Archery Challenges – Week 1

Welcome to a new season of archery challenges!

At Lough Cuan Bowmen, archers are engaging in a series of unconventional shooting challenges for prizes of myth.

Each week – more or less – archers can endeavour to win an arrow of myth, a trophy to ordain their quiver with. As the prize is something you would expect to see within the quiver of a champion, so the challenges are designed to be just wicked.

Week 1 was the Phoenix Fletched Arrow: a powerful arrow with the malevolent energy of the magisterial phoenix residing within it. To some this is hardly a natural state of affairs, for a portion of an eternal and immortal beast’s power to be pilfered and fixed into an arrow. For others it’s just progress and discovery within the natural world we live in.

Either way, one of these revered arrows was up for grabs in last Friday’s archery challenge.

For the opening challenge, therefore, any archer competing had to be under no illusions; pitfalls, learning curves, and guile are main themes, from which each challenge shall be forged. For every good arrow, there will be something lurking around the next corner to rob the archer of that joy, obscure rules through which the archer must negotiate their shots, and traps aplenty to cut through scores, and hobble momentum.

Thus, something familiar to the archers was taken and warped before their eyes, to stretch their moral fibre.

A 60cm FITA target, ordinarily found in static target rounds, such as a Portsmouth for example, was chosen. Ten target rings, and thus the potential for large scores. I couldn’t have that.

In keeping with the nature of the prize, only the yellow and red rings were valid scoring areas. Each archer could score either, 7, 8, 9, or 10. So, the potential for big scores was still sort of there… Except that the blue rings would gut the archer’s score through minus points. That’s -5, and -6, set to ruin a good run. And to increase the deviousness of the challenge, the white and black rings were not only invalid, but should the archer hit any of these four outer rings, they lose that arrow from further use.

To clarify, the rules:

• FITA target, 60cm at 15m
• Each archer begins with 3 arrows
• After 3 ends, the archer with the highest score wins
• Red/Yellow are the only valid scoring zones
• Blue rings are minus points to be subtracted
  • i.e., 10, 9, -6  would be 10+9=19, then 19-6, for an end total of 13 points.
• Black/White means the archer loses an arrow, reducing how many they have to shoot

Of course, the distance is whatever the host wants, and I didn’t want to risk everyone getting eliminated in the first end. That, and as everyone had been shooting at 18m all evening, I decided to throw them off just a tad.

Within this challenge, there were five barebow archers, and one fellow with an Asiatic recurve. The youngest archer was thirteen, and the oldest was… Well, over forty, and I’ll leave it at that. There was even a fellow ginger too!

After the first end, the targets resembled colourful, flattened hedgehogs. Scores were varied to say the least with no one escaping either minus points or losing arrows for future use. From my point of view, I’d certainly call this a good start. The archers competing would likely disagree.

Interestingly, each archers’ accuracy had fallen from the 18m shooting I had seen earlier. I will brag, happily so, about the talents of these archers; Travis has an unshakable focus, hitting high scores on further away field targets; Lucie – perhaps short for Lucifer, I don’t know – rampaged through the Archery GB Indoor Badges; Michael boldly utilises artistry within his shooting, favouring an Asiatic bow and wooden arrows; Elli can adapt her shooting faster than any archer I know, identifying and correcting mistakes swiftly; Kyle is immune to the effects of sour weather during field rounds, his shooting unaffected; Eve, after joining the club, moved onto the longer targets, gliding across the distance undaunted, to land high scoring arrows at 18m and beyond; and Jessica is tireless, with a will that burns as hot as any phoenix.

When adding the weight of scoring, or the potential to achieve something to a round, some archers waver whilst others can be emboldened. For those competing in this challenge, I believe that each archer became distracted, their focus no longer so sharp, blunted by the loaming blue rings and the disaster within them.

Terrifc!

When it came time to work out the final scores, not one archer had anything above 0. Rather, the winner, our boy with the Asiatic recurve, Michael Lewis, had a total of -5 points, or rather a deficit of -5 points I suppose. Though, it had been a tight shoot off, with only a few points between the archers. The lowest score was -11.

That was week 1, the phoenix fletched arrow going to Michael Lewis.

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