Morning everyone. Last night was the annual coon (night) shoot at the Flagstaff Archery Club. It was a great night and I had some interesting experiences I thought I'd share with you all.
As per the usual, it was 99.999999% wheelie bows, and it wasn't seen so much as them having training wheels as me having a handicap bow. All about perspective.
I get there about 630 and around 7, not dark yet, this man approaches me, telling me how amazing and impressive my bow is. This is my 66", super sleek, minimalistic, thin tips, no overlays, no grip riser, no shelf, bendy handle osage. Most of you know, such a bow does not have a lot of volume to it. It's just a little stick. So he's drooling over my bow and declares 'so what this must be about . . . . 10lb draw'? I grin ear to ear and say softly, sixty-five. I could have left and gone home satisfied with the look on his face at that moment!
So darkness falls and we get into our groups, I'm with three old farts with wheelie bows and all the bells and whistles that go with them. I've not been shooting very long and they know it, they've seen me shoot, I'm still getting there. But three things they are not aware of.
1) I think I'm coming up over the hill on the basic learning curve
2) My new(ish) osage bow is perfectly tuned to my old arrows that used to fish tail. It shoots fast and straight and has helped with #1 above.
3) I'm an instinctive shooter, and darkness is no handicap as long as I know where the target is (and I did thanks to the half dozen high powered flashlights these farts brought)
We get up to the first target, a turkey, 17yards. They all shoot first. Its my turn. They're laughing and jeering. I don't take the 35 seconds lining up my bells like they do, only holding for maybe 1.5 seconds to consciously consider my form. Thunk, hit foam. That shut them up. We approach the target. Somebodies arrow is closer . . . . . .
I ended up missing just about half the targets, but a lot of my hits were 10's and all my misses were by inches. A number of other targets I scored higher than my wheelie buddies.
One miss was of particular mention. I pulled my shot (which I beat myself up about) and hit a rock. It made an epic spark in the dark! Almost worth the miss and busted arrow.
At the end of the night I scored 50/144 points, which as a new shooter, shooting in the dark, as blind as I already am, I'm not unhappy. Not to mention, its common practice for 'handicap' archers to shoot closer, and I refused, determined to shoot at the same distance. Some of them were a bit far out. 35yds in the dark.
There was one other "handicap" archer and I beat him by two points, which gave me a lot of pride as a bowyer as well, as he had all the bells and whistles of the recurve world, and all I had was this crooked bent stick. That put me 1st place in my category.
