Something has to give....

Hi all,

Here we are again at the beginning of another season and I have come to the sad conclusion that I am going to have to stop shooting bare bow for as long as I am captaining our summer league team. I just cannot shoot two different styles well and as I have made a commitment to the league team that will have to take precedence over my bare bow aspirations.  

 I know there are lots of people who shoot more than one style but how many of them can honestly say they are shooting both as well as the could, I was finding myself using the corner of my mouth, where I anchor for bare bow when I was shooting target when I should be under my jaw. I am going to shoot bare bow but it is going to have to wait until I can either pass on the summer league hat or until the team is at a point where my score is not so important, so I have  anew goal....get the summer league team up to scratch.

We have a problem with target archery at Noak Hill that I think I have mentioned before, unfortunatly it is also one of our greatest assets, we have our own record status ground that we can use from an hour after dawn till and hour before dusk 365 days of the year. "Big problem!" I hear you all shout, we should try only having a field for one or two day a week, when everyone wants to shoot at the same time and there is our catch 22. Because we can use the club at any time people are not tied shooting at set times and so they come whenever the can/want to. I see other clubs in the area with a busy shooting line with 20 or 30 people on a Sunday morning and then I look at us with  five or six archers on the line, the difference is that there will be the same number almost everyday of the week and field big enough for two independent shooing areas with a safety line in the middle we don't all have to shoot at the same time, which again splits us up. This is not a huge problem for established members as they tend to come over in the same group on the same day. For beginners it can be more of a problem as once they have finished their course passed their assessment and paid their membership they are left to their own devises, don't get me wrong we have lots of people ho are more than willing to give help and advice. But with on set shooting schedule they do tend to end up just shooting at a boss with no real aim other than shooting.

So we are going to try and get back to a regular Sunday shoot, using rounds that have several options for distance we will be able to accommodate anyone who wants to shoot and  start giving some direction to their shooting. The initial aim will be for archers to work up through their classifications and we will also have the odd week when we do not shoot a round but just spend the time working on good shooting maybe by pairing up a novice/improving archer with a more experience archer. I am also playing about with the idea of a sort of informal mentor type set up where each new member will have a go to person who will help them with their progression, this will I hope stop the old problem of being told six different thing by six different people. It will also mean that if you see a novice doing something not quite right you can tell their mentor and then they can deal with it with them.

So that is where I am going this season hopfuly I will be able to report back on good progress as we go forwards, but time will tell.

 

First class unstableised

Yes folks I did it, yesterday I managed to shoot a 706 albion without the long rod, and I still have one and a half weeks to go before I put it back on, so I might even equal my PB of 752. I am still really feeling like it is hard work for my bow arm by the end of the round which is another thing to keep an eye on when I put the long rod back on. This is also effecting my score at 50 yards, the last round I had 267 at 60 but only 256 at 50 and with the long rod on I almost always beat my 60yrd score at 50.
I started the round thinking that I would really pay attention to my release after it had been pointed out how inconsistent it had become, but as I shot things went from bad to worse. The more I tried to keep my release clean the bigger my groups got. By the last end I had given up and just shot normally and of course everything came right back. I carried on for the rest of the round and you know how it ended.

What can I say I just love shooting this bow naked....err... the bow not me....hmm

Back on the line

Managed to get up the the club on Wednesday and shot nine dozen arrows, and while it was pretty cold I really enjoyed myself. I am using my old 26lb Winstorm Carbons to get back some kind of form and then in a few weeks I will put my 34lb Kaya Tomcats back on (I hope). I was only shooting at 30 meters but to start with my groups....well there were none, but by the end of the session I was starting to get four or five out of the six in a reasonable group. I think next time I get up there I will try a short western and see how I do, I really  must start working towards getting some kind of classification this year and get back out to 80 yards before the summer league starts.

That's about it for now I am going to get a few snaps of my training aid and maybe talk about what can be done off the range to improve form next time (within the next seven days). 

Hello again,

I went out and shot an Albion round on Wednesday my second long round of the year so far and I was quite pleased, my score was 607. Last season I had managed to get to a personal best of 701 but then I did not shoot for about eight weeks and that put me back a bit and the winter set in and well you know how it goes. But now it is a new season and I am going to get my first class classification this year ( I think). I managed to get some groups of three four and on one end five arrows out at 80 yards, which is nice because now I can start to get my sight setup properly. I see so many people adjusting  their sight almost every end and sometimes every arrow, what is that about?

You cannot get you sight adjusted unless you have a group, otherwise it just does not work and all you do is chase your arrows around the boss. Once you have a group (all your arrows don't need to so close that they are touching as long as they are all in an area maybe a foot in diameter that's a group) you are shooting consistently and  then you can adjust your sight so that they are centred around the gold.