Balbardie Archers

Debbie McGee, Jedi Knights, Arrow Spines, the Wife Swap, the Wind, Shiny new Toys and Gravy…

 

 

Season2 shoots 1 through 4

 

The Indoor Bit – Debbie McGee and a Jedi Knight

Hey folks, it’s been a loooong while since my last blog so I thought one was well overdue. The 2010 Outdoor Season ended for me in September at Balbardie at the Eastern Area Champs where you may recall I finished my novice season with a PB of 947 for a FITA – missing my target of 1,000 but sharing my journey along the way. I had never intended to blog through the Indoor Season as I had a hunch I would be just too busy. In the end this would be right.

 

Over the Indoor Season I did a lot of work for the Eastern Area setting up and running a new Junior League with great assistance from my able assistant Debbie McGee (well OK it was Bill). In addition to this I was delighted to help our club out as we ran two new beginners courses with many a new member signed up. Finally along with Mark, Iain and Gilbert I qualified as a Level 1 coach. This led to a significantly reduced numbers of sessions practising which was further compounded by some awful weather leading to many cancelled club nights. The net result of all this was that I developed a few form faults which became quite ingrained and led to my scores dropping – nay plummeting like a loosely held bow from an archer (okay me) who has forgot to put his finger sling on - over the Indoor Season. To be honest there was a time in March when I shot a 400 odd on a Portsmouth (130+ points down on my average score not my PB), my ring finger on my drawing arm was wrecked, my bow arm had horrendous tennis elbow and I just thought “that’s it I just can’t be bothered anymore”, it’s true folks my archery got so bad in the Indoor Season el Presidente was ready to quit shooting for good at the March AGM.

 

So what happened? Well about a month before the end of the Indoor Season Obi Wan Murray came over to me and said “ use the force Kev” – well OK not quite he started to tell me all about the benefits of practising (with a bow not a lightsabre) at short distance with your eyes shut to develop the feel of the shot. Sure enough two of my good shooting buddies Gilbert and Donald confirmed the success they had with this technique (UNDER SAFE AND CONTROLLED CONDITIONS) and were amazed how good their groups got. Anyway Murray told me that I was “getting in the way of the arrow” and “don’t worry about it I’ve been there before and it’s pretty lonely but we’ll sort it”. The he just told me to shoot lot’s of arrows walked away and said nothing whilst he watched me shooting for about 4 ends.

 

Murray then proceeded to demonstrate that I had developed a couple of faults that were throwing off my grouping and that the poor results were wrecking my confidence, which made the faults worse and so on creating a horrible cycle. We worked on the loose A LOT, I don’t know how but over the indoor season I had lost any pretence of a controlled expansion, it was basically pulling the string to the clicker, waiting a long time until my brain said (SHOOT NOW) and then wrenching the string through the clicker and letting go with the fingers plucking the string in all manner of interesting directions but seldom back the way in a controlled fashion. This helped explain why I could maybe shoot some good arrows a lot of mediocre arrows and many bad arrows in any given round. My confidence just sapped as everyone else’s groups tightened over the Indoor Season and I was still regularly hitting blacks and blues on any given round despite practising as much as time would permit.

 

So I had to relearn how to loose, drawing the string and then expanding subtly through the clicker. I did as best as I could at this over the next month and gradually my groups improved firstly by eliminating the really horrid arrows and then blues disappeared and then 8s etc. By the end of the season I finally achieved my first C Class score (most of my shooting buddies had achieved that by Christmas) but it was too late to put together another two and gain my C Classification.

 

Outdoor Tinkering – Arrow Spine

So the Outdoor Season started with abandon, I got myself an extender, V bar and twins to supplement my long rod stabiliser. I was also working with a much reduced draw length because Murray was convinced that was part of the reason I had been dragging through the clicker. The net result of all this was that even with the limbs fully wound in and me holding 45lbs on my fingers my Navigators just couldn’t reach 90m without aiming at the top of the flag – no surprise really if you look at last season’s blogs. I was hoping that I might have made it because we had wound in the limbs fully adding about 4lbs over the winter however the reduced drawlength must have cancelled out the benefit because my bow sounded like an unhappy croaking, galley as I drew it and the arrows were still only achieving 180 feet per second. To give you an idea we got Gilbert to shoot my arrows from his bow (similar set up) pulling to the same draw length and whilst his ACEs were hitting the gold mines were falling about 5m short of the target – and I couldn’t move my sight anymore.

 

So we knew it was the arrows, sure enough a quick check of the Easton charts confirmed that at the Arrow Length I had my Navs at were working out at 388 grains. An equivalent set of ACEs were only 287 grains – i.e. they were 26% lighter.

 

I tried lightening the points and even cutting the arrows a bit to lighten them. Unfortunately both of these actions made an already overstiff arrow intolerably stiff and they were just untunable. I eventually accepted defeat and new that I’d have to buy myself some new arrows so with my birthday in mind (June – so it was somewhat early ahem) I sucked it up and bought a new set of ACEs which Murray help me cut and tune over the course of a sunny evening. WHAT A DIFFERENCE, what I hadn’t realised until now was just how forgiving arrows with the correct spine could be. I could see my groups at 30m improve enormously and that was with some pretty ropey looses, I guess I just hadn’t realized how much I was being punished before when I had a mediocre loose. Sure I was able to get some much better scores at the end of the Indoor Season with my Navs at 18m but I was a sweating wreck at the end of the shoot and I still struggled at 30m when we went outside. With the ACEs I got away with a lot more and suddenly I understood what Gilbert and Donald were saying all indoor season when they said a bad shot is now an 8 (well not for me it wasn’t guys it could easily be a 1 or a miss but now it felt like that a bad shot probably would still be an 8).

 

So after Shoots 1 and 2 I got my shiny new ACEs. To summarise the eventual changes to my bow set up and equipment since the last outdoor season were as follows:

 

1. using the Beiter knock system rather than dental floss so as to avoid the string/serving compression problem I suffered with the nocks last year.
2. Improving the stabilizer system to include an extender, v bar and twins to supplement the long rod.
3. Swapping out my 480 Navigators for 620 ACEs.
4. Dropping down the draw weight on the bow from 45lbs on the fingers to 39lbs.
5. Using spin wings rather than vanes.
6. Buying my own spotting scope.

