Going Indoors!

Hi everybody!

As you can see from my previous few posts, I have gotten absolutely soaked through on a few outdoor shoots in a row and it’s getting cold and wet out there. I had one more outdoor round left on my calendar, a Hunter round in March Hare on the 20^th October but I have made the decision to call that one off and go to ground for the winter, it’s time to retire indoors and break out the linecutters to shoot indoor target until the start of the next field season in February next year.

I have my 2315 X7’s which are the largest size legally permitted in FITA indoor competition from last year, so I am going to be using those for the season. They are 31” with heavy 220gn ProPoint Pins and large fletches, optimised for indoor shooting.  The only thing I don’t like about them are the huge plastic SuperNocks. They are cumbersome, chunky and have a poor string fit in my opinion so I got in touch with GoatBoy Archery who do custom work, and Nick was very helpful in machining a dozen inserts for me to glue into the Unibushings to reduce them down to accept regular G-Nocks (my favourites, G nocks or G Pins). I’ve fitted these and they are absolutely perfect, check it out!

I refletched them with large 4” white Bohning Killer Vanes with quite a hefty offset to give them a stabilising spin, and they were ready. I went up to the club last night to try them out and it only took 5 minutes to adjust the rest height for the larger arrow and find a rough sightmark. You can tell the sheer weight of these things (650 grains) as the 20 yard mark for them is the same as my 43 yard mark with my FMJ’s!

I wanted to shoot a scored round to see how the new bow and the newly configured arrows feel so had a look in the target bin, and found an IFAA 5-spot face. I’ve only ever shot the IFAA indoor round once about a year ago and scored 297/300 with 37 X’s so I thought that would be a nice benchmark,  put the target up and started shooting. This is how the round came out after a 5 minute tune and quick sightmark..

I shot a clean 300 with 51 X’s! That was 1 X better than the score that won the WFAA championships last year! It was shot in club conditions and not as much pressure as a tournament, but I now have great confidence in the kit and know that I am capable of a winning score, so I need to work on my mental strength and keep my head in the game, stay focussed and bring it home.

I’ve got a few weeks to tweak and prepare, the first indoor round is a FITA18, the Gwent County Open on November 4^th at St Kingsmark Bowmen, so i’m going to shoot indoor 3 spot exclusively from now on to prepare.

Bring it on!

FITA Welsh & Open Field Championships 2012

The last weekend of September is always the FITA Welsh & Open Field Championships and it was hosted by my club, Pentref Bowmen as usual this year. Being a 2 day FITA event, the shoot was in the usual format of a 24 target unmarked course on the Saturday, followed by the marked distance round on the Sunday.

Everything was tuned nicely on my bow and my sightmarks were good, so I rocked up nice and eager to day 1! I have been shooting IFAA rounds pretty much exclusively for a while, and don’t have a really accurate ranging ‘cheats’ system so the unmarked was going to be a nice challenge J The weather was fairly decent with little wind and mostly cloudy all day, and the course was easy enough to walk with only a few muddy/difficult areas.  I shot quite well with only a few of the longer targets giving me any trouble on the ranging, finishing up on 364, 20 points into Bowman and a 16 point increase on my unmarked PB!

Unfortunately this wasn’t to be repeated a second day! On the way to the club for day 2, the heavens opened – and stayed open all day. It rained relentlessly all day for the full duration of the shoot and through the night, the ground was sodden and very difficult to navigate with mud up over your ankles a common thing. I have to say a big thanks to Tracey Anderson of the GB squad for her loan of a Ziploc bag to keep my sight/scope clear in between targets!  Her shooting was on fire and she had an amazing weekend with some incredible targets, especially 3X’ing  the longest distance in heavy rain. In the end, totally soaked through my so called ‘waterproofs’ I finished on 352 which is 12 points below my PB, but given the conditions and that my PB was shot on a much flatter course in good weather i’ll take that score and be very happy with it J

So all told, I finished with 2 x Bowman level scores and ended on a combined total of 716 which put me in 8^th place overall, 6^th welsh. I had hoped to make the top 5 Welsh and only missed out on it by a handful of points , so it’s within my grasp and there’s always next year!