cave dweller
New member
I've been skimming over these posts from time to time to see what's being said, and unfortunately there's still a lot of things NOT being said, so I'll go off on a tangent here and you can hurl your stones at me when I'm done.
For starters, not everybody wants the heavily regimented, overly structured environment of shooting at a club. Personally I'd rather eat a bowl of my own arrows than go to any clubs and that includes field archery and the lot. The main reasons are down to all the unnecessary "rules" about things that don't actually matter or are none of anybody else's business like dress sense and equipment.
Last I heard there was still some weird dress code for competitions, something like no jeans and no camo, but in the real world I sometimes wear those things when I shoot and it doesn’t hurt anybody, and what's the difference if I wanted to shoot my bow and arrow stark naked? Not that I do really, but most hobby archers won’t like being told there's a damn dress code to a leisure fun activity that is actually much safer than riding a bicycle. And the rules for things such as field archery also take the fun out of it, for instance the insane rules that say all my arrows have to be exactly the same length etc? I make a lot of my own arrows and I doubt that I have any two arrows exactly the same length, type or weight.
Even when I'm seriously hunting game I don't carry around a bunch of identical arrows, I have a selection of different ones I can choose from for differing purposes. I might have arrows with me that are suitable for close range in heavily wooded conditions or for out in the open with a strong wind. I adjust the way I shoot accordingly and choose the appropriate arrows for the job. So why would I not be allowed to do that at a field archery competition?
But people who choose archery for fun, and don’t really care about competing, should be able to have the opportunity to enjoy archery in their own way once they’ve proved that they are proficient enough and mentally sound enough. They should be allowed to go out and have fun within reason, whether in your own back yard or somewhere well away from anybody, like out in the woods or at the seaside or something. What's the harm of letting you actually do it for fun? It’s not noisy, it doesn’t damage the landscape, and proficient, sane archers don’t just go around shooting at people.
Archery is not as dangerous as a lot of people seem to try to make it out to be. Yes it carries some risks, but what doesn’t? Anyway, when was the last time you ever heard of somebody actually being killed at an indoor target shoot? Never- and it's not because of all the over-the-top rule making that keeps us "safe", it's because basically archery, especially at that level, is really pretty safe. Normal, sane people don't accidentally shoot themselves in the head with a 25# recurve, but just try riding a bicycle in heavy traffic where you're perfectly legal to do it and see how safe that is.
Some of us don't want to compete, we just want to fling a few arrows at targets for fun. People drive cars all over the place (a much more dangerous thing than archery) and they have to have a driver's license to legally do it. However, once they have the license they can basically drive where they want. There's not some body of administrators telling them how and where they can do it and lecturing them on their "form" or trying to coerce them into competitions.
For reasons too lengthy to go into here I shoot in different countries. Most of them have a pretty decent legal take on the subject so long as you’re not a dangerous fool. However, in the UK you are treated like a dangerous fool from the moment you pick up a bow regardless of how proficient you can be shown to be. It’s the worst place I’ve ever tried to shoot. The fact is that it’s a combination of the insanely strict UK laws that equate shooting an arrow at a paper target as the equivalent of juggling live hand grenades on a crowded bus or waving an AK-47 around on full auto while blindfolded, and the whole archery club mentality itself keeps a lot of people away from the sport. There’s a lot of people out here who’d be happy to partake of some archery oriented fun but who are put off by the expense and joy-killing complications of UK club archery.
Consequently, even though there’s a smattering of clubs here and there across the country it’s still pretty much a non-sport in an environment where media-fuelled knife crime hysteria reasons that if you make all knives illegal then no drug addicted city kids from a hyped up gang culture will ever go around harming each other ever again, without addressing the real problems.
No, knives do not stab people and people with knives do not stab people either. The chef in a restaurant does not run amok just because he’s got access to some really big knives. But bad people will be bad regardless, whether it’s with knives, spoons, spaghetti or arrows . But that’s not most of us and it’s not reasonable to tar us all with that brush and take away our reasonable freedoms. Not all that long ago people in the UK used to be free to practice archery as they wanted and have fun, and the streets were not awash in gore and corpses. When I was in boy scouts in another country we legally carried knives that would be totally illegal for anybody to have in the UK, but none of us little boy scouts ever stabbed each other with them. I can be reasonably certain that as grownups we’d refrain from shooting each other with arrows too.
Archery just for fun could be fun but due to the turgid insanity of a nanny state gone rogue there’s nowhere in the UK we are allowed to do it. That is what really needs to change or interest in and support for UK archery will never grow and it will only remain a marginal undertaking for the minority of people who actually want a regimented archery club experience.