 

FITA 2.1 Eastern Area Double FITA Star, 14^th to 15^th May 2011 (shot prior to purchasing my new ACEs).

- The Wife Swap

 

For those that remember the weather this Spring April and May seemed to have done some kind of weird wife swap, we had two glorious weeks in April when I wasn’t shooting (Patio building – yaay) and then May (normally a relatively safe(ish) bet in Scotland) was a howling gale for most of the month.

 

So FITA no.1 was up at Penicuik and I can honestly say that the weather was absolutely horrendous. The vast majority of the field were down by 100 to 200 points and there were a large number of retirals. How did I get on?

 

90m

50 points – Seriously I hit the boss about 50% of the time in the wind and even that was basically aiming my bow somewhere into the air above and to the right of the target. The thing is I actually didn’t get phased by it because the wind was so bad it was almost funny – only one Gent in the whole recurve field broke 200 and I counted 6 MB archers beneath him.

 

70m

124 points - Well at least I could aim at or to the side of the target now J. I spent most of the time just trying to figure out how far to aim off and it showed. Sure the rest of the field were struggling too but this was a poor performance on my part. Again though I just didn’t bother about it because there was nothing I could do about the weather and any form issues were just getting accentuated by my overheavy and out of tune Navs.

 

50m

156 points – Same story as 70 to be honest I just couldn’t group them at all.

 

30m

Although I normally step into 30m with a bit of trepidation because of last season’s consistent ability to underperform at this distance on this particular day I didn’t really care. It was still blowing a gale and everyone just wanted to get home. I was therefore somewhat surprised when I turned in a 290 which was 8 points better than last season’s PB of 282. I’m not by any means saying that this was good shooting however in the wind and at my least successful distance I was pretty happy to shoot a PB.

 

Total for the day:

Target Score 1,000                              Actual Score               620                             Prior best 947

 

OK it was a shocker – my lowest ever score at a FITA, I’ll put it down to lack of outdoor practice, the wind and most importantly me. However I honestly was very happy because of the 30m score and to anyone in the club reading this thinking that Archery competitions seems like self inflicted torture I would say to you that the beauty of the FITA system is that you get five opportunities to win really (the overall score and the four different distances) and in case you are wondering no I’m not deluding myself - to me a win is setting a PB – I can’t really dictate how the other competitors will shoot.

 

 

FITA 2.2 – the Wind

So Gilbert picked me up on what was an equally rubbish morning and by the time we got to Penicuik we half convinced ourselves that it would be cancelled. Certainly looking at the target list and the lack of scopes on the line one would have been forgiven for thinking this however a small but committed (pun intended) band of archers set themselves up for Day 2 of the fun.

 

90 & 70m were 165 and 206 for a total of 371 for the long metric which was still sub par but a significant improvement on yesterdays 50 and 124. 50m seemed pretty similar with a 226 posted which was 70 points up on the previous day.

 

30m

OK so based on yesterday’s PB I was well up for shooting this distance now.

End 1 – first arrow in the 6 followed by two 8s a 9 and two 10s – total 51

End 2 – 10,9,7,10,8,7 – total 51 this game is starting to be fun.

End 3 – 9,9,8,X,9,6 - a huge gust blew my bow arm off target giving me a 51 again.

End 4 – 10,8,8,9,8,8 – total 51 starting to fight the wind on every arrow now.

End 5 – 9,8,8,X,6,6 – 47 the two blues were a real struggle in the wind, lot’s of coming down and resetting.

End 6 – 9,8,7,9,8,2 – I was up for this and I really was determined to concentrate in the wind and get my 300 for the first time. The wind was pretty strong by this point and people all down the line were resetting. I shot arrows 142 and 143 for a 9 and an 8 giving myself 30 seconds to shoot the final arrow of the day…and the wind kept puffing, having already blows several houses (ok tents) down. Twice I reset because the wind blew the arrow off the riser (stupid flappy clicker). So with about 5 seconds to go I reset came to draw and just wrenched the arrow into the 2, the problem was that the arrow hit the 2 about a third of a second after the judge blew for time over (her opinion and I had to concede I was past the whistle – archery is a game of honesty above all things I think). I looked round at my fellow target companions who all gave a collective groan because we all knew that it is the highest arrow that get’s discounted so suddenly my 43 became a 9,8,7,Miss,8,2 for a 34.

 

I hadn’t done the maths before the start of the end but it turns out I wasn’t on for the 300 because of the 2 anyway but if the 9 had counted I would have got a 294 and raised my PB – still them’s the rules..

 

Target Score 300                                 Actual Score               285                             Prior best 290

As I said – stupid wind, stupid flappy clicker, stupid Kev…

 

Total for the day:

Target Score 1,000                              Actual Score               882                             Prior best 947

 

I was actually pretty happy, the weather still sucked and I’d brought my score up by a good whack on day 1 cutting the 127 point day 1 lead the guy ahead of me had to 16 points on the aggregate score. OK so the last arrow in the wind was a total mess but my standard of shooting at this distance had improved a great deal on the first season.

 

I should also mention that my shooting buddy Gilbert got his 1,000 point FITA star on this day too – well done mate – thoroughly deserved!

 

Gilbert and I attended a York in Glamis a few weeks later which is set within the grounds of the castle and must surely be the prettiest ground on the circuit. The wind was horrendous, as we drove though the gates and up the road towards the castle you could see lots of stately trees which had been blown over and cracked into horrid shapes by the gales. In the ends the shoot got cancelled after 8 dozen arrows because two bosses blew over and quite a few arrows got smashed (none of them mine). It was so windy I can’t really say I learned much that day other than if you are walking back towards the shooting line after collecting your arrows and your tent is suddenly 10m further away than it was last end it is time to collapse the shelter and put it in the bag.

 

FITA 2.3 – UK National Series, Penicuik 18 June 2011 – Shiny new toys

90m

164 – this was still a struggle to be honest. I was trying out my shiny new ACEs so I couldn’t blame the arrows anymore. I just had a lot of poor arrows and ended up with a miss on every end which is just not good enough.

