John of the Hood

In an effort to maintain my sanity and have a life other than work, I've been browsing through the community education catalog for our fair town. Lots of good offerings, of course. So for fun, I signed up for an archery class!

I had to work on the first night, but the second night I was introduced to a compound hunting bow with peep sights. It was a far cry from the little 10 pound draw bow I shot twenty (twenty-five?)years ago. I found that my form was lousy. But the instructor went from the ground up. Feet placement. Hips. Torso. Shoulders. How to hold the bow. How to draw it back. How to use the sights. Turns out that the shooting fundamentals I learned in the Marines with M-16's transfer pretty well to a bow and arrow. At least those with sights! Once I got the sights zeroed in, I was pretty consistently peppering the center bulls eye with arrows.

During last nights class, I shot the nocks of of two arrows. Then during the third round of firing, I actually planted an arrow into the shaft of another arrow! I asked if I could keep it, but the instructor said he'd just cut the end off and re-nock it. I didn't think to ask for the cut off end at the time, as I was still euphoric at my Robin Hood shot.

Turns out that with a bow like that, I can pretty consistently hit a 2 inch target between ten and twenty yards.

Then I switched to a recurve bow. It is much like a "Robin Hood" bow. Just a curvy stick and a string. No sights. Nada for extras. The instructor ran me through the basics and I fired of a few flights of arrows with that. It was much more challenging. The first arrow I shot hit the bulls eye and the guy next to me said "Jeez, you are Robin Hood!" I then shot the next two arrows completely missing the paper target. My fourth arrow again hit the bull. It was a much tougher bow to aim.

Tomorrow night is our last class. I'm going to shoot the recurve only just for fun. Because while it is very satisfying to see all of my arrows in tidy little clusters, it is much more challenging to shoot without the fancy bow!

More Later