Welcome to The Blog of the Kurgan

If you’re a generic white normie, the idea of thinking out loud (if only in your own head) that many Muslims are sex-starved ferals that think it’s ok to have sex with children, 1 that Jews are controlling the finances of the planet and therefore, pretty much everything else, and also think raping three year olds is perfectly acceptable, 2 thanks to blackmail videos of child-rape and murder, or that the average African has an IQ that is at least one standard deviation less than the average Caucasian, makes you at least uncomfortable.

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In fact, it makes you SO uncomfortable, you will avoid thinking it out loud even to yourself. And the idea of pushing that SHARE button….brrrr…shiver me timbers! no, no, no, can’t have people see me reading this freaky, Nazi guy, right? 3

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Go on, hover over it with your mouse… see that feeling of fear? feel it?

This remains true even after you take some time (if you even can) usually in secret, to try and either “disprove” such “vicious, racist, xenophobic thoughts”. And it remains true to some extent even after you have researched each topic ad nauseam and found, to your shock and horror, that actually, yes, the facts indeed make each of the above assertions true.

Now, you should be able to question why that is.

Why should you feel uncomfortable?

You have no problem accepting other random facts about the natural world.

Lions eat antelopes.

Apes are generally smarter than dogs.

Dolphins are mammals.

No issue there.

But point out that the Talmudians have it as part of their religious beliefs that pedophelia is absolutely fine, as per the writings in their (un)holy books, or that they truly believe gym like you are to be their servants and are no better than cattle, or that Jewish pedophiles can run off to Israel to avoid prosecution and will never be deported back to the country where they raped children, and for some reason… your brain freezes.

Or mention the FACT that not even in the Jewish holocaust museum in Israel does anyone actually officially believe the figure of 6 million jews having been killed by the Germans; much less in gas chambers that no one can find, explain how they possibly could have worked, nor where the bodies disappeared to; or alternatively where the millions of tons of fuel (wood, coal, fuel) required to supposedly cremate them all (in not enough ovens to do it in 50 years if they burned continuously by the way) came from during war time, and suddenly, your own brain seizes up as if it was having a short circuit.

You may begin to experience feelings of guilt, or shame. And the thought of the people you know realising you have such thoughts, fills you with dread.

Do you even know why?

I mean, aside the fact that the Holocaust is the ONLY supposedly historical event that you can be jailed in various countries around the world for drying it happened?

But assuming you are living in a country where you are free to think or even say such things without legal consequences, nevertheless, your expectation is that there would be severe social consequences. And even if not, you certainly don’t want to associate with the kind of people who think and say such things!

And who can blame you, the average Neo-nazi stereotype is of a barely literate ferociously “racist” and cliquey individual that no polite and reasonable person wants to have as a neighbour, much less be associated with on a daily basis.

And so, you continue to pretend, even to yourself, that “well, anyway, even if it were generally true that… [insert uncomfortable thought]… I can still know that not ALL [insert uncomfortable tribe] are like that!”

Which of course has the same logical validity as saying “Well, yes the bite of the black mamba is deadly and essentially no one survives their bite, but… well, one guy did survive, after blowing his own leg half-off with a revolver and yeah he went blind and was left paralysed on half of his body, but… and also! And Also! Not ALL black mambas would NECESSARILY bite you (right away) if you happened right on top of one.”

So why? Why the mental reticence at being able to face such facts?

Hypnosis.

I would know. I trained as a hypnotist and have practices it for some 20 years.

It’s also called by less pleasant names in cases such as this. Indoctrination. Brainwashing.

When a lie or a series of lies, is repeated to you, normalised to you, made VERY IMPORTANT to you, from a very young age (primary school), and all sorts of events and remembrance days and so on are repeatedly taught to you for years on end, regardless o f what that thing is, you will grow up believing it. it will be so ingrained, you will identify with hat lie as though it were a part of you.

It takes a severe shock, or repeated conscious effort being faced or seeking the actual facts concerning it to begin to become free of the conditioning.

And don’t be fooled, this could be applied to anything. For example, Santa. Children who are told that Santa exists (in some supposedly charming version of life) grow up believing it, when the lie is perpetrated repeatedly not only by their parents, but also by their acquaintances and reinforced by all their little friends and the parents of their little friends. It is only because over time, the rest of the world does not sustain the lie that children eventually make the traumatic discovery that Santa was a big fat lie and done by their own parents, no less! And then, from there, will begin the questioning of all religion, because, hey, if these guys lied about Santa, maybe baby Jesus too is a lie!

