Jackpot Taken!

It's taken three years, but a complete beginner at our Archery Have-A-Go booth at the Findon Summer Revels potted three Knights on Horseback and carried off the £5 prize. In the first year, at Burpham, one of the local farmers had about six attempts to hit three Rooks and never succeeded, and nobody ever hit three, and only a very few got two knights or rooks -which entitled them to a free go. We thought we'd managed to get through the day without paying out, but this time we met our nemesis, who in the last minutes of the fete stepped up and first won himself two free ends by hitting two knights twice over; THEN he hit ONE knight three times, and when we jokingly said he should have hit three SEPARATE ones, he only went and did that too. How many of us could do that barebow with no practice?

Summer Selby begins...

Before the Winter results have even been published, it's time for the Summer Postal League to begin!

After last years Longbow success we have gone up the divisions so will be needing even better performances this year!

Recurve A - Division 5 (1625 points) unchanged
Recurve B - Division 13 (1315 points) down 1
Longbow A - Division 6 (430 points) up 2
Longbow B - Division 9 (335 points) up 2

Longbow shoots are on Friday nights, Recurve the following Sunday, as last year. I've tried to set the dates to avoid any other shoots, but if there are any clashes do let me know. Dates for the shoots are as follows:

Recurve - Short Metric round (3 doz. at 50m, 3 doz. at 30m - 80cm face)
19th May
16th June
14 July
18th August
22nd September

Longbow - National round (4 doz. at 60 yrds, 2 doz. at 50yrds - 122 cm face)
17th May
14th June
12th July
16th August
20th September

Looking forward to seeing you all put in some great scores next Sunday!!

Unashamedly Naked

In spite of the endless and very cold winter, several members have been finding out what it feels to shoot Bare - but sensibly limiting the bareness to their Bow (so far as we know). This all started out with Max shooting B/B very impressively, followed by Steve wanting to try some B/B Field. Now Doug is probably going to do most of his archery Barebow, and we've been joined by Michaela who's followed her daughter Sidonie down the Barebow (and Traditional) route.

On a freezy and snowy day in March Steve, Rob and Rod attended a Field Archery Seminar at Furnace Wood near East Grinstead, which was intended for Coaches. Prior to this Seminar we'd been in touch with Steve Baldwin, a well known Barebow Archer and former National Champion (and current Regional Indoor Champ) and arranged for him to visit in April. Barebow is primarily a Field Archery style, and it was really informative to see how Steve dealt with the extreme differences in distance and ground-slope.

(As usual, click on the images to enlarge them)

 

We also were given demonstrations and a lot of insights from the current Recurve and Compound County Champions Ken Burge and Gary Cole, and Peter Damon talked us through the principles of Course Design.

 A couple of week later Steve Baldwin came over to Angmering and got 14 of our members shooting without sights, clickers or extended stabilisers. Wisely he started us off indoors before shoving us outside to get a taste of the skills needed to shoot close and distant targets. For the next few weeks several of the group carried out experimenting, with Doug becoming a true convert. Darren and Max already were.

Rob wasn't at Steve's Session, he was back at Crawley coaching their archers...

A month after Steve Baldwin's Introduction came the chance to try it out on Eastbourne Archer's Field Course at Five Ashes near Crowborough. Those who went had a great time and learnt a lot more. Several who would have liked to go were unable to (it was the Bank Holiday weekend), but we have an invitation to go back, so look out for more news of the next trip out.