Archery - Matt's Progress

[Matblack]

Well on Saturday I went for my first archery beginners lesson at Ferryfield Bowmen near Maidstone and what a nice day it was.

I turned up to the ground (a large rubgy ground of the locally successful Aylesford Bulls team), the ground has a good sized and well appointed car park and a big club house. When I got there there were plenty of cars around but no one in immediate view but I soon located the archery field where about 10 butts were set up at various distances, some a very very long way from the archers!

On the walk over to the field I took the chance to observe what was going on in case I wanted to make a hasty exit! The sight of 20-30 archers lined up on the shooting line is an odd feeling as if it summons up some ancestral memory of battlefields, except most of these archers shoot with candy coloured bows adorned with all sorts of technical aids, the closer you get the weirder this equipment looks, some of the bows sport telescopic sights, wheels and cams, balance rods and bars; others are so simple that they are nothing more that a bent piece of wood with a piece of string, but more of those later.

I was met by Tony the club tutor as well as a number of other members some who were there to shoot others who were part of the administrative force populated by spouses and parents of the shooters. Because of the danger of very sharp sticks shot in a way originally designed to kill animals or people that safety is taken very seriously, almost as seriously as the scores and people who aren't roped in to keep the records keep their eyes open for passers by.

Everyone seemed very friendly, archery seems to cover a full spectrum of ages and backgrounds and is accessible to under 10s as well as over 60s and you can shoot a £50 club bow or spend 1000s on a fully spec'd Olympic recurve or technical hunting compound bow.

Tony soon had me kitted out with a tab (protects the fingers when drawing the string), arm guard (protects the bow arm from getting wacked by the fast moving string) and a quiver. Selecting a bow proved harder, I needed a tall bow to allow for a long draw but one which wasn't too hard to draw. Bows come with different limbs (the bendy bit) which start off around 16lbs and go up to stupidly tough to draw weights which can impart huge forces to the arrow and send it 100yards and beyond accurately! For those not in the know 100yards is a VERY long way to shoot an arrow into a relatively small target, from that distance it is hard to make out the rings, let alone hit the gold in the middle. If you can pull a heavier draw weight then sending the arrow this distance will be possible, all you have to overcome then is compensating for it dropping height during flight but effectively aiming above where you are shooting. Needless to say I won’t be shooting 100yards for a very long time if ever. I ended up with a bit of a compromise between power and length but good enough for a beginner and I’ll stick with the same bow until I need more power or until I am told I need to buy my own, many people at this club use the club equipment for to 6-9 months, others make you buy your own shortly after the beginners course.

Tony started me at 20 yards, the shortest distance a target is usually set up at and after a good safety briefing to make sure I didn’t walk into an arrow travelling fast enough to pass through my considerable bulk or skewer a potential Olympic prospect. Holding a bow is a strange experience, even a cheap one sit beautifully in the hand and balances in a way that holding a weight of it at full stretch isn’t too hard to do, its all very natural until you draw it back. Now I had a light draw bow but even that isn’t easy to draw unless you use the right muscles to do it, rely on the arm muscles and you’ll soon find yourself shaking trying to hold the draw and aim, use the back muscles however and suddenly the action feels right, you’ll shake once fatigued but its possible to draw hold steady and release in roughly the right direction.

Initially Tony had me shooting bare-bow, basically an arrow on the bow, draw the bow, sight along the arrow and release. This is the simplest of archery forms and is a recognised sport in its own right, a pure sport which requires the archer to be totally in touch with his bow and not rely on any artificial aids, adjustment past aiming down the arrow shaft is achieved by compensating on where you hold the string (string walking) but no sights are used. I really enjoyed this part and we shot 6 ends of 4 arrows in this way, none of my arrows missed the target and I was starting to get some quite good groupings which meant that with adjustment I should be able to keep close to the centre of the target.

The beginners program is a set programme put together by the archery governing body the GNAS (Grand National Archery Society) and should be done in 6 weekly sessions, however because I was Tony’s only student we quickly moved onto the second week of the programme.

Probably 95% of archers shoot with a sight and the second week of the course is putting a sight on the bow and shooting with that, changing to a sight means changing technique quite a bit and I found it quite distracting, I’m sure I’ll get used to is but as I was already starting to feel a little tired I found the change caused me to become more tired and we only shot a few arrows maybe 12 before we called it a day.

I’ll be back next week with my own tab and arm guard; I felt that buying a couple of bits would keep me engaged and stop me from going out and buying a shed load of stuff, not something which is sensible due to the changes which can take place in the first few weeks.

I left the field feeling that this is definitely something which I could get into and was pleased at how welcome I was made. Membership of the club provides one other big bonus, cheap beer and Sky sport at the rugby club

MB