Archery post n.6 – follow on from previous post

If you care about the neurology see previous post. And scroll to the heading on that below.

Today for my 10 shots, which I did despite the arm/shoulder injury, I managed to get three on target, so I feel happy. Results below.

Shot 4 was interesting as it went through a piece of bark and a vine on it. I couldn’t pull it out by just pulling on it and I had to use an axe to cut above and below the vine before it would come out.

Neurology lessons

I fired despite the injury, but aware of it and while I do feel some pain, it has moved to further down my arm and is not as bad on the neck/shoulder. This tells me a certain amount of the pain is also due to the recalibration, and reversing of whatever atrophied muscles I have in the shoulder from my previous martial arts training injuries. This process is somewhat lengthy to explain but I cover it in a LOT more depth in my book on Systema , as it was one of the principal discoveries of training in Systema, it healed a lot of injuries I had from my previous decades of training, some of which I thought were permanent.

Other things that I can confirm:

1. The rubber fins really do make a bigger difference than they are worth. I need to update the arrows a lot. But they take long to get here so I think I will order another batch, because on this excursion I lost another arrow, not as in lost it, but the notch at the back snapped off and was lost making the arrow pretty much useless now.
2. I can probably adapt my hold so I don’t get stung on the arm but I need to practice more to see how this affects my accuracy. Not possible to do now, because the rubber fins throw too much of a variable into that.
3. I fired the last shot without a glove and felt a lot more confident of where it washing to go, and it is also the best of the three hits.
4. I am more certain than ever that with better arrows and more practice I should be able to get my target of 70% hit rate on a human sized target well within my 1,000 shots to competence.

Total arrows fired to date: 41

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This post is divided into a “boring” section first (to sift for the lazy readers) of how I am personally doing with my archery, which me and three AI bots care about, and later, the neurology related to learning a new physical skill, on which I actually have a LOT of understanding being as I did martial arts and various other sports and physical activities since childhood, and studied the human mind and neurology for fun, as well as have been a hypnotist that learned, trained and in some cases surpassed some of the teachers I had which are world-class hypnotists.

So… let us begin, the bolded headings allow you to scroll to whatever interests you most.

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My Personal Archery Targets

Judging from the comments of a couple of people on my previous archery posts, my personal targets are apparently “ambitious” I would say. They are, for now, as follows:

• Reliably hit a human sized target at 50 metres – To me this means at least 70% hit rate when I concentrate. 80% would be better. I am not saying 95% because my understanding of the vagaries of archery is presently very limited. I don’t know what I don’t know.But for example with a very accurate rifle, if using standard ammo, you get the occasional flier anyway. Given the far larger tolerances for error in a bow, I am guessing 100% reliability is even less likely. Now, with my rifle, at 100, 200 or even 300 or 400 metres, I can pretty much get 100% hits on that sized target if using match ammo and concentrating. In fact, with a bit of training and no time limit on the shot, I can probably do a 90% hits out to 1000 metres. But with a bow, to my mind, 50 metres and human sized is reasonable. And I am getting that now with the wrong arrows, and being a complete newly about 1 in 10 times.
• Hit a human sized target 40-50% out to 100 metres. I think this will be quite a bit harder, involved wind etc a lot more and may be a very long term goal. If I get to 50% I’d be happy.
• Hit a 4” target at 20 metres maybe 40% of the time and a 6” target 60-70% of the time.

I am using a 60 lbs bow (actually measured at 57 lbs real draw weight) and my current arrows have rubber fletching which is not ideal for my relatively traditional recurve bow.

Yesterday I manage to get another 10 shots in at about 40 metres and the images below are the result.

Shot n. 4 remained in the tree trunk, and remains there now. I haven’t had time to dig it out yet., so subsequent shots were with 2 arrows.

Shot 8 was the one that came closest and my next two shots after that were done with the last arrow remaining as the one in the tree trunk needs to be chopped out, and the other one was stuck in the box and I didn’t want to move the target for now.

That’s how it was in the target at the back.

For size comparison.

The last two shots also went wide of the target.

Things I learnt about shooting the Bow (neurology related)

In order to be able to learn a skill quickly, you need to be aware of yourself, your body, and what happens in it while you attempt the things you are trying. It also helps if you have previously acquired similar or related skills, although any physical skill is to some degree transferable to other skills from a neurological or brain-map point of view. 1

So for me the short version of what I learnt was as follows:

