On the Sunday I went to the Aurora open field shoot and had a fine time, I was shooting with friendly bunch Joyce, Pete, Terry and my mate Mick the blacksmith. There were two AFBs, an unsighted compound (shot off the fingers) a sighted target recurve and my primitive. They's all shot round on the Saturday already, but two days is a bit much for me.
It was an odd format and scoring with two arrows at each target from the same peg, which is a bit irritating if you hit with the first and miss with the second. It's hard to judge how well I shot from my score as it wasn't the usual big game system. I think I did pretty well, and actually scored more than Mick, which is unusual, but by his own assessment he was "shooting like an arse".
My best shot was a really inviting peccary/boar/Javelina or some such. The peg was up on the stump of a coppice stool, shooting down into a dip about 13 yards away. Each target had a yellow spot marked to score 11, the inner kill was then 10, the kill 8 and anything else 5. I just knew I couldn't miss as it was pretty much the same range as shooting into my garage when allowance was made for the downhillosity of it. The first shot was a spot and the second about 1/2" away to score 21. Joyce (AFB) was on great form and just kept hitting 'em all the way round. Some of the long shots caught me out as I rarely shoot at those ranges, the damn Lion standing in bracken was very deceptive... had no idea how far away it was and I put two over his back... grrr.
It was pretty hot, but being in a shady wood helped considerably.
Many thanks to the Avalon team for a great shoot all their hard work and keeping us fed and watered. I don't know how they manage to find the energy to run a two day shoot, but they do it with great humour.
On the Monday (or "yesterday" as we sometimes call it), it was scorching hot and I felt at a bit of a loose end. I'd been contemplating decorating the little Elder bow, but din't want to actually copy a Native American (NA) bow. I just went for it with some Acrylic paint doing a simple zig zag on the upper limb and a wavy line on the lower. My wife thought the red was a tad vivid and I bowed to her opinion as my colour vision is a bit off (slight red/green deficiency) and I went over it again with more burnt umber and less crimson. I added a couple of nice blue iridescent Mallard wing feathers that I'd taken from a road kill and a tassel of horse hair gleaned from a barbed wire fence.I quite like the look, but it's not supposed to be "authentic", it's just a homage to the NA style as us Northern Europeans don't have that tradition of decorated bows (or at least I've not seen any).
Video here:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spDZlBHcMCE&t=6s
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