 

70m

End 1: 9,8,8,7,7,5 for a 44 – Good start, sightmark confirmed pretty quick.

End 2: 8,7,7,4,4,4 total 34 – Hmmm not sure what happened on the three 4s but let’s forget them.

Ends four and 5 were 46s which is good for me.

End 5 – X,7,6,6,6,5 total 40 – meh.

End 6 – 7,7,6,6,5,3 total 34 - a poor last end, just couldn’t hit the gold frustratingly.

 

Target Score 250                                 Actual Score               244                             Prior best 259

Down by 20 points or so on where I should have been.

 

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

End 1: 7,5,5,8,8,7 total 40 – A poor first end, not sightmarks though just post lunch inactivity I think.

End 2: X,9,4,10,7,7, total 47 – better much better

End 3: 10,9,7,8,6,6 total 46 – again keep it up.

End 4: 8,8,5,8,7,6 total 42 – Stupid 5, bad shot move on.

End 5: 7,7,7,8,8,8, total 45 – no great arrows but I’ll take the score.

End 6: 10,8,7,9,6,6 total 46 – The first three made up for the last :D

 

Target Score 250                                 Actual Score               266                             Prior best 248

A new PB, no jolts and felt very confident – I was happy with this, the key thing for me was that I did not let 50m scare me the way it did last year and that after the 5 in end 4 I just forgot about it and moved on.

 

30m

End 1: 10,9,9,10,8,3, total 49 – a good first end for me, first arrow sight mark was wrong though.

End 2: X,9,8,9,9,8 total 53 - this is solid, no worse than a 9 though please.

End 3: 9,9,9,X,10,9 total 56 – I love this game

End 4: 10,8,6,X,8,7 total 49 – unhappy with the 6 and the 7 which were down to a lack of focus.

End 5: 10,9,8,X,8,8 total 53 – keep it going…

End 6: 9,9,8,10,8,8 total 52 – hmm I’ve shot better but I didn’t blow it at the end though.

 

Target Score 300                                 Actual Score               312                             Prior best 290

Loving it – finally broke though that 300 barrier and I didn’t feel like a wreck at the end of it. It just felt like fun!

 

Total for the day:

Target Score 1,000                              Actual Score               986                             Prior best 947

 

Yup you guessed it – I still didn’t break the 1,000 point barrier largely because of my sub par 90 and 70m scores. Still I set PBs at 50m and 30m and broke my overall PB by nearly 40 points. I went home thinking, if I could just practice a lot more at the longer distances and maintain my short metric scores I really would have no problem getting my scores up a good bit. So goes the theory anyway.

 

 

Shoot 4 a York – Pentangle, Kilwinning 19 June 2011 – MMMM Gravy

 

The next day was new territory. Gilbert and I along with Margaret from the club had qualified to represent the Eastern Area at the annual inter area shoot between the three Scottish Areas and the two most northerly English Counties – the shoot collectively known as the Pentangle. I picked Gilbert up early in the morning and we headed off to Kilwinning to an unfamiliar ground for the shoot. The weather was OK and a rather large weather vane (which handily also produces electricity – always wondered what they were for at our ground) made it pretty easy to tell what way the wind was really blowing if like me you get a bit suspicious of that little flag on top of the boss at times.

 

For those in the club that haven’t shot a York before it is a different type of round to the usual FITA you read about in my blog. Importantly rather than shooting 36 arrows at each distance you shoot 6 dozen at 100 yards, 4 dozen at 80 yards and 2 dozen at 60 yards. You’ll note that all distances are measured in imperial measurements not metric. Finally 5 zone scoring is used (e.g. a gold is always a 9 – you can not get a ten) and the face size remains at 122cm at all distances. In summary it’s still archery but there are enough differences to make it a different experience on the day from shooting a FITA.

 

I had no real benchmark for my scores on this as I’d never completed a York before – the scores aren’t really that comparable to a FITA because of the imperial scoring system however there is a clever calculator you can use for your total score which calculates a FITA equivalent at the end.

 

100 yards

End 1 – 5,5,1,1,1, M - 13, really struggled in the wind, I couldn’t figure out where to aim off leading to lot’s of poor arrows.

End 2 – 9,5,3,3,1,M – 21, another poor end with only one good arrow.

End 3 – 9,5, M, M, M, M – the first MMMM I’d had at competition in a good while – as great a sound as it may be on a gravy or coffee advert it ain’t much fun in an archery competition.

End 4 – 9,7,7,5,3,1 – 32 – Angry Kev does not do gravy…

End 5 – 9,7,7,7,7,5 – 42, …he eats gravy for breakfast…

End 6 – 9,7,5,5,3,1 – 30,…no wait a minute that doesn’t work…Doh!

 

Anyway we were given a fairly decent break for food/drink etc. (not a Bisto product in sight I swear) and then cracked on with the remaining 36 arrows at 100 yards.

 

My ends went 13, 14, 26, 23, 25 and 38 – other than the last one I was unhappy with all of my performances. I’m not sure if it was having too long a break or because I’m so used to moving to 70m after the first session but I have to say I found 100 yards a struggle all in.

 

Total Score 291

 

80yards

End 1 – 9,9,7,5,5,1 – 36, other than the first sight mark shot I was happy enough.

End 2 – 9,7,7,5,3,3 – 34, hmm not a step in the right direction.

End 3 – 9,9,9,9,7,7 – 50 – this is it we’ve woken up now here we go…

…but apparently we’d already gone I finished off with ends of 40, 34, 32, 32 and 40.

 

Total Score 298

 

 

 

60yards

End 1 – 9,7,7,7,7,1 – 38, same story with the sightmark, I’d been off all day.

End 2 – 9,9,7,7,7,5 – 44, meh

End 3 – 9,9,7,7,7,5 – 44, extra meh

End 4 – 9,7,7,7,5,3 - 38, uncharacteristic for me but I think my focus had kind of gone at the end to be honest.

 

Total Score 164.

 

 

Total Score for first York 753.

