A Brief Post

Enjoyed a 3D shoot at Avalon today 4 of us in the group (Scott, James, Mark and myself), some old friends, 2 longbows, a recurve (bare bow) and my primitive, I was last in the group but still hit some good shots (scored 472 over 40 targets). The weather was fine, and it was pleasantly cool in the woods, there was plenty of walking up and down and a series of testing downhill shots from awkward stances I blanked a couple but got a 3 nice first arrow long shots. On one of them, we'd watched two people shooting compound take two shots each to hit the target. Then we shot and three of us got it first arrow and the other got it second!
The styles of shoothing were very varied, James had a nice lean into it stance, full draw medieval look (drawing 60#). Scott's draw was shorter with a more target style, Mark sort of came down on the shot with barely a pause. My style is of course perfect ;-) and my scoring being worst was purely due to random external factors (a list of excuse is available on application).
My fave shot was a long slightly down hill on a tiger, last shot before a much needed lunch break... we'd had to wait for the compounds to finish in front of us. James said, you don't need all that fiddling, just step up and shoot (there may have been a few expletives too), he missed, but got it second arrow. I said, in a mock swaggering West Indian accent... (that's in a spirit of admiration rather than racism... think Usain Bolt) "Dis is how d' man does it honey" and promptly smacked it in first arrow.

One unnerving occurrence was when an arrow exploded when I loosed, it broke in two main halves plus a big splinter, the bits all went about three or four yards, so it must have started to move and flex a fair bit before exploding. It must have had some unseen damage, of course they always say you should flex each arrow and inspect it before use, but how many of us actually do?
Thanks to all at Avalon for an excellent course, organisation and catering.

On the way home I stopped for petrol and bought a pint of milk which I drank straight down whilst standing watching a kestrel which was hovering in the breeze above some long grass.