Hi everybody!
Well the indoor target season is almost over for me. I shot the Welsh Indoor Senior Champs back on January 22nd and scored 555 on a FITA18. This is about 10 below what im shooting on club nights, but was still a 6 point increase on my competition PB and was good for 12th place out of 24 in gents unlimited so I was very happy with the result for my first indoor season with a compound. The next and last target shoot I am down for is an open Portsmouth hosted by Llandaff City Bowmen at thier grounds in St Fagans in Cardiff next Sunday. I haven't shot a Portsmouth yet with compound so whatever happens, its a new pb!
Ahh so as soon as that is out of the way, I can put the indoor target season behind me and get back on the Field archery circuit where I belong.. yay! I'm booked in for the Dinefwr Winter shoot on Feb 26th, closley followed by the Glamorgan Championships at Pentref on March 4th so not long to go now! I have switched back to my ACC's and retuned everything back to them and the bow feels like lightning after shooting heavy 2315's for a while!
I wanted to go up the club this weekend to check my sightmarks hadn't changed and that everything was in good order, and I'd be damned if I was going to let the snow stop me! So I called on one of my archery buddies Chris and drove us up to the club. The roads were pretty clear but the lane to the club was impassable for my little Ka, so we abandoned it down the bottom and hiked up the path with our gear. It was absolutely amazing shooting up there for a few hours, pristine snow, dead calm and apart from us and 1 dog walker not a soul in sight - good quality archery time!
I did a few walkbacks to make sure everything was in line and a minor scope adjustment brought them into line, so I set some faces up on the practice butts and checked my sightmarks from 20 back to 45m as far as you can get there, and they are absolutely spot on grouping nicely in the gold - that'll do for me!
Since there were 2 of us up there, we were able to set up a field target so we dragged a large boss and an 80cm field face out onto the hill and set it up. Somebody has taken the measuring tape reel out of the equipment shed so we couldn't measure it, so saw it as a perfect opportunity to get some unmarked experience! We were walking backwards and forwards to random distances and then practicing estimation/ranging. For the most part it was pretty spot on but I noticed a tendency to judge short compared to when I used to shoot recurve, my first arrows were dropping mid-low 4's with the following arrows corrected and going into the 5 (gold) and 6 (x) rings even back at the extremes of 50-55m at quite a steep angle. I will need to remember that and adjust for it when the competitions come around.
I'm really looking forward to the Glamorgan Championships. Its a FITA 24 Mixed Field round so 12 targets marked, 12 unmarked distances and my Field PB's were always on mixed rounds. My highest score with recurve was 290 - 2 points into Bowman. The threshold for 1st class with Compound is 312 so that is my immediate goal, to get into the first class bracket. Only a month to go so I intend to get back up the club a few more times before then and practice a bit more uphill/downhill and shooting across slopes.
Well the indoor target season is almost over for me. I shot the Welsh Indoor Senior Champs back on January 22nd and scored 555 on a FITA18. This is about 10 below what im shooting on club nights, but was still a 6 point increase on my competition PB and was good for 12th place out of 24 in gents unlimited so I was very happy with the result for my first indoor season with a compound. The next and last target shoot I am down for is an open Portsmouth hosted by Llandaff City Bowmen at thier grounds in St Fagans in Cardiff next Sunday. I haven't shot a Portsmouth yet with compound so whatever happens, its a new pb!
Ahh so as soon as that is out of the way, I can put the indoor target season behind me and get back on the Field archery circuit where I belong.. yay! I'm booked in for the Dinefwr Winter shoot on Feb 26th, closley followed by the Glamorgan Championships at Pentref on March 4th so not long to go now! I have switched back to my ACC's and retuned everything back to them and the bow feels like lightning after shooting heavy 2315's for a while!
I wanted to go up the club this weekend to check my sightmarks hadn't changed and that everything was in good order, and I'd be damned if I was going to let the snow stop me! So I called on one of my archery buddies Chris and drove us up to the club. The roads were pretty clear but the lane to the club was impassable for my little Ka, so we abandoned it down the bottom and hiked up the path with our gear. It was absolutely amazing shooting up there for a few hours, pristine snow, dead calm and apart from us and 1 dog walker not a soul in sight - good quality archery time!
I did a few walkbacks to make sure everything was in line and a minor scope adjustment brought them into line, so I set some faces up on the practice butts and checked my sightmarks from 20 back to 45m as far as you can get there, and they are absolutely spot on grouping nicely in the gold - that'll do for me!
Since there were 2 of us up there, we were able to set up a field target so we dragged a large boss and an 80cm field face out onto the hill and set it up. Somebody has taken the measuring tape reel out of the equipment shed so we couldn't measure it, so saw it as a perfect opportunity to get some unmarked experience! We were walking backwards and forwards to random distances and then practicing estimation/ranging. For the most part it was pretty spot on but I noticed a tendency to judge short compared to when I used to shoot recurve, my first arrows were dropping mid-low 4's with the following arrows corrected and going into the 5 (gold) and 6 (x) rings even back at the extremes of 50-55m at quite a steep angle. I will need to remember that and adjust for it when the competitions come around.
I'm really looking forward to the Glamorgan Championships. Its a FITA 24 Mixed Field round so 12 targets marked, 12 unmarked distances and my Field PB's were always on mixed rounds. My highest score with recurve was 290 - 2 points into Bowman. The threshold for 1st class with Compound is 312 so that is my immediate goal, to get into the first class bracket. Only a month to go so I intend to get back up the club a few more times before then and practice a bit more uphill/downhill and shooting across slopes.