Amazing News!

I’ve had some fantastic archery news in the last week!

First of all, I received an email from Mat Symmonds, president of the Welsh Field Archery Association – saying that I have been selected for a position on the Welsh Field Archery Squad for 2013! So next year I will be able to represent Wales on the field circuit as an official member of the team J Woohoo!

The other bit of news is.. I am now a sponsored pro-staff shooter! I sent an email to Wales Archery Specialists a little while ago enquiring about the possibility for sponsorship. I’ve always been impressed by the service they offer and recommend everyone to their shop. As I have been doing so well in a lot of competitions recently, and shooting on a par with many sponsored archers I thought the time was right to ask if I could represent and promote Wales Archery in an official capacity and join their shop team, and they have agreed! So I am now on the Welsh squad, and a Wales Archery Specialists pro-shooter – what a result! 

I am absolutely over the moon! This is what I have been hoping for and working towards all year, spending a lot of time and effort improving my game and attending as many shoots as I can to raise my rankings and now with this news, it has all been worth it! J

 

I am visiting Wales Archery on Friday to pick up a few bits and pieces I need, and they have a pro shooters shirt there ready for me, so I will be able to wear the Wales Archery colours at the Nationals in Coventry this weekend, the biggest indoor shoot on the UK circuit – one hell of a debut! My usual scores on that round are 565-70 and the cut last year to make the top 32 archers in the head to head shoot off was around 560 so with any luck I may get into the final... fingers crossed!

 

The Welsh 3D Championships!

Hi everybody!

This weekend on the 25th November was the Welsh 3D Championships at Llantwit Major Archers course in Fonmon, an IFAA unmarked 3D round of 28 targets. As my main bow Maya is set up at the moment for indoor target with huge slow arrows it wouldn't be suitable for this shoot, so I spent a little bit of money on a 5 pin hunting sight, a bow quiver and a short dampener and set my second bow Vasquez up as a BowHunter Unlimited rig.

Check it out, dressed to kill!

The Guardian is really a hunting bow anyway - being short, fast & quiet so this is the kind of outfit that the bow is designed for. It balances great even with the bow quiver fitted and is extremely accurate and fun to shoot. This type of bow just suits unmarked 3D a lot better than an unlimited setup in my opinion.

The weather for the previous week before the shoot had been absolutely atrocious, with record rainfall and severe flooding in many parts of the UK and rivers bursting thier banks everywhere. The decision was made to go ahead with the shoot as there had been a break in the weather, but by now the damage had been done! What the hell, we're field archers and this is what we shoot for!

The mud was up over our ankles in most parts of the course, and the climbing/walking was very hard going with slips and slides being par for the course. I almost fell over several times and the river crossing was interesting! There is a shallow stream with  stepping stones that you need to cross 4 times in total during the day. The stones were completely submerged in fast flowing water... this river is normally about 6" deep and about half as wide as this...

I shot fairly well through the day considering it was a new style and put in a decent score, coming in second place by 5 points. The 3D round is scored 10 points for a 'kill' in the inner zone, 5 points for an outer zone 'wound' so i was only 1 killshot off taking 1st place, not bad for my BowHunter style debut :)

I had a lot of fun shooting the round and it only took about an hour to clean the mud off my boots and equipment! The next shoot on the calendar now is the big one, the National Indoors at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, really looking forward to that one!

Wobbly bits, and a good result!

Hi everybody!

I’ve been looking at adding some dampeners to my Insanity CPXL because my friend Chris just bought a new  Hoyt that comes with AlphaShox limb dampeners. After trying his bow out you could really feel the difference when they were fitted and I was jealous!  So I went looking around for something that I can add to my CPXL to dampen the vibration that is left in the bow after the shot.

After doing some research and watching some impressive tests, it seems that BowJax are the best on the market and BowJax Revelations which would best suit my bow. Direct from them they wanted $18 per pair + $25 to ship to the UK! But after a search I found a US seller on eBay that were charging $16 for 2 pairs of them, with $8 shipping – that’s more like it! They turned up in about 5 days and I put them on the CPXL and took it for a test drive...

 

Wow, what a difference! It has dramatically changed the feel of the bow post-shot. It sounds totally different, a lot quieter and there is far less vibration - impressive! So much so that I’ve ordered the BowJax string stop enhancer as well, which apparently makes the bow even quieter and is less harsh on the string as it is a softer stop . These are only available stateside but luckily, I have family on holiday with friends in the US at the moment so they have been mailed to them and they are bringing them back for me in a few weeks – result J

So that was the wobbly bits! Now on to the good result!

 On Sunday 18^th November I went down to St David’s College to shoot their annual FITA18. Everything was going well and my shooting was on form. My first dozen was 116 and my name went up on the leader board in first place, which is a new experience J As the day went on I stayed out in front, and going into the final dozen I was 5 points ahead but I had a string of 9’s where I was just outside the 10 ring and lost the advantage – so the archer in 2^nd place closed the gap.

When it came to the results, they read out the 3^rd and 2^nd place scores and awards, and it turns out that I had the exact same score as the other archer – with exactly the same X and 9 count! They had already put all the targets away so awarded a joint 1^st place instead of a shoot off, so I came out of it with a gold medal in joint first place – woohoo! The medal/memento board is looking healthy these days!

The archer that I drew level with is a professional sponsored archer with experience on the pro circuit, and if I had scored just one more point in the final dozen I would have come in ahead. I also beat a few seasoned target archers so I am really happy with the result, it shows that the effort is paying off and my shooting is reaching a respectable level these days in both Field and Target archery.

St Kingsmark's Annual Portsmouth

Well, the indoor season is now well and truly upon us and I have shot my first competition of the season. It was a nice introduction into the season shooting the Gwent County Championships & Open,  a 3 spot Portsmouth round hosted by St Kingsmark Bowmen at Beachley Army Barracks.

I drove down with Mr Bruno and we were shooting the afternoon session. We arrived a little early so had plenty of time to have some food/drink, get our equipment set up and signed in. The hall was absolutely freezing so I was glad I wore the extra layers under my club strip!

 
I had a bit of a shaky start with a couple of wild 9’s but I managed to find the 10 ring eventually, and held a steady pace for the rest of the shoot and finished on 572 which is a new PB, up from 565 that I shot last year (I haven’t scored a Portsmouth round at all in the last year!) . When the final results came in, the top Gwent shooter was in the 560’s and my score was in second place so I came home with a silver medal in the Open. 

I was over the moon with the result and very happy to bring home something shiny! But I was also a little disappointed with 572 as I was hoping to nudge closer to 580. So as I always do, I looked at this as a learning experience to improve my game. I noticed that my shots that were out of the 10 were almost all low hits, 6 o clock outer  10’s/9’s. After watching a video of myself shooting, and some feedback from a coach at the club it seems that I am relaxing my bow arm prematurely. The arm is relaxing and the bow arm dropping before the shot is complete, so I am going to use my practice sessions to work on keeping the bow arm steady and solid, and keep a firm pull into the back wall against this without pulling the arrow into my face which causes clearance issues and erratic arrow flight.

 

Roll on the next one!