bow room where I do my paper tuning is a different story, I put one arrow through the back wall of the closet and another went through the wall, completely passing through to the outside(I have a crappy pre fab home with thin walls). After replacing the section of siding outside, patching the hole inside, and putting a poster up over the patched area you can't even tell what happened but I think I need to get a bigger backstop for my paper tuning.

really you don't need much more than a few yards to work on your form, even if you can only find 5 or 6yds it will help keep your muscle memory there.