 

Analysis – Hard for me to say much on this as I had never finished a round before. I’m in two minds about the York round to be honest – if you shoot well at 100yards on the day they are great as you only need to hit the outer gold for a top score each time. However if you are struggling on the day like me then 6 dozen arrows (i.e. half the round) at 100 yards seems like a long process.

 

We did the FITA conversions and it turns out I scored a 932 FITA equivalent which is useful progress on the early season but a bit disappointing to be honest. Gilbert however scored an 1130 equivalent which is a fantastic achievement – well done my friend.

 

As an team Gilbert and I along with John Purdie from Crief managed a 3^rd place Gents Recurve of the 5 Areas (and top Scottish Area) which we were happy with for our first proper York and team event. Gilbert also scored a very creditable 4^th place. The Ladies did even better with Margaret, Caroline (Bannockburn) and Jen (EUAC) winning Ladies Recurve Silver and Margaret and Naomi (EUAC) winning Ladies Individual Silvers in Recuvre and Compound respectively.

 

Lots of practice in July will be had for the next Tournaments which are the Scottish Champs in August.

 

I’m off to watch Star Wars with my Sunday Roast and lashings of Gravy…

 

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…

This was my first FITA double (two FITAs one day after another with the aggregate scores combined) and the clubs 20th Anniversary shoot to boot so I was very excited about the weekend. A huge thanks have to go to Josie and both Senior and Junior David Herds for all the effort they put in to organising the competition – Josie was working on this all week!

At the Wednesday beforehand in practice I shot really well- My first 50 end at 90m. 70m was also good and was well on the way to a 500 for my half FITA (i.e. equating to a 1000 for a FITA) however the Sun got painfully low as I started the 50m and 30m distances wrecking my score for the round. This wasn’t just me, everyone had to call it a day at that point.

On Thursday those brave souls that turned up to mark out the field marked it all out. I actually found this quite interesting to see how it all worked, it certainly made me realise that paying to go to another clubs competition is extremely good value for money because they do this all for you.

Friday was a quick sighter check taking advantage of our marked out field and a bit of an epiphany. I figured out for the first time why my 90m sighters were giving me issues. Because my arrows are overstiff for the bow they land further to the right the longer distances thus as I shoot my usual half FITA and come down the distances I raise my sight and move it in towards the riser. However the first thing I do at the next club session is drop the sight back down from the 30m mark to 90m but I haven’t been moving the sight back out to the right again – hence bingo the arrows aren’t hitting at 90m. So goes the theory anyway and I’m sticking with it.

On the Saturday I got there for 7am and helped set up the field, it was raining and would do all day – Yaay!

As it happened I was on the same target as Murray and Jim Buchanan from Monklands – a nice Guy.

Practice

I Triple checked my sight marks and stepped onto the line brimming with confidence - off we go. Two misses then a hit right at the top of the boss. I move my sight up and got everything on to the boss. In the second end I got five out of 6 on the boss and note that my sight mark from yesterday was too low. All in all pretty happy that I’d learned the windage lesson from the night before and was starting to at least understand my 90m hoodoo.

90m

End 1: 7,6,5,3,3,Miss. For a 24. My sight pin is about right but my grouping is just rubbish compared to last night. Ends two and three were very similar at 27 and 26 respectively.
End four: 8,8,6,3, Miss, Miss – The last three shots were horrible, I could see and feel the bow step or kick to the right as I shot the arrow – I focussed really hard to make sure I wasn’t pulling my bow hand away…
End 5: 6,6,5,2, Miss, Miss for a 19 – I am shooting with no grip on the riser to avoid adding any torque on release but the bow is making a pronounced kick to the right on release every time. This puts me in a tough spot – I want to correct the fault but don’t seem to be able to so I have to work with it and aim left so that the bow jumps on to the target on release – predictably this leads to poor scores owing to the lack of precision involved.
End 6: 9,6,2, Miss, Miss, Miss – again I can’t stop the bow kicking. I’ve never come across this before and it’s pretty demoralising. Murray noted that I collapsed on the end, meaning I had no proper form on the shots and was pretty much just giving up as the arrow left the bow. I never thought about it as I did it however that is the value of having somebody else see you shoot. Subconsciously I was just giving up and wanted to get the last end at 90m out of the way because of the bow kick thing. OH MY GOD unfocussed Kev had returned and for some reason was practising the Time Warp* with his bow hand!!!

*Nb for our younger readers the Time Warp is a “dance type activity” which is ritually played at Weddings and Christmas parties and has lot’s of “cool moves” (ahem) – ask your Dad to show you the moves at the club next time you are there, we’ll call it a warm up exercise :D

Target Score 200 Actual Score 138 Prior best 159
Stupid Bow…


70m

Right then – big internal chat needed: Angry Kev was found lurking somewhere in the food bag in Murray’s tent and was coaxed out to play with a banana. After feeding my archery alter ego we punted Unfocussed Kev into the 5 a side cages to annoy the footballers (ah if only) and settled down to some “serious” shooting.

End 1: 9,7,5,2,2,1 for a 26 – hmm hardly great but all on the boss.
End 2: X,7,6,6,5, Miss for a 34 – should have been 40+ but for an awful kick on the last arrow… damn it Kev this is no time for 70s Musical/Rock/Opera to return to your shooting regime.
Ends 3,4,5 and 6 were all pretty similar at 40,40,39 and 40 – all with three good shots balanced out by three bad shots.

Target Score 250 Actual Score 219 Prior best 259
I couldn’t really control the bow kick consistently and it showed but at least I maintained some focus.

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

End 1: 8,5,2,8,6,2 total 32. Hmmm I was definitely focussed but I just couldn’t stop the bow kick. This was followed by a similar end of 32 and then a disastrous end of 17. At this point I knew that 50m was just going to be ugly no matter what I did. I spoke to Murray and Tom who were sheltering in Murray’s tent alongside what seemed like half the shooting line and they also confirmed that they were having a mare. This didn’t really help my current predicament but at least I knew I wasn’t alone.
End 4: 7,3,1,8,6,5 for a 30 – just not really happening…
End 5: 10,6,5,10,8,7 total 46 – a good end with two great tens, I can’t say what I did better here the bow just didn’t kick on those two particular shots.
End 6: 5,3,3,8,7,5 total 31 – I was unable to repeat the previous two good shots and trudged back to the tent wet but surprisingly chipper. Most other people were moaning about their scores, I knew that my 50m was awful and decided that my goal for the day was still to have a good 30m and try and put in a score that was at least better than my first FITA.

