New Toy, and the Pentref Christmas Fun Shoot!

Even though I shoot modern bows in competition, I also have a love for Traditional archery and the old styles. The modern bow is the pinnacle of power and accuracy that can be found in a bow, but I feel that even though I enjoy shooting them, they lack the spirit of the old ways. If I had to sum it up in a sentence I would say that “modern compounds are for precision target shooting, traditional bows are for archery.”

I had a bit of a bonus from work, and felt like treating myself to a new toy and after trying some traditional bows at the club I was impressed with the Ragim Impala so thought... why not! I bought the regular impala but after some issues with the wood quality, I was upgraded to the deluxe version by Kevin at Wales Archery – what a guy!

 

 The laminations look beautiful and it is very comfortable to hold and shoot. It is 40lb at 28” and shoots very quickly with my wooden arrows. They are spined for my Flatbow at 45lb so even though this is 40lb, it is a faster bow and the arrows match it well. I also treated myself to a new back quiver to use with this bow.

I had the chance to use it at the Pentref Christmas Fun Shoot and we took my son Daniel out on the course! He’s only 5 but is an enthusiastic little archer, with his own bamboo longbow (about 5lb draw weight!) and a 10lb fiberglass beginners bow and he absolutely loves it!

 

The weather was terrible though, with lots of mud and very heavy rain all day . The targets outside were coming apart in the rain so we only shot about 10 targets before calling it quits and going inside. Once we were in though, there were archery games like popping balloons, smashing a piñata full of sweets with blunt arrows and all the kids, and the adults had a whale of a time! We had a pot-luck where everybody brought a plate of party food as well so we were all well fed!

Daniel really enjoys going up to the club and shooting when we have had open events, and he is almost old enough to join up. We are going to sign him up after his 6^th birthday this year and he can start coming up the club on Fridays to shoot if he wants to, which I think he will jump at!