Bowmen Of Burleigh Christmas 2010 Fun Shoot

'Twas the week before Christmas and no one was stirring.
The snow was so thick, for Wokingham, that I was wondering how many of the club member would make it for the, now, annual "Bowmen Of Burleigh Christmas Fun Shoot". Having scraped the car and cleared the 6" of snow off the windows it was time to head to the Emmbrook School and set up.

This year we would not have our Fairy Paramount because she was at home with a sick baby so it was down John, James and myself to run the shoot. As with last year we set up 6 targets at the traditional 10 yards and 20 yards distances. We were using the same targets as last year and I suspect next years we will be covering my dinning room with glitter again making some more.

As it turned out 12 of the club members managed to make it to the should with all our bow styles being covered. So splitting people into groups of 2 it was time to start the first part of the fun shoot. Each archer started on their designated target and shot 3 arrows and the scored. The catch was that no-one knew what the scoring was going to be until they reached the target but it was a good bet that the smaller the target the more it scored. Once they had shot the 3 arrows it was off to the next target and so on until they had shot on all six. Target 3 had the special addition of small presents hanging from piece of string connected by polo mints. The aim was to shoot the polo and if the present fell you received the contents.

Following the completion of the individual rounds it was time for each of the archers to take a few pot shots at the remaining polos on target 3 whilst James added up the scores. Once a few more of the presents had been won it was time to set up for our team shoot event. Again we would be running the odd variation on the 12 Days of Christmas Archery Darts.

The archers were split into two teams of 7, yes we had gained a couple of people, and then it was time to start shooting. Our rules were simple; each archer had one shot and need to hit the next number (i.e. 1, 2, 3 .... 12) and then once the 12 had been hit it was time to take out the balloon in the middle.The only problem was that if you burst the balloon before shooting all 12 numbers (pictures) you had to start again at 1.

With the shoot off it was not long before team burst their balloon and had to start again. Team B on the other hand was doing a slow but steady shoot missing the balloon all the time until "BANG" the balloon popped. It was not team B though because in the spirit of the fun shoot Chris (Team A) had put oneof his arrows through Team B's balloon.

With Team A having a  few restarts along the way it was a close run shoot with Team B just pipping A to the prize by a single arrow.

Following the bang to signal the end of the team shoot it was off for the traditional prize giving and the end of a fun shooting for we were only running a single session this year.

With 12 months to think about it we will definitely have to come up with some new targets maybe a Santa you have to miss hmmmmm.