Target Score 250 Actual Score 187 Prior best 235
Hmm – actually my worst ever score at 50m – as I said I was resigned to the fact it would be based on the lack of golds and reds. All I could do was clear my mind and set myself up to do the best I could at 30m.

30m

End 1: 8,8,7,8,8,7 total 45 – my first shot was 12 o’ clock high in the 7, after that I was able to adjust and get everything a bit closer. I was happy with this because it normally takes me about three arrows to get it right so some progress there.
End 2: X,8,8,9,8,6 total 49 – better scores but my grouping wasn’t really there and I got a horrible kick to the right giving me a 6.
End 3: 8,8,8,8,7,6 total 45 – a bit frustrating there were no gold to improve the average – again my grouping just wasn’t; there.
End 4: 8,7,7,10,9,6 total 47– stupid blue… Angry Kev decided we would finish with a flurry and break 100 for the dozen.
End 5: 8,8,7,10,9,8 total 50 - better, much better – c’mon my son…
End 6: 9,9,8,8,8……3 – I bottled it on the last arrow for a 45 as Angry Kev packed up a bit prematurely in search of another banana presumably fed up listening to the time warp going over and over in my head…


Target Score 300 Actual Score 281 Prior best 277
Well given my performance over the day and in particular at 50m I was pretty happy to shoot a PB at 30m – still need to raise my score by 20 points but I’m creeping up towards that 300 number. The last arrow was a bit frustrating but to be honest given the whole bow kicking nonsense all day (I still suffered from this at 30m) I wasn’t too upset.

Total for the day:
Target Score 1,000 Actual Score 825 Prior best 929
Knowing Murray was picking me up at 6:30am tomorrow morning I went home and got organised. I dried off all my kit before repacking it and made up my lunch before changing the alarm from six to 5:45 – giving me an extra 15minutes in case I needed it.

Day 2:

06.11 – “You do realise you set the alarm to 5:45pm last night” said my wife as I awoke to the cat stomping up and down on my chest and noisily making it known that he did not approve of me shooting all day if it meant that breakfast was going to be 11 minutes late.

Anyway after sorting out Stompy with a pouch of Whiskas and some water I nabbed a quick shower, got dressed and grabbed my kit as Murray arrived.

When we got to the field for setting up we noted that the rain had gone (hurrah) but the wind was blowing… Now to be clear the wind was blowing very strong – so strong in fact that the trees were about 30 degrees towards horizontal – not so strong however that our ever rocklike Balbardie Wind Turbines were moving. Nothing, Nada, not an inch – surely they must qualify for the biggest paperweights in the world?

Anyway this was to be my first competition where I shot a double FITA. So I was quite intrigued by the concept of how I would do compared to yesterday. By the time the field was set up Murray announced that he wasn’t shooting today because the wind would play havoc with his back. I respected this (no point in getting an injury for the sake of archery) and got ready to start the fun all over again. I had been thinking about the bow kick thing a good bit and reckoned it was something to do with my loose. However in practice I wasn’t able to sort it and so resorted to an elastoplast technique of holding the riser a LITTLE more closely in my hand – i.e giving it no room to kick. For clarity I KNOW THIS IS WRONG however I needed a solution for the day and this seemed to be the only thing that worked.

Sighters were interesting as a lot of archers really struggled to get any real group in the wind. I treid Simon Needham’s advice of visualising the colour of the wind and compensating for it accordingly (it seemed blue to me for most of the time but occasionally it really wasn’t and I overcompensated).

90m

End1: 7,3,2,2, Miss Miss total 14. Same problem really with the bow kick.
End2: 9,8.8.7, Miss, Miss total 32 – getting better but no consistency.
Ends three, four five and six went 15,27,32,19 respectively. I went from ends where I was happy enough to just spraying them around the target. I had to keep it relative though - when speaking to other archers they were all the same – Indeed at one point Tom Whalley was literally giggling because the conditions were so poor.

Target Score 200 Actual Score 149 Prior best 159
Well an improvement on yesterday.

We shot one end at 70m during which Jim Buchanan from Monklands had an equipment failure and his arrow flew very low and to the right and then the bow wrenched out of his hand (followed by a small exclamation of “tut, tut this weather is most vexing” – I paraphrase) and then the shoot was cancelled because of the strong winds. For safety reasons this was absolutely the right call however I must say I was disappointed because despite the fact I was shooting with an elastoplast solution to my Time Warp shooting I was enjoying myself because I was up on yesterday (and I knew nobody else would be) and I was starting to learn how to shoot in the wind.

Anyway all was packed up and the scores eventually totted out.

Notably David Herd grabbed 2nd in the Gents Compound with Jim Buchanan from my target getting 3rd.
Murray stepped in as Lord Patron (we felt he had to do something to earn his bacon roll). Matt Nowicki from EUAAC shot a great double to win the gents recurve.

When it came to the last senior award I heard Murray say “and the kn*bs award goes to our very own Kevin Young from Balbardie – which I figures was Murray’s way of handing out the wooden spoon for the worst score. I sheepishly accepted my prize and only realized he was genuinely congratulating me for the novice award! Anyway we had a good laugh about it and set off into the sunset (we’ll ok we dashed into the car before the wind blew us about even more).

Positives - No equipment failures
Unfocussed Kev stayed at home mostly.
No bleeding fingers or any other injuries
Learned (sort of) how to read the wind
Learned it really doesn’t matter and to keep shooting anyway – tenacity for the win…
PB at 30m
Better than my first FITA
Somehow bribed Josie into giving me the novice medal.

