Crowthorne National Shoot Report 26th July 2009

Having seen the weather reports for the weekend I was expecting to get slightly wet during the Crowthorne Nationals. I was shooting a Double New National which was an interesting choice given I could not use my Warbow and was restricted to my light longbow but such is life. My son and his friend Daniel we also shooting, the Short Junior National, and hence we had the Bowmen of Burleigh Longbow team. With the hope that we would retain the Team Longbow Cup from last year we were all prepared to do our best.

The morning session started at 10:00 with fine weather and a light breeze. Shooting a 100 Yards for only the second time this season (I have been doing more Field Shooting than Target) it took me 12 Arrows to find my mark and yes that meant the first 6 scoring arrows were not exactly up to scratch. Anyway with these out of the way my second 6 arrows were a storming success with a nice 25 scored (not bad for a longbow at 100 yards) and this instantly put me in the lead. Shooting continued in much the same way for the 4 dozen at 100 yards and then after a short break the targets were moved to 80 yards. At this point Roger, who had been shooting on the same target, found his mark and started scoring rather well. The net result was that by the end of the morning session Roger had more than recovered and lead Colin, Rene and myself.

With the morning concluded and lunch out of the way it was time to shoot the Second New National of the day. At this point there were only Roger, Colin and myself shooting with Rene having only shot half a day. Over lunch the weather had definitely changed with the air becoming thicker and heavier. This was to prove the undoing of all three of us we all scored lower than in the morning. Given that I had shot 4 Dozen arrows in the morning you would expect that I new where to aim for the afternoon. No the change in weather meant that I, and the others, were having difficulty hitting 100 yards. After a few brief showers the 4 dozen at 100 yards was over and we were down to 80. This did not seem to do any good for Colin and me because we continued to shoot badly whilst Roger managed to claw back some respect by improving his score.

After an excellent, if entertaining, it was time for the awards. Roger won the gold for the Gents Double New National whilst I managed Second but Burleigh won the Longbow team trophy and I suspect that this was due to the impressive score (680) that my son put in for the Double Short Junior National.

All the results for the day can be found on the Crowthorne Site.

South Wilts 150th Anniversary Shoot Report 19th July 2009

This was my first trip to South Wilts and I was looking forward to a recommended shoot, although having seen the weather I was expecting to get damp if not wet, and as usual we travelled down in our usual Westcott group. On this their Anniversary shoot South Wilts had organised 40 3Ds set through their woods and into the opens fields surround it. This provided a variety of entertaining shots especially when the wind picked up.
The course layers at South Wilts placed a camouflaged back stop behind each of the targets that did not have a natural bank and the net result of this was that the shoot progressed rapidly. Having these backstop saved me, and I suspect other archers, a number of lost arrows and I would recommend them to more of the field layers especially with the camouflaged covering which meant they were not distracting. But the end of my comments on the pros of backstops and onto the a summary of another excellent days shooting; for those interested I have again been using my phone to track the course and the file can be found below.

Longbow Heritage - Jim's Jungle Jaunt Shoot Report 4th & 5th July 2009

After the excellent shooting last week I was looking forward to another entertaining weekend shooting Jim's Jungle Jaunt; near Shackleford. Carol always organises a good shoot but this year she managed to surpass herself not only because of the target layout and shooting lines but primarily because of her commitment to run the shoot even though one of her neighbours managed to burn down Carol's house along with the rest of the block. All credit to Carol for putting on the shoot and as usual a fun shoot it was.
Jim's Jungle Jaunt is a two day shoot in the woods around an organic farm near Shackleford which this meant that we had real live piglets roaming the woods. As such we we under strict orders not to shoot anything that moved apart from the eagle. Although the weather forecast warned of showers the weekend turned out to another glorious two days with sun cream a mandatory requirement for the shoot and a prolific amount of water a must.
Again for those interested I recorded a Google Earth GPS file that records our days travel around the 3 loops of the shoot.