1. Rubber fletchings (the little tails on the end of the arrow) definitely have an adverse effect on accuracy with a recurve (traditional, as some call it) bow. It also made me wonder how much better feather versions could possibly be, or even none of them at all. I mean, I figure there is a reason arrows have them on given the long history of the bow, but nothing new happens until a crazy guy tries crazy things, so, at some point I will probably fire arrows without any fletchings at all, and if I manage also ones with curved fletchings to try and impart rotation on the arrow, similar to a bullet. I have no idea if such things exist, as I have not googled any of it. I’m giving you my unvarnished thought process. A few of you more educated on neurology may benefit from seeing the apparent nonsensical ramblings of my mind when learning a new skill.
2. Arm protection matters. Even though it was not a bad sting, I did get one on the left arm when holding the bow in what is for me the most natural position and most comfortable. Ignoring that later made me flinch ever so-slightly prior to the shot and actually resulted in a shoulder injury (brought on by incorrect posture and an old recurring shoulder dislocation from my karate days).
3. My natural grip on the bow is loose. This is not new to me, as it’s the same kind of grip I have when firing revolvers, and why some semi-autos, like the Colt 1911 with a grip safety used to not fire well for me. Training to be able to shoot like a modern firearm user instead of an old style cowboy took time for me. And it’s the same with the bow. I pretty much don’t even hold it. I just use my thumb on one side and open hand on the other to form a fork against which I place the bow. The tension from pulling on the bowstring holds it in place. This “grip” is so loose that when the arrow nock left the string just before I released the arrow both bow and arrow fell at my feet. This happened twice and made me aware of two things:
   1. Finger sensitivity really matters for me (the gloves are fairly thin but I had not felt the arrow becoming dislodged by their pressure against it as I drew back).
   2. Trying to correct my grip by holding onto the bow more firmly is how I injured my shoulder. the combination of using different muscles, the slight deflection of the arm not to get “stung” by the bow string and the 60 lbs draw weight meant when I released the next arrow something went “click” in the wrong way. Later in the shower I “clicked” it back in place by using the wall to give my arm pressure at the right angle, but the muscle pain is all up into my neck and shoulder/arm too. No doubt my shoulder being dislocated some 25 years ago is still somehow affecting it, but I see this as a positive incentive to get overall healthier and fitter and re-start my pushup routine.
4. Holding the bow more firmly is a “conscious” learning process, versus my natural “looser” hold. I need to experiment more with both, but in general:
   1. Unless the instinctive way has some major draw-backs, and as long as initial results are decent, building on your own natural ability is usually the way to get proficient faster. however… there may be an earlier plateau. Not as often as you might think, but often enough it can make a difference. In other words, you sort of need to know enough about the “official” way of doing things before you can break the mould and improve on it by using your own natural way of doing things.
   2. Finding a balance here is not easy. Karate essentially made everyone do it one way and then if you reach a certain level of ability that way you can begin to mildly adapt it to your own way, but the general signature of the “mould” remains. Breaking out of it later can be almost impossible. Systema on the other hand, only gives general principles and lets you discover your own way. The effectiveness of this way if you persist enough in it is superior in all cases I am aware of, BUT the persistence is really required before this is true and it takes at least a year and more like two before you can reasonably expect to be there. Having been exposed to both ways, I think I will focus on my natural way of doing things and try and find a way to sense the nock of the arrow better, with or without gloves as the case may eventually be.
5. Overall, the finger/arm protection matters, since it can negatively impact the learning to shoot accurately. I suppose one of those mechanical trigger things would help here, but… as a principle of not just aesthetics (no one is watching me and I don’t care to go compete, or achieve any kind of fame or recognition for archery (or much else I do) but mental attitude for me, I will not use one at this stage. I want to get the sense of the bow as close to a natural/traditional way as I can. I am already “cheating” to my mind by using a bow that has a shelf for the arrow, instead of one where I have to use my hand as the shelf, but then… I am 56… I only have, oh, say another 50 years tops before I… well, being the Kurgan, disappear and take on a new persona, you see… heh. And I do want to achieve some regular target hits, so… I’ll use a recurve bow with an arrow shelf, but not a mechanical trigger.
6. There was a suggestion by a reader who is no doubt far more experienced than I am to use some markings on the inside of the bow to determine the height to hold the bow/arrow at when firing at the target at various distances. I think this falls into the very “conscious” part of learning the skill, but is a very good idea, because you need to be able to measure what you are doing and this also will generally help me get a natural feel for distance over time. I am fairly good at estimating distances on the fly with a handgun or rifle, including anticipating shots on moving targets, but a bow, despite the similarities with respect to distance is quite a different “animal”, and requires a different baseline calibration before it becomes second nature to me. This is not an unusual concept even for world-class shooters. I recently saw a video of a world class shotgun shooter in Finland, trying to shoot down drones and he missed his first one that was flaying fairly directly at him. He corrected and subsequent drones were all shot down, but I immediately realised why he had missed the first one. He was world-class trained on… clay pigeons. Clearly not a hunter by baseline training. And the speed and different movement of a drone initially threw him off. His very real and excellent skills meant he quickly adapted, but I think I could have done a better job than him on that first drone because I grew up firing up to 300 rounds a day at birds that ducked and weaved and bobbed near a pond with only very limited view that was open over the underbrush and forest near the pond. meaning quick, fast shots at targets that weaved and bobbed at very variable speeds. Anticipating movement shots with a shotgun is something I am very good at… when I don’t think about it. The minute I try really hard to do it well… is the moment I perform worse.
7. Mental approach intent remains the pivotal thing, always. The most important learning I had was that even my current shoulder injury is a good thing. it forces me to realise I need to keep up the other training if I want to be able to be competent at this new skill. The usual problem I have with injuries is learning to stay still long enough to let them heal properly and/or train appropriately for/with the injury. My body may be 56, but my mind still thinks I am in my 30s. Which is not a bad thing in itself, but it has the occasional down-side.

Conclusions related to neurology and calling my shot.

If you have enough experience of your own body and can particularise little bits of information as they happen, as I tried to explain in autistic detail above including relating the experience to other experiences for relational context, you can then become fairly good at estimating the effort/time/adjustments you need to make to reach a certain approximate level of competence.

At this stage I have fired exactly 31 shots. And I will try to keep an accurate count going forward, but presently I estimate that it will take only about 1,000 shots to achieve competence. It also depends if I can fire those at 50 shots a day for 20 days or 10 shots a day for 100 days to some extent, but my sense of it is that after 1,000 shots I should be able to hit a man-sized target at 50 metres at least 50% of the time, and hopefully a bit more. I will also give myself a little room for error by saying that the 1,000 shots should probably be counted only once I have the feathered arrows.

