April Showers, and wind

The time has come for another look through the Raven's Eyes.

Firstly I am going to start off this month's update with a little moan. Its nothing serious and probably shouldn't bother me, because its something I like and its potentially dangerous.
Cosplay: For those unaware its basically dressing up as characters from cartoons, films, comics, etc. Recently I've been seeing alot of pictures dressing up with bows, mainly due to "Brave", "Archer", "Hunger games" and more. Honestly I quite like it, it looks good and people are enjoying themselves. But what is really bugging me is that they've gone out and bought/borrowed bows, or in some cases made bows, but have done zero research into how to use the thing. Ok I know its for photos, more than anything else, but they've spent along time making the costume quite detailed in some case and when it comes to the bow you get a mixture of having the arrow on the wrong side, holding the string wrong (which in Brave I don't know how you can do that as there is a close up in the film of the main character at full draw), holding the bow upside down, and worst of all, strung backwards, or a combination. The strung backwards concerns me as is can break a limb or the string can just slip of resulting in injuries. The arrow on the wrong side just bugs me, esp as nearly all do the look directly at the camera pointing the arrow at full draw at the camera (hoping this is a camera on timer and not some photographer right in front)
So little memo towards cosplayers, don't go to the extent of getting a great looking costume if you are just going to spoil it by getting the bow (potentially dangerously) wrong.

Ok back to normal, few things have been happening since last update;

Firstly I attended the longbow shoot at Abbeydale, where though I didn't win anything (no surprise), I managed to improve my score from last year, unfortunately we didn't have splat the rat this year, but there was a new game of an extra end at 60yds, but it was the lowest score that one the end. But there was a twist that any misses counted as 10, extra bit of a challenge.

Secondly it was our clubs AGM, which to those not in the club is probably not very interesting. But we have some new faces to the committee, the rules have had a revamp, and I'm once more fixtures sec. Which tbh is a position I like and like doing.

Another longbow shoot improved from last year. This was the St. Georges shoot at Morely, which is a fun shoot as period costume is encouraged. Unfortunately my shirt/tunic wasn't completed in time so I went in modern garb, though it was still fun to see the costumes, and because there are some re-enactment displays there were times we were shooting accompanied by cannon fire. and the smoke drifting over the field. Though have to say no cake and little sherry, tsk tsk. Again it was only raffle prizes that were awarded to me, with the main highlight of the ticket I drew from the bag was one of my own :D

Another highlight of the month was I was able to attend an open talk by Pip Bickerstaff, organised by The Longbow Shop. If you didn't know who he is, he's a well re known bowyer, and came away with interesting bits of knowledge I'd not yet heard and am interested to try, main one being,"With arrows you want 10 grains for every 1lb of draw weight". Though despite his cursing of shooting gloves I will continue to shoot with mine, I prefer it to a tab, and I'm not going to by different types of tabs just to see if they work. But I came away with some signed night time reading material. Downside was I had forgotten about this talk when setting up the clubs fixtures so there was a clash....ah well can't win them all. But it did give me the chance to pick up the boar for our open longbow shoot. If you are a longbow archer and are reading this why haven't you signed up for the shoot?? Entry forms can be found here:
http://www.northcheshirebowmen.freeserve.co.uk/downloads.htm

Well, this update is drawing to a close. Sorry no pictures this month I really must get on with taking some.

But I leave you with this archery saying, from an unknown archer (If you know who it was comment below):

"An archer's creativeness for excueses is only limited by the amount of arrows in their quiver."