Friendly shoot against Rochdale Archers,
The July Monthly Medal,
The NCB longbow shoot.
There was another club shoot but that I didn't go too as it was raining hard all day, and a 3 mile walk in the pouring rain, followed by shooting in the rain and then walking back, kinda damped my spirits.
Unfortunately at the moment my practice has taken a back seat as soon there is going to be a little one around so I've traded my Tuesday evenings to preparing myself for the event. Though it hasn't effected me too much, it has a bit but not a great deal. But on with the activities so far.
Firstly the Albion shoot against Rochdale didn't go as planned, the main handicap was that only three members of NCB turned up to represent our club. These were David Campbell, Richard Park, and myself. In all honestly I was quite disappointed about the lack of support we showed for this annual event, I was even informed last year also had very little turn out as well, and those that did turn out were novices at the time. So while there were only three of us, there were fifteen of Rochdale's archers. More of an interest to me though was the fact that one of their members was a longbow archer, so him and myself had our own little competition between us. Despite the lack of numbers we gave a good run for their money, though we did lose the odd stacked against us it was kinda obvious, but as a side note I did beat the other longbower, who had been shooting long only a little less time than I have so were kind of on an even keel. Despite the poor turn out by NCB, Rochdale were very friendly and laid on a wonderful spread, esp for those non drivers as there were a few bottles of beer. Also it was a lovely sunny day with very little wind, so lovely in fact that a couple of us retreated to the shelter of the indoor range to re-apply suncream and to cool down.
The next club shoot that I attended was the July monthly medal, which again was a Warwick shoot, though this month my shooting was definitely left wanting, perhaps this was down to being tired from work, perhaps not. But at the start of the shoot there was a sudden cloud burst, which had the fair weather archers pull out quickly, though the shower passed within minutes. But as I said for whatever the reasons my ravens weren't wanting to fly to the target that day. On the other hand Shaun Allan set a new club longbow record, and Doug Shaw shot extremely well lowering his handicap by 5 points. Shows you what high quality arrows and a good shooting day can do. Though yet to see how all this effects the new handicap league results.
Last but not least of the shoots was the club longbow shoot. Now for those unfamiliar this shoot is where archers come down to shoot, yes you guessed it longbows. This is often a chance for recurve archers (and a few compounds) to try their hand at a more traditional style of shooting. Its a Windsor round so shooting 60/50/40 and longbows ans arrows are lent to club members normally from our two (G)MB longbow men, Angus Reynolds and Shaun Allan. What makes it even more fun is that during the range changes we often have a selection of cheese and biscuits enhanced by a good sampling of port. This time as a guest shooter we saw the return of Steve Dunn.
Yes the rain did fall, but this was usually only luckily during the range changes so sheltering under the gazebo from the rain gave a good excuse to give the port glasses a top up. I will admit that I surprised myself with the fact that out of 108 arrows I only missed with 7, which though still leaves room for improvement but still only missing the target twice at 60yards was a big feet for me, though not sure why I seemed to miss the target the closer it got. But it was the second highest score of the day, and if we go by longbow rules and go by some longbow shooting rules I would have won on hits.
But I would like to offer an extra congratulations to Elise Smith for achieving a 3 gold end. Which is a big achievement......or at least it is for me.
After the Windsor it was time to shoot the knights, three knights (an archer, a knight with a small round shield, and a more armoured knight with a large kite shield).
This is where we split into teams and shot at each knight in turn gaining (or losing points) depending what part of the knight we hit, whether weapon, head, body or limbs, shields were classed as misses. Though my team didn't win it was still fun to shoot at something more than a five coloured target, and French knight makes the hits an awful lot sweeter.
Though tonight a tragedy has befallen, one of my ravens has died and will not be able to fly again. With a side contact with the boss stand the pile broke and now the shaft is too short. Its always kinder to let it travel back with its flock so they know it too and I often find that they fly truer at least for a short while to honour the flocks fallen member.
So with this tragic news I come to a close. I shall leave you with not an archery quote but one by Edgar Allan Poe:
Quoth the Raven,"Nevermore."