Those of you even mildly interested in this can then see how close or far I was from my estimation at a skill I started out with literally zero knowledge or ability.

If you are interested in this kind of post do leave a comment. I have noted the archery posts receive only about half-the readers already, so I know it’s not very interesting to most of you, but if any of you read the whole thing let me know. No point in boring you all if only a handful want to read about archery at all. I can always just write out other stuff.

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I can tell that I am going to be hooked on archery, and as with all things I get interested in, whether for a season or a lifetime, I tend to get obsessive about them until I master them. By labelling the posts chronologically anyone interested can find them by simply searching for “Archery Post n. X”. And those of you who are bored stiff by them instead can skip them easier.

I think it would be interesting for other novices to see the progression from “knows absolutely nothing” to wherever I get up to. I also have headings in these posts so you can quickly skim over things and skip some parts if they are not interesting to you. 1

The first three post were not labelled but here they are in order:

Archery Post n. 1 – Brand new idea

Archery Post n. 2 – Learning Super-Basic stuff

Archery Post n. 3 – Kids and my new glove and better shots

In this post, I will tell you about my latest 5 shots, just taken, at the end of a long day and with low light, so not ideal, but basically I placed a cardboard box at 50 metres away from me and tried to hit it. The first shot went wildly wide and I couldn’t find the arrow. Second and third shots were close but missed and on the fourth I also lost another arrow. However, the fifth and last shot I not only hit the target, but I also understood why I seem to have lost the other two arrows.

It zipped through the box as if it was a bullet and went so deep into the ground behind it at a shallow angle that only the fletching was barely visible under the grass.

I fear I may find the other two arrows only when the tractor tries to trim the grass…

But… the important thing is that I learnt that the bow is a lot more powerful than I thought.

For a start, I kept shooting high because I expected the arrow to drop a lot more than it does. At 50 metres it’s really about as flat shooting as a handgun I would say.

Here is the box I used and where I hit it.

And here is the surprisingly very neat and small exit hole. Considering the back flap was not closed flat but was more or less open as in the picture, to hold the box up, I expected the fletching to tear through it more as it’s pretty hard little rubber fins.

Anyway, I am now down to 6 arrows as 3 are somewhere in the field. the first one I lost was entirely my fault for assuming weakness and arrow-drop that the bow does not have. I shot about two feet above the target, missed the backstop entirely and the arrow sped off into the forest, underbrush and downhill, so it could be anywhere from 50 to a couple hundred meters into forest, tall grass, or anything in between.

The area was safe for me to fire and miss in obviously, but that arrow might be found by archeologists one day. the last two I lost today… maybe if I trim the grass myself with a trimmer…

Another arrow I broke the tip off pulling it out of a dead tree I shot it into. That one, and another two I took out the point from, I gave to the three kids who want to try archery too (Monkey 10, Young Viking 6, and the Pink Astronaut 5 [she went out to practice by herself earlier today when I was working apparently]).

It got dark and I obviously need to rethink my target practice area, trim the grass in a good area that is uphill and clean, and stuff the box with old plastic bags, maybe some foam or something else to “catch” the arrows into it too.

In any case, I really like this bow thing.

And to paraphrase and butcher Obi-Wan Kenobi, the way I see using a bow is thusly:

It is a more elegant weapon; for a less civilised age.

It absolutely is more elegant. And the idea of getting stuck with a barbed, poisoned, or even just razor-edged hunting arrow, is less appealing than getting shot. Even if objectively, survivability of an arrow is almost guaranteed to be higher.

And that instinctive shooting thing is getting better all the time. the new arrows are on order, and now I am preoccupied with how to get a target area that will not make my arrows disappear in the low grassy undergrowth.

If I had more time I think I’d probably spend a couple of hours out there just perfecting a few things.

In any case, I am very pleasantly surprised and am now convinced this thing is definitely not a toy.

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So… Piglet has decided to rename herself Fruit Bat in honour of now being 5, and she does pretty much try to live only on fruit if we’d let her. But in reality her coolest name, which she came up with when she was 3, is [her give name] Danger, the Pink Astronaut. Which may sound like a bit of a stripper name, but is a vast improvement on her first iteration which was Dirty Astronaut (she does make an unholy mess whenever eating).

Anyway, Monkey (10) has been sick but as they all saw me shooting the bow they all wanted one of course, so I made hers first but she’s not used it much. The YV gets disheartened quickly if he doesn’t achieve immediate success, but he’s also tired today and possibly coming down with what his older sister has, so he fired a few shots with the one I made him, satisfied when he hit the target a couple of times.

The Pink Astronaut however, was out there for a while by herself, practicing, and well, I’ll let you see for yourself .

As for me, I am definitely getting better and now that I got the driving gloves, although they are OJ Simpson tight, make using the bow a pleasure now. No more cheese-grated fingers for me. The combination of little red plastic tubes and driving gloves works perfectly.

I have also decided to go with instinctive style of aiming/shooting and although this was from about half the distance I have been firing from, about 15-20 metres (70 feet or so) I actually basically hit the target once.

The glove fingers point to the piece of light-coloured bark I was aiming for.

And thanks to the glove I can now hold the bow at full draw for a much longer time without it being a struggle or painful, which obviously makes for a much better shooting experience.

I still need to settle on, or find, a way to aim that is naturally good for me, but I think that will come with more experimentation and better (feathered) arrows; which are on order.

I am pleasantly happy with how well archery has slotted in with my imagined perception of what it would be like.

