Well just returned from my second competitive shoot of the week, with good and bad news. The two rounds shot this week were in aid of the clubs postal league shoots, but seeing as I shoot longbow unless I shoot well or there aren't enough people turning up to them my scores won't be put forward for the team as the club only has recurve and compound teams.
Like most things its the good news first, on Thursday it was a Portsmouth round*. A Portsmouth round for those unfamiliar with archery terminology is five dozen arrows (sixty arrows) on an 60cm target face at a distance of 20 yards. Overall it was a very good shoot, fourteen people turned out for it, 3 longbowers, 2 compound archers, and 9 recurves (quickly checks maths, yep fourteen). Pleased to say everyone shot rather well overall, quite a few 500+ scores**. Hmm should really explain the scoring shouldn't I. Ok, well I'll do that below. I myself got a total score of 387, which for a novice longbow is pretty good, I even beat one of the other longbow archers I was shooting with by 7 points. Yes only 7 but seeing as she has a few years experience on me I still take it as a triumph. Readers will soon know that longbow archers myself included will find reasons to celebrate in the smallest things. Just to show this, what made me even more pleased was that face that not only every arrow I shot hit the target, but was also a scoring arrow too. Again with a longbow even an experienced longbow archer this is not always a certainty.
Now comes the bad news, today's shoot again for the postal leagues was the frostbite. This is outdoors, yes outdoors first thing Sunday morning in November, shooting three dozen arrows, on an 80cm face. After the sighter arrows*** I was doing fairly well staying within the inner rings of the targets, then all of a sudden just over halfway through shooting my arrows decide that its too cold to be outside and start flying randomly either missing the target face (luckily staying on the boss) and when they decide to go on the target its just to stay in the outer rings. Which as you imagine made me annoyed and confused, which ment I began to think more which in turns means I shoot worse, which goes to more thinking, and so an descending spiral. Yes archery is one of those sports where its usually the more you think the worse you shoot. Esp for me as I don't have aiming points on my bow but reply on body memory and instinct, which isn't the best way to shoot at all, but I like it and makes me feel better when I out shoot more experienced archers with sights and point of aim marks or even with better more modern bows.
Ok apart from the explanations below, I think that's about it for this post. Stay tuned for more.
*For those that don't know archery has an array of rounds to shoot which denote how many arrows you shoot and what distances, and whether your shooting indoors or outdoors.
** Scoring: Archery targets as most of you probably know usually have a series of coloured rings. starting from the outside going white, black, blue, red, and gold. Depending on what rounds you are shooting these are either solid colours scoring 1,3,5,7,9. But sometimes each ring is split into two, so you have white, white, black, black, blue, blue, red, red, gold, gold scoring 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,X(this is a compound score mainly). So if your arrow lands in a ring it is given that score. If your arrow cuts the line between two rings, the higher value is scored. You shoot 3 or 6 arrows at a time, score them collect them and shoot again.
***Some shoots allow sighter arrows, these are arrows that allow you to gauge that your sight marks/point of aim markers, or instincts are set right so that you'll hit the target, mainly longbow competitions do not allow these, so always best to check before hand. Sighter arrows are not scored so if you miss the target or get bang in the centre makes no difference.
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