Balbardie Archers

OK so FITA no 4 was up – the West of Scotland Championships in Milngavie. Training for this consisted of lots of half FITAs and the purchase of a new cavalier clicker (affectionately known as Clicky), the type you place on the sight bar to accommodate for my overly long and overly stiff arrows.

Clicky only arrived on the Wednesday before the shoot so I had to take a bit of a guess in terms of the position. I shortened my draw length by about an inch and I must say the Time Warp bow jump disease immediately went away. Guru Elliot believes it was because my overly long draw length was causing me to place way too much tension on the bow just to get it through the clicker (admittedly it was more of a wrench than an expansion) and this was causing the jump to the right. I was delighted with this, hopefully Richard O’ Brien was banished from my technique for good.

It was my turn to drive this time so I duly printed off the route and map etc. and picked up Murray at 7:15am.

“we don’t need that – move into the 21st century and embrace technology” said Murray as he started to charge the Tom Tom from the cigarette lighter and we loaded the car up with his gargantuan archery case, freshly returned from a successful tournament that week – well done mate by the way!

After following the ever calm and strict female voice of Tom Tom (or should that be Nag Nag) for about 50 minutes we duly arrived at our destination (or so she claimed). Apparently Clyde Archers were running the tournament in the driveway of some poor soul’s cottage that had been visited by about a dozen other strange cars that morning already. We decided to give Tom Tom one more chance to redeem herself and 5 minutes later agreed that no matter how pretty the lawns looked it was also unlikely we would be shooting down a monoblocked cul de sac at wheelie bins. Reverting back to the medieval technology that is a map we found the place on the third attempt and got ready for the shoot.

My shooting partners for the day: Derek McAulay, David Lainge and Mark Smith – all tournament regulars and really nice people.

Practice

The organisers very generously gave us 40 minutes for practice (three ends). As I loaded my first arrow I knew something didn’t look quire right… I came off the line and rushed back to my bag so that I could screw my button in and then got on the line and shot 5 arrows. Left, everything was way left which was even more confusing given that my 90m shots are usually way right. After one end I knew it wasn’t just my string picture or windage and went back to basics. Sure enough my centre shot was materially inside the stabililser. I’m not sure how but whilst transporting my bow my button must have moved about 3mm and it was making a big difference at 90m. I identified and fixed the problem myself and consulted with Tom and Murray who agreed it looked “about right”. Completing this piece of precision tuning I then got in another two ends of practice and got a half decent sightmark.

90m
End 1: 9,8,8,7,5, 1. For a 38. Everything was still a little left, but I adjusted my sight accordingly.
End 2: 10,9,8,7,7,2 for a 43 – happy with this.
End 3: 8,7,5,5,3, Total 28 – I was getting settled, a little too settled I shot my last through the clicker for a lousy 3 and knew straight away that unfocussed Kev had to be banished – silly man.
End 4: 10,7,7,5,3,3 Total – 35 – back on track, a couple of low 3s – presumably must have dropped my hand…
End 5: 6,5,2,1, Miss, Miss Total 14 – Low, really low, like really incredibly low.

As low as having two of Gilbert’s ACEs in your quiver whilst you are on holiday in Canada for a month while the rest of us search the field every week and then eventually accept they are a sacrifice to the arrow god (not guilty by the way it was another committee member). As low as gluing spin wing fletches to a car aerial to improve aerodynamic efficiency (again not me). So low… anyway you get my point… my arrows were limbo dancing and thought the bar was set at 6 in the blue. I knew something a bit more radical than moving my sight down was required. As I knocked my 6th arrow I noticed that Clicky had jumped forward half an inch on the sight bar – no wonder!
End 6: 9,9,8,4,4,3 total 37 – I had the forethought to have marked the line on my sight bar where Clicky should reside so I was able to reset it and carry on. I walked away with an acceptable end considering.

Target Score 200 Actual Score 195 Prior best 159

What can I say – hacked off that Clicky cost me my target of 200 on End 5, however actually pretty positive about life given I increased my distance PB by 36 points and was only 5 off my target.


70m
I was looking forward to this, I’d had my best 90m to date and 70m is my favourite distance so I was feeling pretty positive despite the clicker issues on End 5.

End 1: 7,7,6,6,5,3 for a 34 – everything was still a little right and Clicky was making one hell of a rattle.
End 2: 7 – then Clicky died, the clicker rod fell out of its holder and plummeted to the ground.

For those that haven’t shot in a competition before this is known as an equipment failure (sounds a bit Scotrail I know but that’s what they call it). The procedure is to take two steps off the line and hold your bow in the air. At that point a judge will come over – ask how many arrows you have shot and then give you a wee while to fix the problem. All I needed was to place the rod back in it’s slot and tighten a grub screw up which I must have overlooked when setting it up last week. The ever equipped (ok I appreciate that sounds really rude but that’s not what I mean) George Blythe from Bannockburn had the allen key for this job (yaay) and it only took 10 seconds or so to fix. Now for the fun bit… because I had had the equipment failure I was 5 arrows behind everyone else. Once the second wave were finished I was invited onto the line and given 3 minutes and 20 seconds to shoot my arrows – whilst everyone else gets to watch. This isn’t really a problem at your own club but with 50 odd people there some of whom are International level archers I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t practising a few bum clenching excercises as I stepped onto the line.

Anyway I was determined I was going to do these 5 arrows right and took my time executing each shot as well as I could, they all felt great so I didn’t bother looking through the scope – particularly with everyone else watching.