I think I will set up a better/proper target, in a location that makes arrow retrieval easier when I miss, and a consistency that makes arrow retrieval easier when I hit too.

The classic target is a bale of hay I believe, and there are plenty of those around, if not on my farm.

I’ll keep you updated. My long-term aim is foggy presently, but for now I’d like to be able to consistently hit a human-sized target at 40-50 metres.

Any of you who are archers, feel free to chip in and critique to your heart’s content.

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I put my abysmal ignorance in all things archery due to the fact that my Red Indian heart is just not used to the white man’s fancy bows of the modern era.

So that’s the reason for all my idiotic mistakes, but I write this in the hope that out of my 600 or so half-shadow-banned readers, there may be one or two who want to take up archery (it’s not expensive and it has many benefits at least for me mentally) and might be starting from zero, just like yours truly.

So… total number of arrows fired as of last post was 11. That has now increased to 16, with five more shots earlier this morning after I had fixed a few things I had been completely missing before.

All of these details below, and in case you don’t care at all, I just have a few pictures at the end of the current target progress, with which I am quite pleased.

So… first the finger protection.

The ones I tried so far kind of sucked and my simple work-gloves I use on the farm were adequate.

This stuff (see image below) not only looked terribly gay, but the leather pad on it is so thick and unwieldy that I couldn’t feel the bowstring effectively and I think reduced sensitivity to the point I never even tried to use it after merely pulling on the bowstring a couple of times with it.

It was also mostly useless because they must be made in China and for children or something as my man-sized hands barely fit in them. So I split them open most of the way and tried to use them with only the side of the finger-glove, ignoring the thick leather pad. this was better but the adjustments I would need to do would be too much of a hassle to bother.

I then tried something that looked like a cheapo, non-workable thing, some Chinese made little rubber tubes…

Instinctively though… they looked like they would work. My main issue is that if I could do it repeatedly without issues I’d prefer to pull on the bowstring just with my bare fingers, as it gives me a better feel for everything, but at a 60 lbs pull, when you let go of it, the bowstring basically tries to slice off the pads of your fingers.

Now, as it turns out, these little plastic things actually work rather well. I can still feel the boosting after a few shots, and I did get a blood blister, but in all honesty I get all sorts of little dings, so I am not even 100% sure this was caused by the bow, but I can’t think of anything else that would have done it and I noticed it only after using it, so I guess it may well be the cause. Still, it’s all quite tolerable, even so, I have ordered leather (or likely faux-leather) driving gloves, as a thin extra layer for the fingers would not go amiss. I’ll let you all know how it goes when I use them.

As for the bow itself, I had missed quite a few things.

The “silencers” of felt to be placed at the tips of the bow as shown below,

And the bit of cowhide on the arrow rest. which has to have the direction of the hair going in the same direction as the flight of the arrow. I had no idea originally what the little piece of furred leather was for, but in doing a tiny bit more research, it became obvious this is what the self-adhesive backing was for. I cut the original piece in two so one is for the side of the bow and one for the arrow-shelf on it as shown below.

Lastly, the arrow nocking tabs (or whatever they are called). there is actually a tool to make sure you get the position right (a perfect 90 degree angle between the arrow and the bowstring, but I just used a scale ruler and a protractor, and I think it came out fine.

And here are the results of my 5 shots from this morning.

The first one was just over the tree trunk, the next two were low, and missed the tree-trunk altogether, but the last two (numbers 2 and 3 below) were close to the target. Although the arrows have a simple point, they get stuck into the wood hard enough you can’t just pull them out, hence the hammer and chisel you see in the picture.

Arrow 1 was the one I had fired yesterday and left in overnight. So number 2 was worse, but number 3 is pretty good. I was slightly closer to the target, so maybe 37 metres or so instead of 40 metres. That’s roughly 120 feet instead of 130 feet. The target is the little yellow leaf placed under a vine on the left of arrow 3.

And for perspective, here is my hand to show the distance between the leaf and the closest and last arrow I fired today.

There is still a LOT I need to learn, however, you might notice that the arrow that is closest is missing one of the fins, as I mentioned in the previous archery post.

I genuinely think I am more accurate with hat arrow than with the ones where the plastic fin bashes the side of the bow and as a result deflects in a somewhat random way. And in all honesty, I am not sure 2 fins instead of 3 makes all that difference.

I am sure some actual experts would anathemise me and label me a dirty heretic unfit to own a bow… but… all I care about is how accurate I can get with my own way of doing things.

Main issue I have so far is that there is no easy way to aim. I get the best results when I sort of “sense it” without really aiming in any specific way other than by literally just trying to perceive where I want the arrow to go. I am not sure that is a good way to do things, and I know a lot of people say you should find a spot on your face to “weld” a part of your drawing hand to so as to have good consistency, but I find that doing that tends to make me shoot even less accurately.

Anyway… this is more about Archery from a complete novice than anyone is likely to care about, so thanks for reading if you got this far.

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So we have a new semi-neighbour, a Sedevacantist, who bought a really nice house with some land that goes right up to a river that flows nearby, about a half-hour away from us. He lives in America so he was only here for a couple of days to sign all the paperwork, and then he had to go back, so we had him over for lunch.

Aside the fact it may have put him off having more children (he has two), as with any new person that enters the house, the kids pretty much assaulted him with questions.

Aryan Girl, of course, being suspicious by nature of any foreigners, quietly sneaked up to my home office while I sent off a work email quickly just before lunch and said:

“Dad… I am not talking to your friend, because he might be a bad guy.”