Negatives - Shot like a lemon
- Now have an uncontrollable desire to watch the Rocky Horror Picture show

Next shoot – West of Scotland Championships, looking forward to it - I’ll be there sans Time Warp…

Chairman’s Blog 13 June 2010

My Second FITA… The off the shoulder look doesn’t combine well with gold…

OK so for those that read the previous blog we’re a month on from my first FITA. What have I been doing for the past four weeks you ask? Checking my equipment each time I shoot, taping my ring finger regularly to avoid any more blood blisters and training as much as my work life will permit for the next shoot. What format has that training took – a mixture of two things really: 1 Working on my loose to improve my consistency – thanks to Bill McKay and Murray Elliot for their coaching. 2 shooting a half FITA two times a week against my perennial lefty shooting partner Gilbert Jamieson. Thanks to Gilbert must be given here, the constant friendly rivalry has done a lot to improve both of our scores. For those that don’t know a half FITA is exactly the same as a full FITA (i.e. for Gents 90m / 70m / 50m & 30m) but with only 18 arrows at each and not 36 arrows. Although there is a fair bit of moving the boss around Gilbert and I have found that this is easily achievable in an evening or Sunday Morning shooting session. I like it because you get shooting practice at all four distances and at only 3 ends per distance it’s a fast moving fun substitute for shooting a full FITA. One final advantage is that packing up is quicker because if you keep moving the boss it starts out at 90m and ends up at 30m. Anyway all of this training was being done in preparation for my second FITA hosted in Stirling by Bannockburn Archers.

So I arrive at a grey and drizzly field at Stirling and set up my equipment. The dreich weather doesn’t dampen my spirits as I’m really committed to breaking through that 1000 point hurdle today and smashing my first attempt of 760. Also I found that I was shooting beside Tom Whalley for the day which meant that I had a friendly face to shoot beside alongside the ever friendly George Blythe from Bannockburn whom I’d met before.

Practice
The hurtling enthusiasm train is quickly derailed after 12 out of 12 straight misses. I always find this really disconcerting at 90m. In the past month at club practice sessions I have been working hard to make sure I get that reassuring thump one and a half seconds after loosing the arrow, I know the arrow is in the boss and when I check the scope I can adjust accordingly. In the past two weeks this has been no problem, typically 11 out of 12 arrows at least would hit the boss. You can sense then how I started to get into a state of panic when none of my arrows were even hitting the boss in competition, and I had triple checked my sight mark.

90m
Helpfully Tom noted that my arrows were all flying high and to the right (it was difficult to tell in the rain) and so I could then start adjusting my sight accordingly and scraped an 8,6,4,3, Miss, Miss for 21 on the first end.
Ends 2 & 3 were a 31 and 24 respectively I couldn’t concentrate and started to worry about how I would catch up my scores.
End 4: my concentration was getting pretty low at this point: four blues, but I couldn’t see them all through the scope. The reason? two of them were on the adjacent target sitting directly below David Herd’s collection of golds and reds. A 6,5, M, M, M, M led to an 11 and I decided I just didn’t care any more and remember saying to Tom and David I was considering going home.
End 5: 9,7,5,4,4,1 – feeling like a prize idiot I just shot arrows and didn’t care for an end score of 30.
End 6: 9,8,7,7,5,5 - a 41, my best end at that distance, a good recovery but way too late. I suppose I learned Murray’s lesson from the coaching session at the Grange that if it is all going wrong just shoot some arrows and say to yourself: “who cares it’s only archery”.

Target Score 200 Actual Score 159 Prior best 95
very frustrating because I know I can shoot much better in practice.

70m
I knew I had beaten my previous FITA 90m score and shot a good last end so I told myself that there was no way that I was quitting and that even if a 1000 points was going to be a challenge I would give it my best shot and thrash out a PB. Learning the lesson from 90m I moved my sight relative to my sight mark and started anew.
End one: 9,7,7,6,6,6 for a 41. I was happy enough with this, I knew I needed 42 an end to get my 250 target for this distance and the first end is always a little lower owing to the inevitable fine tuning of sight marks.
Ends 2,3,4: a 39,38 and 39 – again I was happy enough with these scores as I became very settled after a poor 90m. There were too many 5s instead of 7s but I just tried to stay cool.
End 5: X,10,9,8,7,6 for a 51. My best of the day and my confidence flooded back, the key thing on this end was that I just relaxed on each shoot and said to myself “you can do this”.
End 6: I decided “right I’m going to break 250 and do it in style by shooting a 6 gold end”. Arrow 1 – 9 just outside the 10 at 10 o’clock (oh well I thought I can’t get a 6 gold end but at least let’s get them all in the yellow stuff). Arrows 2 and 3 were 9s both within two inches of arrow 1. Arrow 4 drove into the group made by the first three for another 9 and then arrow 5 dropped 4 inches below to score a 9 at 7 o’clock. I could see Tom looking at me at this point because both he and I had obviously seen them through the scope. Sadly the pressure got to me and I dropped my bow hand on release to give me a 7 at 4 o’clock (remember I’m a lefty) for a score of 52. I was actually dead chuffed with this (I’ve never shot above an end above 50 at 70m in practice never mind a competition) but was somewhat confused when Tom pointed out that I just missed my six gold end badge by one arrow. I thought I needed 6 arrows in the 10 at either 90m or 70m but apparently six 9’s would have sufficed – DRAT. “Never mind I’ll get it at the next competition” I said grinning like a Cheshire cat as we walked back to the shooting line.

Target Score 250 Actual Score 259 Prior best 190
very happy, a massive turnaround from 90m and as it turned out the best gents recurve score on the day at that distance with the exception of Tom himself who was defending champion from last year.

With no equipment failures to deal with this time round and my fingers not killing me I was able to enjoy a relaxing lunch chatting to Tom who himself had a solid 70m and was setting himself up well to defend last year’s win and set a new PB.

50m (shot in ends of 3 but I’ll count them as six to keep it going)
End 1: 7,7,6,8,8,6 total 42. For a first end I was happy with this, I started off high right and then gradually moved the sight to get into the red.
End 2: 5.5.Miss, 10,6,6. A gold and a miss – a bizarre end, not sure what happened to be honest but I just didn’t feel confident after the Miss (second arrow).
Ends 3,4 & 5 were a 40, 45 & 41 – which showed a recovery to that 42 target I needed to give me the 250 score.
End 6: I don’t know why but I found my bow hand floating much more than usual (I assume this was down to me being tired because it is not something I usually suffer from). Anyway a 10,7,3,5,5,5 was all I could manage and I was really TRYING very hard to keep my bow hand still and hit the gold.