How much stronger the lie is when it is in fact reinforced and reiterated (though with no more factual basis than Santa) by the rest of the entire world!

How much more difficult to see clearly.

Well, let me leave you with a link and a couple of short videos for the end of this part 1 of n. series of posts.

Israel appoints Itai Ofir as its new Chief Military Prosecutor following the resignation of Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, after a video showing a Palestinian detainee being raped by soldiers was leaked to the media. https://apnews.com/article/israel-military-scandal-prisoners-abuse-7becb2de4079b76b656910cc3c640d0d

I mean, that way you CAN justify your sentiment that “Not ALL Jews are like that!” right?

And maybe you are wondering why Jews love Mamdani… hmmm could it be that he’s their puppet? No, no, surely not! Surely this is just the much vaunted diversity that Jews love. Well they love it in the Western countries, not so much in their own, but hey, stop noticing it! Also Mamdani’s mother was married to a prominent Jew named Mitch Epstein. And he wears some weird Kabbala string bracelet, but hey, hey, stop noticing the Cohencidences.

Let us instead, look into a well known strong German woman, of uncompromising principles 4

And finally, you might want to look at this guy, going through the whole arguing with himself process. I mean, it might help you see what questions to ask yourself at least:

Welcome to your friendly, neighbouring deprogrammer.

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So we’re going up to the village to collect the parcels that the weak, cowardly, scum that are BRT, both employees and managers of that company suck ass, leave with the bar, the newsagent, random strangers, and if we had homeless people, probably them too.

I take the Pink Astronaut, who, by the way, in keeping with her scatological history , is just finishing up in the toilet, where her mother is valiantly trying to flush the umpteenth log this child has produced that clogged the bog.

As she pulls up her leggings, and runs out o the toilet, leaving her mother to deal with the smelly problem, she runs up the stairs to me, knowing I’m off somewhere saying:

“I am so proud of myself for blocking the toilet again!”

You know that meme on Facebook about a fossilised turd that they attribute to some Viking and how “huge” it was? Well, my wife thinks that was either an amateur of the turd Olympics, or possibly a child of age 3-4 since the fossilised product was a mere 20cm in length.

Aaaanyway… with that shitty prologue, we proceed to get in the car and drive up the hill. I was eating an apple and give her what’s left of it, because she loves apples, and as soon as she’s done munching on it she opens with:

“I know you will die before Mommy.”

Me: (cue another What the actual fuck? Moment.) “What?” Giving her a sideways glance of deep suspicion. You never know. The wife may have plans to poison me…

PA: “Yeah. You will die before Mommy.”

Me: “Oh yeah? And why do you say that?” You gotta finesse these kids, if I outright asked Is she trying to poison me? They’d probably just smile enigmatically and say “maybe…”

PA: “Because you’re older.”

Me: Ha! Foolish girl! I’ll outlast you all, they didn’t nickname me the Kurgan for no reason… “Well, just because I’m older doesn’t mean I’ll die first.” Pause. “In fact, given the way your mother is going…” Lack of proper sleep, ignoring me when I tell her to take naps with the little wolf, not eating properly, ignoring my cautions about her health in general…

PA: “Yeah… maybe Mommy will die first.”

Me: (silently to myself) Well, that was a completely fucked up random little chat. At least it’s over now. I mean what the hell makes her think about our death anyway? Probably after the inheritance, knowing them.

PA: “ Squished by a bus.”

Me: What the ACTUAL fuck is wrong with them?!? “What?!”

PA: Smiling gleefully, with an evil grin. “Yeah!” her lisp remains, making it even more sinister for some reason. “Squished flat like a pancake!”

Me: “…”

PA: “Yeah, squished flat. Like a pancake, and then mom disappears.”

Me: “…” (just looking at her now. I mean it’s probably worse, because she doesn’t LOOK like a psychopath. Which means they won’t see her coming.)

PA: “Mommy will be squished flat like a pancake and then disappear.”

Satisfied she has made her position clear she then quickly takes my hand when we get to the village and asks me to play the “pulling” game. I walk fast and give them a strong tug that means they can sort of skip-glide along as they get pulled.

Yup. You’re just not going to see her coming at all.

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I’m ambivalent about Torba .

