Archery

Sorry about the lack of post last Friday. I was busy / lazy.

Well, not quite lazy, I had to run into work even though it was a public holiday because a project at work broke. Even worse, when I got in there and ran it, it worked fine, the issue being only a temporary server downtime. So much for a day off...

Anyhoo, last week, Sarah and I joined my brother and a few other people heading to Olympic Park for some archery. It turns out that about a month ago, he and a mutual friend bought bows. They've been running off to archery ranges most weekends to have a few shots. Mark had mentioned to me at one stage that once he finishes uni, he'd be interested in taking up archery, and I was definitely up for joining him in that. My guess is that my bro heard me offhandedly mention that, and invited us to join him for a go (unfortunately, Mark was busy since uni is eating his soul).

We headed to Olympic Park, and paid our moneys. Matt and Josh had their own equipment and "know what they are doing", so they buggered off to another section of the range to play with their compound bows, whilst the rest of us were in the learner group with plain old longbows.

I quite enjoyed it, though I learned quite quickly that I'm a terrible shot. I spent a large amount of time in between volleys searching for the arrows that missed the target - and at one stage even managed to permanently lose one somewhere. They sometimes have a tendency to burrow under the ground (apparently the compound bows are worse for this), making it difficult to find them, if not impossible.

After a while Sarah and I managed to start hitting the target with greater reliability. It was at this point that I began to notice that the arrows we were using were bent. It makes sense, since that was the equipment that anyone can use when they head to the archery center, but it also allows me to blame my lack of accuracy on said bent arrows.

Eventually we were told to stop - altogether way too quickly, and we fired our last shots. We then watched Matt and Josh for a few shots (it turns out they're also quite terrible at archery, and although they were shooting at a much longer distance, they were also using bows equipped for said range), and I got to try one shot with the compound bow.

The compound bow is a pain to fire. The string was ridiculously difficult to draw back til a certain point, then it drew the rest of the way quite quickly. I don't know if this is expected behaviour, or if its my brother's bow being useless, or what. I took my shot, and managed to hit the target - which is more than Matt and josh could say for most of their shots!

In the end, I am considering purchasing a bow, although I do not know if it would be a compound one - those things are a bit pricey, after all!