The Spring Flight

Though this month is not over I thought I'd post up an update anyway to show how things are going. So far the weather has been pleasant and allowed the outdoor shooting to go ahead, and the new bow has been working well. I still need to build myself up to be able to draw it consistently over and over, as well as controlling the recoil. But I'm enjoying it none the less and re-learning the distances.

At the moment arrows for the new bow are still in the construction phase at the moment, and despite being sold arrow shafts with curves in them (looking at your archery world) I've gone ahead and made up arrows anyway. Mainly because I can't afford to get new shafts and waste these ones so I'll make do for now. The new flock of ravens will be slightly shorter than the older flock, but they will be thicker so hopefully I'll be able to use more power from the bow without it being wasted, though time will tell.

The short bodkin has been looked at with some negativity due to the edges that it has, so for the mean time that flock will be put on standby. Determined as I am not to waste them though, I am forming plans acceptable to all to allow these ravens to fly.

But for happier news, despite the first shoot being cancelled (and noting the 3rd shoot and President's Cup was cancelled as well again due to the rugby club using the field for warm ups) we did manage to shoot the 2nd scheduled shoot. This was the first outdoor monthly medal of the season (hurray!!).  This month the round was a National, which is four dozen arrows at 60yds, and 2 dozen arrows at 50yds. This is shot at a large target (122cm). Though two keen longbow archers arrived extra early to shoot a York round (so weren't allowed to shoot in the monthly medal), while some experienced archers shot a Long National (as the name suggests it has longer distances than the National).

As I didn't have my new arrows made, I used arrows donated to me last year by Shaun. These arrows are slightly unusual as they have 4 fletchings rather than 3, and also are much longer. Finding range took a few ends, but got their in the end. Though as is always the way outside we shoot in 6's and I only have 6 of these arrows, and yes you guessed it, a pile came off in the boss so I had to use a spare arrow which was shorter, different spined, different fletched and all around different. So with the spare arrow which most of the time promptly missed the target (having different arrow types is never a good idea), we proceeded to shoot.

So it is my pleasure to extend congratulations to the following people:

Monthly Medal Awards:

Scratch Medal:              David Campbell

Compound Medal:        John Stubbs

Longbow Medal:           Steve Mudd (yes that's me, yay!)

Handicap Medal:          Richard Park  

I would also like to extend a special congratulations to master Joe Shaw for having a 6 Gold End. My personal downside is that I was 4 points off a 2nd class score, but seeing as its only the beginning of he season there is plenty of time to achieve this. Plus no one can say that I don't like shooting, as one of my fingers is now sporting a blister thanks to the thinner string, and that is despite wearing a leather shooting glove.

That's it for now, stay tuned because I have some interesting stuff coming up, in the next few months.