His connections to Jewish interests make me assume he is, like so many of the freemasonic and Jew-funded gate(gay)keepers merely the other side of the coin. You know the one. The “reformed” faggot “Catholic” like Gary “Michael” Voris and his butt-buddy Milo Yankmypoulous , who poses in freemasonic signals as a matter of course.

Nevertheless, his latest post is quite decent.

And while I am not naive enough to fully endorse Andrew, the reality is that there are two things one should always keep in mind:

1. Everyone has some skeletons in their closet, and,
2. Sometimes, flawed though a man is, he’s still fighting the right fight.

So… if he is, more power to him.

Until EVERYONE, literally EVERYWHERE, not only names, but sees, understands and KNOWS what the Jew has done, and is doing now, and always will do, nothing will change.

And as I said before, it only takes ONE of them to cause massive problems:

Now yes, yes, you can call me an anti-semite, I mean if you can’t spell anti-pedophile. Since the Talmud is explicit that raping toddlers under age 3 is no crime at all.

And to be more precise, I am anti-jews, and anti their vile, vile, inhuman religion, which mo, has nothing to do at all with mine, that is Catholicism. Not the fake, Jew-infiltrated and inspired Protestanised Version known as the Novus Ordo, pushed on us all since 1958 by the infiltrating Freemasons, commies and fags that crawled into the seminaries years prior, as Bella Dodd fully referenced and explained when she repented, and as Mino Pecorelli specifically identified by name and Freemason codename too, before they shot him for this and the other corruption he was unveiling in the underbelly of the Vatican and Italy.

I’m a Catholic like Bohemond was. Or Jean Parisot de Valette was. Same religion they had.

And Catholics have ALWAYS known that the Christ-Killers are a scourge on the Earth. That they literally worship Satan, as even their own Rabbis admit, and hate European whites with an absolute passion, and Catholics most of all.

Look at who is pushing the foreign invasion and trannification of the West and who own ALL the supposedly “democratically elected” politicians across all of Europe and the USA as well as the most cucked of all, the Australians and New Zealanders.

Do learn about the Jew.

Then name him.

They hate when you notice, because it removes their power over you to brainwash you into some form of submission and acceptance of their massive lies and the murderous policies they want to impose on us.

Deus Gloria et Deus Vult

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After a couple of decades doing karate in a country and dojo where the two baseline rules were:

1. If you get knocked out, when you wake up, you carry on, and
2. You clean up your own blood on the dojo floor

I had built up a number of injuries that in essence were permanent as far as I was concerned.

Some remain (badly broken nose and deviated septum means I wear a plaster to bed to be able to sleep/breathe, and have done so for about 30 years, I also have a couple of bones in each of my feet that are good weather detectors), but many that were “permanent” actually came back out in full force after I started to do Systema and then healed and became non issues or much milder ones.

Keeping in mind I had also some injuries from hiking with too heavy a bag, a car crash that I literally walked away from but would have killed me if the idiot that jumped a stop street at 2 am had hit my car a tenth of a second later, and other vagaries of my rather adventurous life, while fit, I was probably healthier in my early 40s than my early 30s.

The recent shoulder injury from a small but erroneous and unnatural movement reminded me that, as in life, those things that feel horrible and bad and hurt us, more often than not, could be used to better our situation or at least learn something useful so as not to repeat unnecessary errors.

In fact, if treated properly, this injury, which is in part anyway an echo of a dislocated shoulder suffered in training about three decades ago, can probably make my shoulder heal better than it has been over that period of time. And even if not, it can teach me to take more care in my movements being natural. Unhurried. Calm.

And of course, to heal it properly, using systema breathing techniques and the generous healing massage and touch of my wife.

As we enter the final part of 2025, I am being reminded daily to focus on all our healths, and to try to learn a better approach to everything; because it is unlikely I will stop being in a “rush”.

My brain works too fast.

My impatience is the result of that as well as knowing more often than not “patience” for most people, is really just an excuse for the witless.

Real patience I can do. The hunter’s and tracker’s gene is the same one my ancestors, including the ones in my still living memory, had.

And this is part of that. Learn to fill the time between me noticing the idiots slacking off, and their eventually activating themselves, only to fuck things up in three different ways I warned them about a month earlier, and their eventual hobbling towards the right answer, with alternative endeavours.

Or as Mr. Kipling wrote, though perhaps with a slightly different meaning as I intend it here, as I never had trouble doing it as I believe he meant it originally:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute, with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.