Target Score 250 Actual Score 235 Prior best 206
Definite progress made from my First FITA however I was a bit gutted not to get the 250 because of two bad ends.

30m
I reckon the judges were trying to get home to watch the World Cup because the pace of the shooting really picked up at this distance. You still got the permitted 2 minutes per 3 arrows however we were shooting one wave and not two and the judges were pretty sharp on blowing the whistle when you got back to the line so for me a key lesson I taught myself pretty quick here was to have your tab and sling on your fingers whilst you walk back from the line so that when you get over the line you just pick up the bow and shoot – otherwise you are losing 10-20 seconds of valuable shooting time.
End 1: 6,5,5,9,9,8 Total 42 – a bit too soft for my first end, bearing in mind I was looking for 50s this was giving me a big deficit.
End 2: 9,8,7,9,8,6 Total 47 – not bad but still sub 50.
End 3: This was a new one for me, my chest guard had slipped from my shoulder down my arm. Normally I just shoot through this, I’m confident enough in my machismo to shoot sporting an off the shoulder look…
However this time when I was shooting all I could think of was the chest guard, I was actually having a conversation in my head at half draw which went something like this:

Focussed Kev “Stop drawing the bow you lazy fool and sort out your chest guard”
Unfocussed Kev “Quiet you I’m trying to aim this thing and there’s too much noise”
Focussed Kev “Seriously you idiot how smart is this, you have time to come down and restart”
Unfocussed Kev “Easy, done it loads of times, just shoot the thing and we get home quicker for a beer”
Focussed Kev “You know you really should be concentrating on the sh…TWANG”

The result of my angel on the shoulder conversation led to my string catching the chest guard horribly and my arrow flying way off target and off the boss. After conducting my walk of shame I scored for a 9,7, Miss, 9,7,6 (38) and learned my lesson. Unfocussed Kev was duly punished later when I forced him to drink Cider rather than beer (punishment in moderation you know…)

End 4: A 10,9,8,10,8,8 for a 53 – my best of the day – amazing what you can achieve when you shoot the bow rather than converse with yourself whilst drawing it!

Ends 5 & 6 were a 45 and 52 respectively.

Target Score 300 Actual Score 277 Prior best 269
Idiocy, OK I was not quite on track to hit the 300 mark but that chest guard shenanigans cost me dearly.

Total for the day:
Target Score 1,000 Actual Score 929 Prior best 760

Winner for the day was Tom who improved on last year’s score with an 1128 so I was very happy for a deserving champion. I managed to avoid coming last this time round so there was some improvement in that respect.

Despite not hitting the 1,000 on this occasion I was delighted with the end result which was a big jump forward for me. My fingers weren’t bleeding and my bow behaved itself so these were all positives. I’m still not clear what I was doing wrong in practice at 90m and that worries me because I like to know how to fix something if it isn’t working. However 70m was great fun and 50m and 30m were ok despite two bad misses. Next FITA is our own Anniversary competition in July (which I hope as many of you as possible are entering) where I can assure you that I won’t be shooting off the shoulder and I’ll be trying to leave Unfocussed Kev at home…

El Presidente

As some of you will know I entered my first outdoor competition yesterday. As a novice the rules permit you to shoot at reduced distances in your first year so any budding competitive archers in the club shouldn’t be put off by the distance factor. 
However as I have gone off and bought my new toy and very much have the archery buzz at the moment I have set myself a goal of shooting a FITA 1000 this season. To explain what that means a Gents FITA round comprises the following.

36 arrows at 90m on a 122cm (full boss size) face. Max Score 360
36 arrows at 70m on a 122cm face Max Score 360
36 arrows at 50m on an 80cm face Max Score 360
36 arrows at 30m on an 80cm face Max Score 360
Total Max Score 1440

Compounds and Recurves shoot the same round. For Ladies the round is the same but the longest distance is 70m and the 90m is replaced by a 60m round. For Children and Novices the distances reduce (max 50m for example).

To illustrate the difficulty involved you gain a classification based on what you score (you have to do this three times but the concept is the same) which for Gents recurve is as follows:

	3rd	2nd	1st	BM	MB	GMB
FITA (Gentlemen)	481	716	885	1065	1190	1259

There are also awards available such as FITA 1000 star, 1100 Star, 1200 Star and 1300 Star which you gain as you achieve these scores. Hence by setting my sights on the 1000 number I am trying to achieve my FITA 1000 star and gain a 1st class Ranking which is approaching the BM (Bowman score).

In terms of expertise, in our club Murray is the only Bowman class recurve archer and is pushing for MB (Master Bowman) this year which would include him in the top 4% of competitive archers. In case you are wondering Scotland only has one Gents Recurve GMB (Grand Master Bowman) Simon Needham who is an Olympian and has been the Scottish number 1 for about twenty years now.

Finally to get a 1000 points on a FITA you need to typically shoot the following scores at each distance:
90m: 200, 70m: 250, 50m: 250, 30m: 300.

OK how did I get on then?

Pre- shoot
I arrived at the competition and registered which pretty just means confirming your name to an official at the table and showing them your GNAS card so that they can confirm your insurance. After that you look up your name on the target list to find out which target you are on (kind of like a seating plan at a wedding but without all the bridesmaids and kilts). You then find yourself a place on the line close to your target number and set up. At this point you enter a tented village at the back of the line where everyone has set up their respective shelters from the wind. Going to my first competition I didn’t have one of these so I just plonked my stuff down in a suitable place beside the folding chair I had the forethought to bring. Newbies should have nothing to worry about here there’s no requirement to bring a tent or anything else, I guess people are just used to the weather in Scotland!

So after you set up your bow and traverse the jungle of guy ropes, travel rugs and thermos flasks you will see a lot of archers chatting and being friendly and generally not doing a lot of warm ups (not much difference from a club day then). You will be called to the inspection line where basically the Judges need to make sure your draw weight is safe (compounds) and that all your arrows match and have initials and that your bow and tab don’t give unfair advantages, apparently mines would in fact do much the opposite but more of that later.

