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!