Basically she said that because she has not yet seen any war films set in WWII. If she had I am fairly sure she would have stopped him at the door and shouted:

“VERE AR YOR PAPERS! SCHNELL!”

I reassured her that he was indeed a good guy, and after that it was difficult to shut her up.

At one point though, the Young Viking asked him what was his favourite thing.

Our new friend asked if he meant thing or food, and YV said “either” but he also qualified it could be anything even off this planet. I realise now in hindsight he was trying to give the man (and us all really) a hint.

Our guest explained he didn’t know about anything off planet as he’d never been to space, so he expressed what was his favourite food instead. After he listened carefully, the YV said:

“My favourite thing is God; because he made everything.”

Which left us all open-mouth stunned.

Keep in mind that although I am a hardcore zealot, because I understand the contrarian nature of our kids, I do not impose anything on them. We hardly do grace at mealtimes, and half the time it’s one of the kids that reminds us to do it. We had friends that had a preemie baby and our children would without fail remember to include him in our daily prayer at mealtimes. We did not skip a single grace in the period for a few weeks until the little boy went home to his family and was out of danger.

But all of that is their own doing. I will answer questions of theology as best I can and they have been to church several times despite it being two hours were, from their perspective, they have to sit quietly while understanding nothing of what is going on as it’s either Latin or Italian of a nature that is hard to grasp even if they were fluent, which they are not.

I taught them how to cross themselves and to act respectfully in church and how to pray , and that’s about it.

I think the YV learnt to pray properly as he listened to my explanation and he told me later the things he prayed for happened, so I think he is starting to see how things work, in great part due to his natural stoicism and aspie-level logic processing.

Even so, his answer stunned me as much as it did everyone else. But it’s that kind of simple yet profound faith that makes men powerful without being weak in the face of adversity or trouble.

My son is exceeding any hopes I had for how he may turn out that I could possibly ever have imagined.

Thank you Lord.

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NB: Skip my explanation/excuses if you just want to get to the archery bit heading. It’s fun.

So, it’s become apparent to me that at least until a solid routine is in place, the training will not be… well, routine. And with the kids, school runs, extra dance classes runs (for the one kid), work, the farm, and general crap that happens always, 1 it’s not really going to happen… or at least not immediately.

I go to bed exhausted, and want to still maybe have a conversation with the wife, or watch a piece of Dexter Resurrection with her (in 5 minute stints, because she passes out as soon as she relaxes, poor thing), and I have always been a light sleeper so…I also get woken through the night, (one kid has a bad dream, another coughs, another gets up in the night to go to the bathroom, the little one wakes up for a change or some boobage, and so on) then wake up and hit the computer, or whatever needs doing, after sorting the school run, and breakfast, together with the wife.

So yes… always being on the backfoot will do that, but it will not always be this way, and even if it is, so what? The point is: find a way.

So… I have felt that just some generic movement will be good, so I looked into Tai Chi a bit, and I think I like it, I can see it being something worthwhile for the first time, but I struggle with the concept of it only being related to health and I can’t see the martial application of it, and that… I have come to discover, presents a problem for me. I mean in a way it’s just like karate katas but in some kind of slow motion and far more flowing instead of the staccato type movements common to katas; and it’s true that nothing quite relaxes me as doing things martial. Except that… my ignorance of Tai Chi means that I don’t see any of the movements as relating to anything martial.

Which leaves training alone in Systema, which aside some bag work, is mostly fitness exercises, so again, the mindset is different as there is no opponent to synch or “push” against with. Even if not actually fighting each other, training with other people is helpful, there is a sense of a kind of “resistance” even if it is not an opponent in a real terms, it is still something or someone to give you an intent. For some it can be just teamwork, and while there is a sense of camaraderie with people you train with, for me it was always mainly the fact of having what I suppose is an “opponent”. Not in a competitive way with the other person so much as a way to measure my own efforts against multiple other points of reference.

The kids have been asking me to teach them, so I do a little tiny bit of instructing and pad work with them now and then, but teaching is not training, it’s teaching, and them being little, it is not even any kind I can really get active in, plus it just eats into my time too.

But… I bought myself an early Christmas present and it came early.

The Archery Bit

Mine has the name SHARROW, but in the USA I can’t see any functional difference from what is called GLURAK there . The only difference I think is that mine came with almost all all the accessories you actually need to start:

• The bow stringer tool
• The string protection/silencer strips (which I didn’t know what they were for until now when I saw the picture when I did the search for the bow on amazon.com instead of the Italian site, so I now need to unstring my bow and put them on)
• String silencers (again, I had no real idea wha these are for until now I saw the name of them)
• And finally string nock markers (I got two but no special pliers, which I am not sure you need)

I also didn’t get any of the gloves and finger protection things, and though I have bought a bunch of them now, so far, they all suck, so not willing to recommend any of them, but I will once I find what works. For now I will say only this:

• You definitely need both some kind of finger protection for the hand you pull the bowstring with, as well as some kind of arm/hand protection for the hand/wrist/forearm that hold the bow itself.

And having just pulled and released the bow-string right now at 3 am in the silence of a house with everyone but me asleep, and without any of the “silencers” mounted on the bowstring, I didn’t realise how loud a noise it makes, since I only fired it outside for now and wasn’t really paying any attention to that.

Anyway, while I realise merely shooting a bow is hardly any kind of physical exercise at all, it is having a VERY salutary effect on my mind, and probably achieving the same kind of mental state I would achieve if I knew more about the martial aspect of some Tai Chi movements and could relate them to some combative aspect.

