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.
This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here
