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!