Some Pictures and a Story!

[agtex42]

My local club hosted an archery team from the British Royal Marines last Saturday as part of a North American Sports Tour that they’re currently putting on. We don’t have a whole lot of traditional shooters in our area, but we’ve been seeing our numbers grow over the past couple of years. We had initial scheduled the shoot for Sunday but foul weather forced us to move it up a day and I was a bit worried that our turnout would suffer as a result.

We got the course setup pretty quick on Saturday and I was pleasantly surprised to have a dozen shooters come out to participate. After a quick meet and greet with the Royal Marines everyone grabbed their gear and hit the course.

My group shot the FITA course first, the wind was pretty stiff but at least it was blowing in our faces. We shot 5 ends of 3 arrows for a total of 15 shots for score and about halfway through the course of fire mine and Martyn's target butt decided to blow over crunching our arrows in the process! After a ten minute timeout to reposition and tie everything down we were up and shooting again.







The Olympic style shooting was a first for all of us at the club and some of the groups reflected the new venue! After we wrapped up the FITA portion everyone stopped to chat for a minute before we headed into the woods for the 3D course.





Martyn started us off on the first target and now it was the Brits who were in a new element.



We made our way through the ten target course, sharing some laughs, making some good shots and a few bad ones along the way.

[agtex42]

After the first few targets folks started to get in their groove and the collective groups started shrinking up on the 12 ring.









The Bison was one of the longer shots of the day, combining the length with the change of shooting from the tower stand made it a favorite for a lot of folks.





When we wrapped up the course we were all wearing smiles, but it sure wasn't because of the scores we had posted!

[agtex42]

After shooting the course we all headed back to the practice range and that's where the real fun began. I broke out the box of clay pigeons and started tying string to some alligator clips, this of course got people's attention and after a few short minutes we had our targets up for the "Quick Shot Challenge".



The objective was to shoot as many clays as you could on your column before jumping over and breaking the clays on your opponent's side. In the event of a tie both competitors would face off in a sudden death elimination in which the first person to break a clay would move on to the next round.



Anna went up against Swanson in her first bracket and they both went through their entire quivers without breaking a clay. You could tell that she was getting frustrated and was about to step back from the line when we all reminded her that she still had one arrow left.

She nocked that sucker, took a deep breath, came to anchor and released then the whole crowd let out a big yell as the arrow flew right into the center of the top clay!



After several eliminations it came down to Dave and Dale in the finals and Dale made it look easy hitting four clays with his first four arrows to take the win. We then moved on to the long shot challenge in which each archer went head to head in a best out of three scenario.





I ended up in the finals against James and both of us were only able to get one arrow in that stinking sheep, must have been the pressure of all those eyes. It was too close to call from the firing line and after a closer inspection I ended up beating him by an inch.

We had a great time yesterday afternoon. In a surprising turn of events Ira (Yank) took home first place in the FITA competition and York (Brit) had the high score for the 3D course as well as the overall top combined score for the day. I was a little sunburned and sore on Sunday morning but the juice was definitely worth the squeeze for this one.

Hope yall enjoyed the read, we sure had fun this weekend and I felt like sharing!

[M-2]

I for one sure enjoyed the read! Thanks for posting.
That looks like a really fun day for sure.

[Johnny Dangerr]

Wow what a job ya'll did. Nice shoot...

[Bisch]

That sounds lime a real fun day!

Bisch

[SMOOTHboar]

Man that sounds like a great outing. Thanks for sharing.

[Loreva13]

Sounds like you guys had lots of fun!

[Night Wing]

Thanks for all the photos.

[huntmaster]

don't that look like a fun day, good job.

[bountyhunter]

Good stuff!!!! What did the Brits think of the 3D course???

[Ron]

A great read and the pictures were really enjoyable. Thank you for sharing.

[Lost Arra]

What a great day of archery with a variety of targets!

I'm jealous.

Where is your club located?

[jpbruni]

Looks like a total blast! You guys do it up right!

J.P.

[trad"Doc"53]

Great read and pics!! Looked like a great day of shooting!