I of course knew absolutely NOTHING about archery before I bought the bow and did only a minimal amount of research before buying the bow I did, mostly to try and understand what kind of draw-strength/weight I should go for.

All the videos I saw of pasty British individuals, emaciated by the lack of firearms in their police-state, multi-cultural, pedophile-rape-friendly state, invariably told me a beginner should get a weaker draw-strength bow so as to get proper form, blah, blah, blah. The American videos primarily made by steroid infused would be ninjas, had robot-like compound bows of up to 100 lbs or more draw strength, using some mechanical thing to release the bowstring.

So I made a few decisions right off the bat.

I was NOT going to go for a compound bow. While I am sure they can provide a lot higher draw-strength that can be accurately fired, the main point there, to me at least, seems to be to have the highest draw-strength you can pull in order to have the most “powerful” bow possible, that you can still shoot accurately, because once yogurt past the heavy point of the draw, with a compound bow, the pulleys make it only a 15 lbs or so pull to keep it there as you aim.

With a traditional bow, when you are at maximum draw, you are also at maximum weight of pull, meaning the longer you try to aim for the longer you have to keep the full weight of the draw steady.

But here was my reasoning… Instinctively, while the killer instinct aspect of me of course wants the most powerful bow, some other instinct in me, the one I would call the hunter instinct, made me realise that having powerful bow in and of itself wasn’t the main point. First of all, I would never hunt with a bow. I saw firsthand what shooting animals with arrows is like (crossbow and bow both) once from my dad who used a crossbow on a chicken when I was little, in Nigeria, and another time years later from a guy we took hunting a single and only time, in Botswana.

I find bow hunting to be cruel. I wouldn’t even use it on a snake. The only creatures I could see anyone reasonably using a bow on would probably be politicians. Even then, I’d worry about them surviving it, so yeah… it’s strictly target practice for me, so there isn’t really a real killing/martial aspect to it other than the mental discipline and physical skill to learn.

I was also reminded, years ago, of when training in karate-do and becoming familiar with pretty much every aspect of Japanese samurai culture, I recall that archery had a whole philosophy of mind when aiming, releasing and striking a target. I had never used a real bow other than a few times as an early teenager when my dad bought my brother and I some simple recurve bows, which I doubt had a draw pull of more than 15 lbs if that. But I have fired a lot of rifles. And to my mind, there is a distinct parallel way of doing that. I think the sense of taking a measured, aim, long range shot with a rifle, and firing an arrow at a target are very similar from the mental aspect of it. And nothing quite relaxes me as much as shooting.

I grew up with hunting. The very first memory I have is of firing my dad’s .38 special at a puddle. Dad was 24 and I was 2. The next memories I have are of helping him clean the shotgun and walking besides him when he and I went hunting. Again I was between 2 and 3 years old. I recall a bird he shot and another time when walking beside him I saw a fox in the distance, which was about as tall as I was then, and pointed to it and shouted to my dad “Dad, a wolf!” I didn’t know what a fox was. My dad raised his shotgun to shoot it, it ran off somewhere and my dad sprinted off to chase after it. I assume now to get to place where he could see it again from and shoot it, but I could not keep up no matter how fast I ran, and my dad soon disappeared from sight in what was afield with some forestry around it. I remember I couldn’t run anymore, because it was pointless, I couldn’t see him anymore and had no idea where he had gone, leaving me in that field with what I thought was a wild wolf roaming around, and I had started to cry, thinking I had no idea where I was or how to get home, we were far, as we had come here by car, and now my dad had disappeared, and it would be night soon, and there was a wolf out there somewhere.

A few minutes later of course dad re-appeared, shotgun over his shoulder, asking me why I was crying. And many, if not all certainly most, of my other childhood memories often have hunting elements in them.

Hunting is different than mere killing.

There is a synergy with nature in it I think, if done properly. And in a way that I think is perhaps similar to Red Indians, even by age 15 or so, when I’d go duck hunting with my dad, I had reached a point where the killing of the animal was something that was felt as somewhat excusable only if you ate the animal. That had always been the case, we never killed for mere “sport” and I always had only contempt for “shooters” who did, whether for a “trophy” or to feel like “hunters” when they never tracked anything and just shot from a car with a scope on their rifle.

I never used a scope on a rifle because if you couldn’t get within shooting distance of an animal with open sights, what kind of “hunter” were you anyway? I only started to use scopes once I started shooting at targets instead of for hunting.

And there is a skill to it, of course. Reading the wind, adjusting for distance, reading the distance in your scope reticle, not the fancy electronic ones, the original mil-dot ones, and so on. It’s truly relaxing.

And I figured archery must be analogous.

I have so far, fired the bow only 11 times, and I can say it is. It is a different set of physical skills, but the mindset is, to my view, almost identical.

Anyway, back to my choice of bow, which that whole interlude was designed to explain to you.

My original first thought was to get this one instead , I am not sure if the link to amazon Italy will work for American readers, so here is a screenshot:

In the end I went for the one I did because I figured if I screwed up on the draw-strength maybe with the one I got I could get a slightly longer string and reduce the pull or somehow maybe just replace part of the bow and tone it down, because hint he end, against most of the advice I saw online, I went for what I thought given my size and so on would be a fair draw-strength, which is 60 lbs.

And I am glad I did. It is a pretty hefty draw, and the first time I fired the bow, (without any glove or sleeve protection, the tips of my three fingers I pulled the string with certainly felt it. Not so much on the pulling, but on the release, the string has a tendency to want to slice off the tips of your fingers, and on the hand holding the bow, the string will leave a mark when it makes contact after the arrow has shot off and the string strikes the left hand. So yeah, you need gloves. I have since been using the same leather work gloves I use on the farm for working in the field and they work fairly well, though I still feel it on the fingers after a few shots.