The remaining 5 arrows were in a good group but all to the right, 6,5,5,4,2 for a total of 29 – not that great really. As I walked off the line Alistair the judge congratulated me on shooting all 5 arrows in 2 minutes. For all our club members that moan about the slow shooters on 90m on a club night (and yes I accept I’m the slowest) it just proves my point really that it’s the scope that slows you down not the archer…

Ends 3,4 and 5 were a 36, 38 and 37 which all had 3 good shots and 3 mediocre ones. Hmmm.

As I stepped onto the line for end 6 Angry Kev gave me the “let’s make this a 6 gold end” speech – I shot an X,9,9,8,7,6 for a 49. Clearly not a 6 gold end but it’s amazing how much you can improve your scores sometimes with a bit of aggression!

Target Score 250 Actual Score 223 Prior best 259

Frustrating… I really enjoy 70m but just couldn’t get it going today.

Over lunch I asked our seasoned archers how they were getting on and was greeted with the following responses:
Murray: “Meh”
Tom: “Naah”
David: “Mmm”

Unfortunately I didn’t see Josie to add a female perspective but it did make me wonder whether our lot thought they were competing in an archery contest or auditioning for a Clannad tribute band.

I’m told that after shooting for years in these competitions you tend to respond in sounds rather than words unless one’s shooting is good – not being fluent in 80s Irish prog rock lyrics I therefore assumed that things were not going entirely well for team Clannad.

Anyway I told Tom I was dead chuffed with my 90m but a bit hacked off with my 70m. This season 50m has always been my mental barrier distance because of the jump down to the 80cm target face but angry Kev decided we were going to man up for this and smack it about a bit (no dreamy celtic music here – eye of the tiger for me!).

50m (shot in ends of 3 but I’ll count them as six to keep it going)

End 1: 9,7,2,9,7,7 total 41 - not quite what I was looking for but much better than my usual first end at this distance.
Ends two three and four were 45, 42 and 42 respectively – lots of reds and a blue but just couldn’t get the gold.
End 5: 8,7,6,7,5,4 total 37 – last arrow shot through the clicker – idiot.
End 6: 6,5,4,7,6,5 total 33 – I convinced myself that the last arrow from End 5 didn’t matter and to shoot like it never happened I really did (honest Murray!), however both angry Kev and focussed Kev seemed to have departed early (there was still a Kit Kat left in my bag) leaving unfocussed Kev left to shoot – and we all know his favourite colour is blue…

Target Score 250 Actual Score 240 Prior best 235

Ah well a bad last end wrecked it but it was still a PB.


30m

End 1: 10,6,6,9,7,7 total 45 – my first shot was 7’o’clock low in the 6, after that I was able to adjust and get everything a bit closer. 45 equalled my first end on my third FITA at this distance so this was ok.
End 2: 10,10,8,8,8,8 total 52 – much better grouping, much happier.
End 3: 9,9,8,9,8,6 total 49 – I prematurely clicked, by which I mean I was at full draw but hadn’t centred my aim on the gold yet, however rather than expanding for the lats 2mm of the shot Clicky did his little shout and I released for a 6 – Doh!
End 4: 8,6,3,10,9,8 total 44 - Not content with one error this time I actually shot through the clicker on my third shot sending me low and left into the black, Clicky severed a fletch in the process as a statement of his disgust. Reinvigorated by the Kit Kat Angry Kev had a chat and decided we weren’t finishing this end with anything less than three golds. As is often the case Angry Kev’s expectations were a tad higher than the final result but I was happy with the last three arrows considering the third shot.
End 5: 9,7,6,10,8,7 total 47 – not a great end to be honest, I just kept sliding them into the red rather the gold…
End 6: Angry Kev: “6 golds sunshine, stop being a wus and do it!”. Score 9,7,4 (another shot through the clicker ARRRGHH), Angry Kev “Seriously is that the best you can do then?” 9,9,7. Hmmm a last end of a 45 was pretty disappointing given that I shot through the clicker again. Angry Kev stormed off in the huff which is always a good thing as he isn’t that great at Maths and I had a lot of scores to add up for the four archers on our target.

Target Score 300 Actual Score 282 Prior best 281

What can I say – I shot through the clicker twice and didn’t hit enough golds – it’s that simple. Angry Kev did his best to turn around a few bad arrows but I should have scored at least 10 points higher, ah well a small improvement!

Total for the day:
Target Score 1,000 Actual Score 940 Prior best 929

Lot’s of fun – I thoroughly recommend Milngavie as a place to shoot because the facilities are very good. In terms of my performance I was frustrated with myself at 70m because I know I can do much better and there were about 12 arrows over the course of the day that were just errors on my part. However as a positive other than in practice I kept everything on the boss (althoug I still had 3 misses at 90m – stupid clicker). Also I managed to get PBs at 90m, 50m and 30m so there was definite progression there (albeit only by a point in the end at 30m!). Overall I felt much more comfortable shooting today, there were no instances of the Time Warp going on and when something went wrong with the bow I was able to identify it and fix it. In that respect Clicky and I have an agreement that I’ll respect him and not shoot through him if he respects me and stays in the correct place. I’ve still not broken that 1000 point target yet but I’m inching my way towards it.

Next shoot – A Double FITA at the Scottish Championships. Clicky and I will be doing a lot of training in the interim so look out 1000 point target you will be mine…