For starters, not everybody wants the heavily regimented, overly structured environment of shooting at a club. Personally I'd rather eat a bowl of my own arrows than go to any clubs and that includes field archery and the lot. The main reasons are down to all the unnecessary "rules" about things that don't actually matter or are none of anybody else's business like dress sense and equipment.
Last I heard there was still some weird dress code for competitions, something like no jeans and no camo, but in the real world I sometimes wear those things when I shoot and it doesn’t hurt anybody, and what's the difference if I wanted to shoot my bow and arrow stark naked? Not that I do really, but most hobby archers won’t like being told there's a damn dress code to a leisure fun activity that is actually much safer than riding a bicycle. And the rules for things such as field archery also take the fun out of it, for instance the insane rules that say all my arrows have to be exactly the same length etc? I make a lot of my own arrows and I doubt that I have any two arrows exactly the same length, type or weight.
Even when I'm seriously hunting game I don't carry around a bunch of identical arrows, I have a selection of different ones I can choose from for differing purposes. I might have arrows with me that are suitable for close range in heavily wooded conditions or for out in the open with a strong wind. I adjust the way I shoot accordingly and choose the appropriate arrows for the job. So why would I not be allowed to do that at a field archery competition?
But people who choose archery for fun, and don’t really care about competing, should be able to have the opportunity to enjoy archery in their own way once they’ve proved that they are proficient enough and mentally sound enough. They should be allowed to go out and have fun within reason, whether in your own back yard or somewhere well away from anybody, like out in the woods or at the seaside or something. What's the harm of letting you actually do it for fun? It’s not noisy, it doesn’t damage the landscape, and proficient, sane archers don’t just go around shooting at people.
Archery is not as dangerous as a lot of people seem to try to make it out to be. Yes it carries some risks, but what doesn’t? Anyway, when was the last time you ever heard of somebody actually being killed at an indoor target shoot? Never- and it's not because of all the over-the-top rule making that keeps us "safe", it's because basically archery, especially at that level, is really pretty safe. Normal, sane people don't accidentally shoot themselves in the head with a 25# recurve, but just try riding a bicycle in heavy traffic where you're perfectly legal to do it and see how safe that is.
Some of us don't want to compete, we just want to fling a few arrows at targets for fun. People drive cars all over the place (a much more dangerous thing than archery) and they have to have a driver's license to legally do it. However, once they have the license they can basically drive where they want. There's not some body of administrators telling them how and where they can do it and lecturing them on their "form" or trying to coerce them into competitions.
For reasons too lengthy to go into here I shoot in different countries. Most of them have a pretty decent legal take on the subject so long as you’re not a dangerous fool. However, in the UK you are treated like a dangerous fool from the moment you pick up a bow regardless of how proficient you can be shown to be. It’s the worst place I’ve ever tried to shoot. The fact is that it’s a combination of the insanely strict UK laws that equate shooting an arrow at a paper target as the equivalent of juggling live hand grenades on a crowded bus or waving an AK-47 around on full auto while blindfolded, and the whole archery club mentality itself keeps a lot of people away from the sport. There’s a lot of people out here who’d be happy to partake of some archery oriented fun but who are put off by the expense and joy-killing complications of UK club archery.
Consequently, even though there’s a smattering of clubs here and there across the country it’s still pretty much a non-sport in an environment where media-fuelled knife crime hysteria reasons that if you make all knives illegal then no drug addicted city kids from a hyped up gang culture will ever go around harming each other ever again, without addressing the real problems.
No, knives do not stab people and people with knives do not stab people either. The chef in a restaurant does not run amok just because he’s got access to some really big knives. But bad people will be bad regardless, whether it’s with knives, spoons, spaghetti or arrows . But that’s not most of us and it’s not reasonable to tar us all with that brush and take away our reasonable freedoms. Not all that long ago people in the UK used to be free to practice archery as they wanted and have fun, and the streets were not awash in gore and corpses. When I was in boy scouts in another country we legally carried knives that would be totally illegal for anybody to have in the UK, but none of us little boy scouts ever stabbed each other with them. I can be reasonably certain that as grownups we’d refrain from shooting each other with arrows too.
Archery just for fun could be fun but due to the turgid insanity of a nanny state gone rogue there’s nowhere in the UK we are allowed to do it. That is what really needs to change or interest in and support for UK archery will never grow and it will only remain a marginal undertaking for the minority of people who actually want a regimented archery club experience.
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