Of course, being novice I got the wrong arrows. They should have been with feathers at the back instead of the plastic version, because with a traditional recurve bow, as the arrow shoots past, the feathers flatten, but the plastic fin does not, so it bounces off the bow and screws up the arrow’s flight path. I even experimented with cutting one fin off all together and that arrow certainly went straighter than before, and it made me wonder just how important the little fins at the back of the arrow actually are. I mean I am sure there must be some utility to them, given the centuries of firing bows and people putting them on, but in my one test, I couldn’t see that the arrow flew any differently with only two of the fins instead of three. In fact, in my case it seemed to be a net improvement. And sometimes, I find, being new at something nd thinking differently bout it, you find a way of doing things that others haven’t tried just because “it’s not done that way” and no one ever tries to see if it really is the only or best way of doing things. So I will experiment more.

But anyway, I am pleasantly surprise with myself and the initial ability with the bow.

Even though I have the wrong arrows (better arrows have been ordered), I have been able to realise I tend to shoot high and to the left, and adjusting for that have found I can be more consistent despite the undoubtedly many errors I am still making. So at about 40 metres (Roughly 120 feet) I can probably hit a man-sized target half the time. I was aiming for the yellow leaf and of the 10 shots I fired, these two came closest.

The target was the yellow leaf at Cicci’s elbow (my nickname for Piglet, who just turned 5).

And this was the best shot so far:

Given that’s at roughly 40 metres/120 feet or so, am using the wrong arrows and I still haven’t put the arrow nock markers on the bowstring yet (mostly because I wonder if there is a science to where/how to place them) 2 it’s not too bad I think.

There is also to be said that with eh bow I bought, because it came with all the necessary bits to put it together nicely, I feel more confident that I probably di ok for a first bow. And besides, if I really like this activity, I can always get the one whose look I like better too. They make them with a 60 lbs draw strength too.

I am still trying to find the most suitable thing to use for the hand-protection, because the stuff I got so far is either hobbit-sized, so doesn’t work on my hands, or somehow removes too much sensation for my liking from my fingers and so being able to have a good “feel” for the bowstring. Which… maybe is supposed to be meaningless or you’re supposed to sense it in a more general way or something, but for me right now, feel very relevant to my ability of being able to release the string properly and with as little variance as possible.

I’ll update you when I eventually settle on a way to achieve that without losing my fingerprints permanently on the right hand.

A funny thing is that I noticed over the last few years, one of the guys that does Systems at a high level that I met in Canada, with whom I don’t have much contact aside seeing his Facebook posts over the last twenty years, has obviously taken up archery a few years ago. He has won some competitions and so one and I saw those posts over the years. He’s Greek, and I liked his way of teaching as well as generally his philosophy of life. I wondered if it was just a kind of middle-age search for meaning, or something else for a few years. And I didn’t make the connection until after I had fired the bow and thought about the mental aspect of it, but I get it now. Maybe old warriors just get more meditative in their training and aspects of things martial. It makes sense. It’s a kind of return to the purity of hunting but without the killing of anything.

And it certainly stills my mind. I find myself thinking about the bow, and shooting the arrows late at night, first thing in the morning, and so far the kids, the girls especially, seem to like watching and helping me retrieve the arrows when I miss. None of them can even budge the bowstring on my bow of course, but we have lots of bamboo, so I’ll make them all their own versions and see how they do.

The boy is somewhat less interested in watching and I also think he would prefer the immediacy of guns, patience not being one of his virtues (then again he has my and his mother’s DNA, so he was doomed from the start on that score).

Maybe it’s the elegance of it, but the girls so far seem to be into it, which is another unexpected aspect of it all.

So… I am not sure this post qualifies as a fitness/training one, and I keep failing miserably on the eating front too, though I have cut down a lot on anything sugary/carbs based, I inevitably find it near-impossible to feel satisfied with my eating habits while in a family context. Then again, while there are aspects of monastic life (in the SŌHEI sense) I crave, I also realise I would never trade family life for it.

The right way, as my grandfather always said, is to find the balance in all things.

And I find that archery may just give me that sense of balance that may allow for balance enough to navigate the daily chaos in such a way that I will be able to slot in more of the type of training I know will be beneficial than I am now. At least, it feels that way and I think it is early days but it’s having an effect already.

I will certainly keep you updated on this.

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This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here

I don’t just call her Aryan Girl because she has perfectly blonde curls and her mother’s stunning blue eyes, and an angelic face.

She also has the demeanour of a little rule-following Nazi with impeccable memory. And some of the rules she knows I have no idea where she learnt them. Especially considering she is two years old.

We’re off to get pastries for her newly five year old sister and it’s just me and her in the car. It’s just up the road so I sat her in the passenger seat. As we get to the stop sign up the road, I see no cars either side, it is a little sleepy village after all, so I gently roll through it…

“DADDY! THAT WAS A RED STOP SIGN AND YOU JUST WENT THROUGH IT!”

The look of outraged accusation in her angelic face was fulminating. It couldn’t have been worse had I been a curly haired and hooked nosed Jew trying to pass a border post out of the ghetto.

After the initial shock of thinking how the hell does she know about stop signs and wondering if perhaps she’s learned to read by herself, I couldn’t help but laugh as we went down the hill.

