Going Back Outside!

I’ve been doing a bit of work on my gear over the last weeks in the gap between the indoor target season ending and the field season kicking off to make sure everything is ready and as accurate as possible.

Maya has been set back up for outdoors with my FMJ arrows again. I set it up and got it shooting bullet holes, a vertical line on a walkback and I put it through the Chrono. At 55lb I am getting 255 fps average. This is a little slow for a field bow (usually in the 270’s at least) because these are such heavy arrows (419gn), but I love their performance in wind so I can live with that.

I put the numbers into Archers Advantage and generated my marks. A friend from WFAA let me shoot on her farm so I could get back to 80 yards and test them all. At the longer distances they were drifting low, about 2-3 yards out at 70 and 80 yards. I made a minor adjustment to the draw weight of the bow (about 1/3^rd of a turn on each limb bolt) which brought these up into the spot. The arrow flight is still good and the marks are accurate now for all my distances so I think we’ve nailed it!

I’m trialling one of the new LaunchTec rest blades at the moment. It’s made from an epoxy-composite instead of spring steel, so it won’t rust or bend, its more resilient and recovers faster. I tried it out on my bow and the draw is smoother and the shot is quieter. It seems to be very consistent and shoots well, but I’ve noticed a burning smell occasionally and it and it has scorched where the arrow flies off it a little. I’m going to keep an eye on this and will contact the company if it gets any worse, but it could just be settling down/breaking in.

I’ve done a bit of work on my Guardian as well. I took the cheap Decut rest I bought for it off and shelved it, it’s true what they say – buy cheap, buy twice! It’s awful and wobbles, so the Trophy Taker has gone back on it. It only took 10 minutes of tuning to get it shooting a straight line on a walkback, and my pins are still accurate for 20/30/40/50/60 yards, shooting great groups so she is ready to compete now as well.

The arrows I am using with it (ACC’s) fly perfectly, but they are a bit shot up. The wraps are scuffed up and only 5 of the 12 still have decent fletching, they’ve all been shot or torn off on pass-through’s. As this is a ‘hunting’ config, I want the arrows in bright visible colours like hunters do, so I’ve ordered neon orange fletches and nocks, and orange zebra stripe wraps! They are going to look crazy, but bright and easy to spot on 3D and Animal targets which is the point as this bow is my 3D rig.

Last weekend was a WFAA squad training session at Blandy Jenkins, and we focused on physical fitness and stamina. We completed courses of circuits, short runs and an ‘Ab-Blaster’ workout over the 2 days with lots of information and handouts on sports nutrition, and healthy eating to give us a physical edge in competition as well as our shooting skills. It was a real eye opener into just how bad for you some of the food I eat is and what I should really be aiming to eat. I have gone back to the gym since January anyway to shift some of the weight I put on last year (half a stone gone so far!) but the information and exercises we picked up at the course will be very useful.

So everything is all set and it’s less than a week now until the first shoot of the field season, a Marked Forrester at Fonmon. We’ve got some new WFAA members from Pentref who will be making their debut so it will be a good fun day, I just hope the weather is better than the last time I shot Fonmon!

Fingers crossed!!