Mixed Fortunes

An odd couple of days!
I took the Yew Stick bow up to the club and confirmed, it didn't really perform as well as it should... it was merely ok. As such I'm pleased I decided to keep it as a show/demo bow.
The guys were rather amused with the whistling arrows, but I was met by 'Taxi' Dave who cut a sad figure holding the smashed remains of 'Dogleg'!
If you recall 'Dogleg' was the bow that had a nasty crack across it's belly due to impatient and over enthusiastic heat treatment, it was patched and went on to have 8 months of life at a full 32" draw and maybe a tad over at about 80# . It was one of the bows used on the TV shoot and you may well have spotted its Dogleg kink in one shot where my mate Evan, dressed as a Monk is shooting it.
Anyhow, it's an ill wind that blows no good, so I'll be lending the 100# warbow to Dave to see if he can take it in his stride. I was going to make him a 90 pounder anyway. All in all he won't be out of pocket and I won't be worrying myself silly about couriering replacement bows half way up the country.

This morning one of my mates from the club turned up with some Yew which he'd rescued from a tree which was being trimmed by someone he knew. Should be at least 2 bows in there and maybe a primitive, it will need sorting, the ends painted with PVA and storing away, excellent!

Meanwhile I've been further reducing the Derbyshire Yew stave, it has a few minor drying checks running longitudinally here and there on one limb, but looks in pretty good shape. Hopefully I'll get it up on the tiller for a 'look see' during the week. (first pic shows it with the limb nearest the camera tapered)

BORING RANT ALERT!
At the club there has been some reorganisation to accommodate different shooting styles, clout, target and field. Now I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about how the various archery societies don't mutually cover members of the other societies for insurance purposes during shoots.
Thus as a member of NFAS you can't go as a guest and shoot at a GNAS shoot! (Bonkers!)
This is a total disgrace! The societies are there for the benefit of their members and the insurance companies rake in good premiums for cover. It's up to the societies to ask (nay demand) some sort of guest cover for each other.
Ok you'd need some sort of stipulation like which societies are covered (e.g the local horticultural society wouldn't count) and maybe a limit on the number of guests or number guest appearance by any individual. But considering most of the societies are probably covered by the same underwriters and probably have never had a personal injury claim I think it's time it was sorted.
Without this, we, as archers can end up paying for effectively the same thing multiple times.

As an illustration we were advised that NFAS wouldn't cover us to shoot clout.
Now one reason I belong to a club is so I can test my bows for distance. This is of course vastly different from some guy with a compound wanting to try for distance, and clout distance just about covers it.
We are in danger as a nation of falling into a nonsensical "on size fits all"  "Computer says, No" type mentality.
Where has common sense and initiative gone?

To be fair, I've paid up to join GNAS (or Archery GB as it now calls itself .... an irritating gross misnomer, as it only represents a portion of 'archery' in GB) as it is beneficial to the growth of the club.
However, on studying the NFAS rules I find, we could quite legitimately set up a target at 180 yards as part of a field course as long as the safety consideration were met. This is shows that one has to be very careful what question you ask!
If you ask the NFAS if you can shoot clout, the answer is no! But there is nothing to stop you having a 180 yard shot at a rubber 3D centurion... let me know if you try it and anyone can actually hit him!
Footnote:- To actually be a legitimate NFAS field target it would have to be at an unknown/unmarked range, but it could be say 180 yards plus or minus 10? 20?... how do you define unknown?