“Daddy, you PIGLET!” That’s her way of showing disapproval without being too harsh, a half smile on her face. As we roll up to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill before the village, and I’m still laughing, I do the exact same thing and roll through it…

“DADDY! YOU JUST DID IT AGAIN!”

It’s unconceivable! I obviously need to be put up against a wall in front of a firing squad.

I can’t fault her at all, after all she’s absolutely right, and I tell her so. We get to the piazza where the bar is with the pastries and there is a squad car of carabinieri checking cars. I park literally next to their squad car. They know me and I know them, but I still have a two year old in the passenger seat, despite the seat belt and all. I fully expect I will now be rightfully crucified for my multiple crimes. And I fully expect my little Nazi would make uncle Adolf proud by telling the gendarmerie what a reckless felon I am.

The carabinieri carefully pretend to not have seen me. Probably just as well, if it were up to Aryan Girl I should probably have been whipped in the town square as an example to other vicious criminals.

You can see why the Germans always thought the Italians were an undisciplined bunch of too human catastrophists though.

I had best get myself in shape fast.

Maybe learn a few German commands.

This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here

Because I talk about things you are not supposed to know. And we have been hovering at the 600 subscribers mark for months with 3-4 of you subscribing at a time (daily even) and then a few others unsubscribing but silently, without any message of it which was not the case before, so… either way, this is not news to me. YouTube did it to me for years and even my own OG blog had been hacked and infiltrated and for over a year was being shadow-banned internally. That is settings on the blog were changed to curb the search engines from finding posts. Specifically anything related to actual Catholicism and the Talmudians, but because people kept telling each other about the blog and navigating to it individually, not due to algorithms but because of word of mouth or sharing links, the readership had continued to grow organically anyway. And so…

…as some of you know, a year ago my OG blog was severely hacked by state actors because it was near election time and because most of my readers are Americans, and because I named the Talmudians as the vile creatures they are, and mentioned the vile stuff they do, their constant lies, subterfuge and mass-murder and discivilisational efforts towards the West in General Catholicism in particular (which is why the Novus Orco clergy are…well…New (but always pedophile) Orcs, instead of Catholics), and absolutely against the last few remaining actual Catholic clergy (1958 Sedevacantist Totalist clergy and the associated laypeople).

Telling the truth about the real causes of war in general, who starts them, who perishes in them and the real reasons behind them is something intentionally kept from you.

It is —along with how money (and fiat money especially) works— the most guarded of secrets. You need to spend time digging things up, finding the odd ostracised and excised historians that dared tell the truth and had their lives ruined for it (David Irving for example) you may need to dig up websites that had a bunch of evidence and proof for alternative versions of what you have been taught at state-sponsored schools. Websites that may have been wiped off the internet and then even off the wayback machine. You may have to take out a calculator and do some basic maths involving ovens and crematoriums and realising reality is not a theory, and so certain physical things are just not possible.

But I came across two people who made two statements that are very succinct and if you ponder them a bit may have the same power of finally removing the veils of lies from your eyes as reading me and my blog does over time.

I cannot credit them directly sadly, unless they specifically read here and give me permission to do so as it appeared in a place that asks to keep the people in it private, but their statements alone are powerful, together, they are truly exceptional, so ponder these two things in the order presented:

And:

Think about that. And realise Israel receives something like 35k a year for a large part of the people that live there from Germany. Because of reparations supposedly. Not to mention a bunch of other billions from their diaspora hard-working colleagues that fund and prop-up and control the entirety of the US government. Yes including your current puppet-president. And of course through that control almost all of the European puppets and thus the world.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with two thoughts:

ONE: The OG blog is up, we recovered it all thanks to a good friend who had put in place all the security measures I had asked for long ago, and it mirrors everything I write here so when the rug pull happens (and I have no doubt it will once the current shadow banning becomes ineffective) you can still read it all and keep following me. The link is at the top of this blog or if you can’t see that on mobile it’s thekurganblog.com so book mark it and go there unprompted by algos if you want to keep reading me regardless of what happens down the line (the new version is gonna be harder even for state actors to take down, though, of course, not impossible, but I figure they will need me to have a few hundred thousand followers before they do that). And…

TWO: Ponder this miraculous thing!

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This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here

Sitting at the table…dinner time

Now there needs to be a little interlude. The Young Viking (YV) hates multiple textured foods. His mother has forever been trying to make him eat all sorts of “towers of taste”… the English abomination of mixing a bunch of foods into one forkful. Instead of savouring the actual taste of the thing you are eating, instead of covering it up with a bunch of other tastes and sauces and condiments.

But the YV knows what he likes. Plain meat. Plain pasta. Never cheese unless it’s on pizza. Never raisins in anything unless they are on their own. Never yoghurt.

And so he has eaten his chicken breast and his mother wants him to try a bit of sauce in his pasta (for the 100th time) or maybe it was chicken soup with vegetables. And this is where his last 4 years finally bubble up.

YV: No, I don’t want to taste it. Because every time, you say (in sing-song voice) “try it, you can’t know if you don’t try it at least once” but I do know, that it’s disgusting. And then I try it and it’s disgusting! And I’m right!”

Sense of conviction: 11,000.

The room went silent in a slightly stunned silence. Except for my spontaneous laughter.

Me: “Ah, there it is. That Filottian conviction. And yes, you’re right my son. And don’t let anyone tell you different’”

YV: “Yeah. I know I’m right!”

His mother looks at me, abject defeat in her eyes, she shakes her head in resignation.

Indeed.

The Young Viking is clearly Venetian too.

Buon sangue non mente.

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This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here