After that you get on the line and shoot some practice arrows (basically like sighters but as many arrows as you can shoot in 4 minutes). There is no maximum on this so I imagine our very own Gilbert Jamieson could easily get through his entire collection of arrows in this time 

After practice you get called up onto the line and shoot a six arrow end. One thing you’ll note is that a lot of people are using scopes, however because these take up space the etiquette seems to be that you leave it on the line if possible and share so I shared with a fellow left hander and used his scope. This is a good method for keeping the line free and also letting those that don’t have scopes use someone elses (reducing cost).

90m
End one: 9,7,2, Miss, Miss, Miss. Arrows are way too low which I assume is the wind (it was quite blustery).

End two: 8,4,3, Miss, Miss, Miss. Despite aiming much higher I’m still not getting anywhere, and start to wonder whether my arrows think that they are actually apples trying to prove a point on gravity for Isaac Newton.

End three: As I load my arrow I notice my clicker has moved forward to the end of the clicker plate. I then spend ends 3&4 adjusting my clicker to find the correct drawlength.

End five: having found the correct clicker position my arrows are still flying way left on the target, I continue adjusting my sight but to no avail. Eventually with the sight nearly fully wound out I am aiming halfway towards the adjacent target in order to hit mines. A friendly passing judge by the name of Bill McKay enquires as to why I am moving my sight pin in the opposite direction of the error and I confirm that I am indeed an idiot. Having never done this in practice it shows you what the Clickergate incident had done to my head by this point.

End six: 9,6,5, Miss, Miss, Miss. Between readjusting the clicker and the sight I manage to struggle 20points on my last end out of a target of 33.

Target Score 200 Actual Score 95 

As a team you now grab the boss and stand and move it forward to the next distance and confirm off everyone’s scores for the distance. Then you have a 20 minute break and off you go again. I spent this time making sure my clicker was screwed down really tight and getting my sight in the right place. And yes I managed to do this in an expletive free fashion that did not involve racket abuse.

70m
End one: 4,4,3,2,2,1. a lot of whites as I struggle to get used to the wind.
End three: 10,10,8,7,5. Having remembered to move my sight the correct way I finally hit a gold. At this point I notice the fourth finger on my string hand is really hurting from a blood blister I’d developed over the course of the week through all the practice. Thankfully Murray had a first aid kit and I strap up the offending finger and ignore the pain GRRRR 

Clearly the part where I ignore the pain doesn’t register in the part of the brain that controls my loose as my arrows start to fly in all sorts of interesting directions towards the target making my scores drop again pretty rapidly. Interestingly I also manage to nock enormous lumps out of my bracer (seriously I’m talking inch square holes) for the next three ends as well and wonder why I am paying to do this…

Target Score 250 Actual Score 190 

After moving the target and listening to lot’s of advice about button tuning from well meaning individuals (cheers guys but seriously I’m not going to do it in the middle of a competition). One of the other Judges commented that my form was fine but that I was applying torque to the string with my fingers which was causing the string to smash into my armguard at a horrendous angle and also causing the arrows to fly in such entertaining patterns.

On closer inspection the platform on my tab had twisted at a great angle and was causing me to seriously pinch my string. I borrowed a leatherman and got to work on the tab thinking right, we’re sorted bring IT ON!

50m
Buoyed by my newly adjusted tab and cup a soup (OK let’s face it by this point I’d reached for the chocolate). I set about the 50m target with new hopes.

End one: 5,4,1, Miss, Miss, Miss. The Second shot was an almighty crack as my arrow left the bow and dropped less than delicately at my feet. I got a bit of a fright and realised that my arrow hadn’t been knocked properly and nearly dryfired the bow. Clearly the rest of the end I spent bottling it from pulling the arrow through the clicker.

End Two: 10,9,7,5,4,3. Happy enough but something doesn’t feel quite right.

End Three: 9,9,8,8,7, Miss. I notice that my arrows just won’t knock properly, basically the serving between my knocking point had compressed to the stage where the arrows were very loose (one arrow an end was dropping off on the line). I manage through to the end of distance trying not to think about just how bad my equipment was behaving today and seek out the sage like Elliot for advice.

Target Score 250 Actual Score 206 hmmm

After finding Murray huddled around a stove and describing how much he was looking forward to a bottle of wine that evening (by no means was I the only archer having a less than great day in terms of shooting) we concurred that an emergency fix of dental floss over the serving between the knocking points would suffice to give my knock something to bond upon.

Helpfully the blood blister from earlier had now burst so between the blood from my fingers and the dental floss my string now looked more like an instrument of torture than my friend however we had a brief chat and I explained to it that if it let me shoot 36 more arrows in a relatively painless manner (both figuratively and literally), I would reward it by putting on a new serving and making it look pretty again.

30m
End one: 8,7,6,6,4,3. Thankfully at the two shorter distances you only shoot 3 arrow ends so between that and the fact you can see your arrows land you can adjust your sights much more quickly.

Ends two and three I started to improve my scores up to the 45 mark.

Ends four and five I kept nearly everything in the red and nudged it up to the 47 mark.

End six: 10,9,9,8,8,7. A 51, my best end of the day and a good one to finish on (my target was a 50 score end).

Target Score 300 Actual Score 269 happy enough considering the rest of the day
Total Target 1,000 Total Actual 760 (ahem…)

Conclusion

At this point you pack up the bosses (just like a club day for those that wonder what happens to them if they leave early) and sign off your score card. You then pack away your stuff and watch the great tented village disassemble itself back into the boots of various cars.

Clearly I wasn’t in the running and my hand was a right mess at this point so I wasn’t hanging around but several others would to receive their richly deserved medals. I swapped war stories with Josie, Murray, David and Struan and then headed off into the Sunset (it was indeed a glorious evening).

On the way home I reflected on whether I enjoyed it. To be honest After 90m: No, after 70m I was getting pretty frustrated, 50m felt like nothing else could go wrong but 30m – yes I’ve got to say it was great fun. Finishing on a good end was a great feeling and I’m totally coming back for more. Angry Kev is back but this time he’s packing a first aid kit and dental floss. Bring IT ON!!!

El Presidente