One of my New Year’s resolutions was to get back into the regular practice of archery. It’s been awhile, mainly because I had trouble finding someplace to shoot…
I got the recurve in the middle–a Samick Sage–for Christmas a decade ago and loved it. I hadn’t owned a bow since I was a kid and was hugely excited about setting it up and tuning it for the right arrows and all that cool stuff.
It really was an awesome starter bow and now, years later, I still think it’s my favorite.
I ran into the backyard that Christmas morning to try it out. My target was an empty cardboard box: the first arrow impaled the box dead center, stapling it to the grass. Yes!!
The second arrow hit a rock and deflected up and over the neighbor’s fence, into their yard. No!!
Not hearing any screams, I scurried over to retrieve my arrow before my crime was discovered.
Hunting frantically, I caught a glimpse of yellow fletching in an ornamental shrub. I snatched up the arrow and ran back to my house, cured forever of suburban backyard archery.
After doing some research, I found that we had an indoor archery range about 20 minutes from the house.
I drove up there just about every week and got to where I could more or less hit the target. They had awesome coaches and technicians on staff who helped me immensely with getting started in the sport.
Some of the other shooters at that range were training for competition: I was definitely not in their league, but it was fun and challenging to try and keep up.
As I got used to drawing the bow I upgraded my Sage limbs for 45, 55, and then 65 pound pulls, although eventually I settled on 55 pounds as the best balance between power and control.
Before I knew it, a 55 pound Damon Howatt Savannah longbow joined the Samick Sage on my wall. While not as forgiving as the Sage, the Savannah was faster–sexier–and more precise when I was “on.”
But soon work began to interfere with my leisure time, and one of the first casualties was my weekly trip to the archery range. Archery requires frequent practice, and I hated to lose whatever limited proficiency I’d gained.
One day while home alone I paced off the distance from the family room wall, past the kitchen, down the hall to the laundry room. 15 yards! Not as good as the 20 yard range I was used to, but maybe it would suffice for those weeks when I just couldn’t get to the range?
I put together a target bag rest out of a laundry rack and a heavy gauge shower curtain:
I also invested in some blunt rubber arrowheads–and I was off to the races!
Thereafter, whenever I was left home unsupervised I’d lock up the cats, drag out the bow and my rubber-tipped arrows, and get some practice in at my very own home archery range.
If you haven’t shot a bow indoors you’d be impressed by the “sssssss-WHACK!” sound that echoes through the house. Pretty soon I didn’t need to wrangle the cats at all: they wanted no part of it and at the first sight of the bow they’d run and hide under the bed.
(if you live with someone who has cats, be advised that they–the cats–love to gnaw on bowstrings and arrow fletchings, so some sort of aversion training is definitely in order)
About this time I happened on a used PSE Stinger X–the compound bow in the top picture–in the bargain cave at Cabela’s. The folks at the archery shop got it tuned up for me and I began to understand why traditional bows lost market share to this newer technology.
The Stinger is an entry-level compound but I don’t see the need to ever replace it: it throws arrows at around 250 fps and it is ACCURATE. Unlike my traditional bows, it’s fitted with sights so hitting the target consistently was not a problem–a good thing, because at 250 fps any misses were going straight through that shower curtain, rubber tips or not.
Eventually I got enough practice that I was able to dispense with the laundry rack and shower curtain setup altogether, and just stood the target bag up in the hall. As my proficiency increased, I also substituted regular field points for the rubber arrowheads.
I concentrated on the traditional bows (recurve and longbow) and was pleased with the results.
While certainly not Olympic-caliber…pretty good.
Yes, I got cocky. Complacency is a deadly, implacable foe who has bested me many times in the past, and this time would prove no different.
A few weeks without practice, coupled with an ill-advised decision to move the target back a few yards “to make it more challenging” had predictable consequences:
I shot the laundry room door.
In my house.
Technically, I didn’t miss the bag, but close enough. The top edge of the target bag cover was no match for the field point, even at stickbow speeds (if I’d done that with the Stinger it might’ve gone all the way through the door, into the garage–thank goodness for small favors!).
I was mortified and shut down my personal indoor archery range for good.
Fortunately, the story has a happy ending: our County shooting range has an old Boy Scout archery range that they’re kind enough to let me use. It’s a bit of a drive, but I have it all to myself–and there’s not a laundry room door in sight.
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