It’s great to meet new people and it’s even better to meet amazing people. Recently we made some new friends, Becky and Sharon, and in our conversation we learned that they were competitive archers!
I have recently gained an interest in archery but had no idea where to start. I had looked at compound bows in several shops but didn’t understand how to get my draw length, what the proper draw weight should be or what any of the numbers on the arrows meant. So of course I took the chance to start asking my questions and right off the bat Becky fires back with, “You aren’t looking at compound bows are you?” to which I said, “I don’t know, should I be?” And that’s where the learning began.
As it turns out compound bows remove much of the skill required to be good at archery. There are sights, levels, distance correction tools, wind calibration thingies and even more. Not to mention the pulleys to help reduce the strength it would take to draw an arrow back. Instead what we learned was that we should start with a recurve bow and it just so happened that there was a shop with an indoor range in town so we all arranged to meet there so we could shoot.
The shop was amazing, it had a massive selection of recurve and long bows and a separate room for compound bows. The wood work in some of the bows was really nice as well with some having colorful wood patterns and others custom textures to the wood.
We paid for our range time and bow rentals which was only $35 for the day and were given some instructions on range rules and shooting technique. Then they turned us loose!
(A perfect shot for sure. Or at least it’s not in the ceiling.)
Becky was practicing on the longer section of the range and Sharon was giving Sandra and I pointers on shooting technique, and helping to find the right arrows for our current shooting skills.
One thing we didn’t expect to discover on our archery outing was that Sandra is pretty amazing at this sport! After just a little bit of practice she was hitting pretty consistent groupings on the target and wasn’t too bad on her form either.
Check out her results, I’ll just say I wouldn’t want to be an apple!
This is the first of many archery experiences for us, I can promise that. We had a great time shooting and it was so amazing to have such great new friends along to make our first trip to the range that much better! We can’t thank them enough for the great introduction to the sport of archery, and I can’t wait to get in some more practice!
