Archery…

Most of the money is in….before paypal & ebay take their pound of flesh I have £598.44 coming my way….

Right..start setting up the auctions for the other stuff..

ooh..tempting…but no..:( I will not fritter it away on more stuff…honest I won’t…

Tonight I shot at 20yds, into (and through on several occasions) a soft boss. The reason for this was to allow me to extract my arrows from the tougher parts without too much trouble. For tonight I was continuing my process of sorting out my bow (see this post for part 1).

The first thing I needed to do was to try and sort out the fact that my arrows are overspined. My starting point was to put one turn on the limb bolts. I shot a couple of ends and found them still overspined so off came the string, one more turn was put on the bolts and then the bow was restrung. By now I was holding about 37/38# at full draw.

The arrows were still a little overspined, but as Marcus is not here to tell me not to do this, I adjusted the spring pressure on my button to compensate. The bareshafts were still impacting high, so the nocking point was adjusted twice, the second being just as everyone was packing up, so I will not be able to judge until Friday.

As I said, I was shooting at 20yds, 9 arrows at a time, 7 fletched, 2 bareshafts, by the end of the evening I was shooting 6 fletched as on my umpteenth attempt at burying my arrows up to the nock finally loosened a fletch. I found that I was getting two distinct groups towards the end of the evening, the first three would go straight in the gold, the second three would impact a couple of inches to the left at the same height.

After a couple of ends of this I examined the way I was shooting and found that I was reverting back to my old method of getting through the clicker. This was by pulling the string round the side of my nose. So I moved the clicker forward about 1/4″, this worked for a few ends and then it occurred again. I think this is a tiredness thing. My clicker positions (one for carbons, one for my slightly longer allys) are marked on the extension plate, I will move it back to its original position on Friday and shoot fewer arrows per end until I am used to the weight.

Once used to drawing and holding the weight I will properly tune the button and make final adjustments to pull the bareshafts into the group, either by slight adjustment of draw weight or by increasing pile weight – my least favoured solution as it costs money, and I can rarely buy just one thing…I’ll get something else ‘ to make the order worthwhile’ and end up spending £100.

My back is moaning at me now, but I’m used to ignoring complaints. I am happy just to be shooting. In a ploy to stop myself tinkering again and again rather than shooting the bow, I have removed all my archery tools from the car and put them in the garage rather than the flat. This way it won’t be quite so tempting to pull it all apart between sessions.

Hurry up Friday, get here! I want to shoot some more…

Today I shot a Windsor round, the last one I intend to shoot this year. I woke up late, after maybe 3 hours of sleep. I thought I was running late, jumped in the bath, got dressed, filled my cooler and left.

The sky cleared as I headed the 10ish miles to Yateley from home, but clouded over again. By the time we started it was overcast, chilly and there was a strong left-right wind across the field.

I wasn’t shooting well. At 60yds I had as many 5′s as 9′s and a handfull of 3′s to boot, we’ll pretend the 1 never happened..ok? I had things on my mind, not least the thought I had offended a good friend. By the time the distance finished I was really quite despondent over the way I was shooting. At the distance change we had a 45 minute break for lunch – a pastie, two cups of tea and a mars bar, since you ask . Over the lunch period the skies cleared a little and the temperature rose slowly.

My shooting at 50yds was kinda mixed, plenty of 9′s & 7′s but also too many 5′s & 3′s * . The skies cleared and I found it easier to enjoy the shooting. Maybe it was because I realised that I wasn’t going to break any records, personal or otherwise, I just enjoyed being there, stood in a field, the sun in the sky, doing something I love.

At the next distance change we had a 15 minute break, my parents had shown up to watch, I bought a cup of tea and chatted for a while until we had to recommence.

Now came the 40yd ends. Because my parents had sat the other end of the line from me, I had to scurry back to take my place on the line for the first detail. Maybe I should scurry more often, that end brought me a score of 52, my best of the day and probably my best in competition, certainly this year.

I stormed the 40yds. I have no remaining records prior to this year with the exception of totals listed at my club or in competition records so cannot say this for absolute certain, but the score for this distance is the best I can recall. I scored 296 for the distance, dropping 28 points.

I didn’t keep a running total during the day, I have found in the past (last week included) and found that knowing how I am doing doesn’t help me in the slightest.

I was given my scoresheet to sign at the end, the total over the distances were 222, 250 & 296 = 768. This represents an increase of 94 points over last week and 162 over my first full round of four weeks ago. it is also only a few points short of my PB for this round, set four years ago.

While it is a long way from the 940 shot today (a new Berkshire record) by one of my clubmates, it represents a big step forward.

Today is a good day to be me.

* In preparation for my shot I nock my arrow, take up tension in the string and then look down at the ground along the line from me to (attempt to) clear my mind of the last shot. During the mid distance (50yds) there was a compound archer on the next target across who found it impossible to hitch up his trousers properly. Every time I tried to set my mind/shot I got to stare at 2″ of hairy arse crack. This is my excuse and I will stick by it.