Highs & Lows

Welcome back, or hello for those who haven't been here before. This weeks archery has been a mixture of good and bad results, more on the side of bad than good, but hopefully be able to fly out of the slump soon.
Tuesday there was a tragedy, another raven has fallen, knocked out of the sky by one of its own flock passing to close. I Robin Hooded (shot through my own arrow) on of my arrows splitting the nock and the wood down to the binding making it unshootable unless I strip it down and shorten it, but I'd need more than just the one so for the moment it is laid to rest with its brother who suffered a similar fatality previously. But that was not the only injury, another raven had its tail cut short (broke the nock), but luckily that one has been replaced and is eager to fly again.

Thursday was the December monthly medal, and despite doing well on Tuesday and the previous Thursday my shooting wasn't fairing to well. The monthly medal is a FITA 18, which is five dozen arrows on a Bray 1 target, so effectually two consecutive Bray 1 rounds. I managed 254 48/0, which to me isn't that good due to the amount of misses as it seemed that I was missing with almost every 3rd arrow, with an average Bray score of 127 24/0 which isn't bad, but isn't my best either. Suffice to say I didn't manage to retain the longbow medal but just means I have something to shoot for next month.

Today being Sunday saw the opening of the December frosbite shoot, but with the snow that fell on the Friday still lingering it being around 2-3" very few archers turned up. So few in fact it was just myself and Steve Dunn, a fellow longbow archer who had taken one for the team and brought out his recurve for this shoot, seeing it is technically a recurve postal round. So there were a brief passing comment of "we few, we crazy few" and a couple of odd looks by people come to the rugby club. Despite the snow it was a nice day sun was warm, there was no wind, and as long as you had decent boots and thick socks the cold didn't really reach you. The more interesting was when there were a few stray arrows and they left trails for you to follow in the snow, though digging them out did leave your fingers cold and numb. By the end of the shoot I walked away with 145 31/0 which is about the same as the last frostbite but still in my eye not overly that good, but just means more practice is needed.

With Christmas looming next week there is the Christmas fun shoot to be looking forward to and in two weeks is another Frostbite which hopefully will be better attended but we'll see. Till next time, stay warm and a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!