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30 years ago, notably after I had completed the then cutting edge game of DOOM in normal mode by playing it something like 36 hours straight, I concluded that most of humanity was composed of useless idiots, and that the world would probably be a better place if most of them were to remain hooked up to virtual reality computers, being fed through tubes automatically, in giant buildings filled with them living in coffin-like apartments.

Their net contribution to humanity was essentially a negative and if they were reduced to that semblance of existence, they would in fact be “happier” insofar as creatures as stupid as they are are even capable of grasping that concept in any form, and so would the rest of us that are not idiots, since without their incessant idiocy slowing and tangling everything down, we would be able to create a far better way of living. Not utopic, because that way communism and mass murder lies, but just more efficient. We could take the time required to build things of relevance, beauty, and import. Be it cathedrals with the kind of detail we no longer do, or spaceships to take us to the stars.

I voiced this idea to my friends at the time repeatedly, pointing out that most people would actually voluntarily sign up for it. There would not need to be any coercion. Your only criteria for not being one of the tube-fed zombies in condecologies of entrapped uselessness would be the fact you would choose, instead, to strive and struggle and build and work in the real world; by choice.

I voiced this idea a few years before the film the matrix actually came out. So much so, that when it did, the people who saw it that knew me were curious to see my reaction to it.

And my reaction was simply that the vast majority of people would choose to be hooked up to the machines if only they got to occasionally bang the woman in the red dress. Or Mr. Smith.

Give them an even more “perfect” simulation and the uptake in my opinion would be over 90%.

Certainly of the urbanised West anyway.

And now… my 30-year-old prediction has once again proven correct.

And although I knew the matrix was ripped off, by the two trannies, from a comic book a guy made, I didn’t realise the concept was even older and linked to the unabomber guy Ted too .

The point of this post, oh my plugged in reader, is that if you are wondering why my posts on what the latest Jewish puppet pretending to be in charge of anything are few and far between, the war in Ukraine, the genocide the Jews are perpetrating on the original natives of that land, the Palestinians, and pretty much all other current affairs are increasingly approaching zero is the same reason I haven’t read a single newspaper or watched a single news programme since early 2008.

None of that stuff serves any purpose, even if you were in the active war-zone yourself, other than to spread, fear, alarm, and keep you in a constant state of adrenal pseudo-alert. Lowering your immune system, exhausting you mentally and spiritually and keeping you plugged in to the satanic clown show that they have you engaged in.

I get by on 3-5 hours sleep for weeks at a time, and most people half my age can’t keep up with me. And while I may have lucky genetics, once you talk to the average person, you realise they carry tons of completely useless and toxic mind viruses that serve absolutely no purpose other than to make you a slave of the absurd system this planet runs on thanks to Satan-worshiping, child raping, cannibalistic, pseudo-humans that have gamefied the very concept of money.

So, buddy, if you have been ignoring the archery posts because you don’t care to interrupt your own worthwhile endeavours in building crystal radios, studying sunspots, cultivating a new type of mushroom, tending your garden or playing with your kids, more power to you. Or if it’s because you find deeper meaning in music or painting or cloud-bursting than in martial endeavours, again, carry on.

But if you have been skipping them because it didn’t engage your outrage muscle, or your kink fetish, or your need to critique something on the internet, well…

Guess what, friend…

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First the stuff no one but me probably cares about, my specific progress. Immediately after, the neurology and philosophy in the lessons learnt. Further philosophy after (see bold headings to skip the bits you don’t care about).

Progress

Yesterday: 3 hits out of 11 shots – total shots 52. Distance (accurately measured now: 35 metres / 115 feet. Shoulder injured but not made worse, in fact, level of injury has been better understood as a result of firing the 11 shots. Lost one more arrow.

Lessons Learnt:

1. Fletching makes a big difference (at least 50% of my “error” margin presently).
2. Train with injury is as per karate, Systema, etc. Can be done, but requires mental adjustment, relaxation, perception

Today: 1 hit out of 12 – total shots 64. Distance 35 metres. First 8 had wrong attitude, anxious/rushed. Realised state is key. Took next four shots with better neurology. First was “good” and worked as recalibration (missed left). Second hit. Third missed by one arrow width, still a “good” shot. Fourth was tense. Shoulder pain, and wrong intent (wanting to hit).

Lessons Learnt:

1. Mental attitude is (as always) pivotal in anything related to martial stuff (and life, really, as well as prayer, observing reality, and recognising fear (and to a certain extent, pain) as essentially irrelevant, and illusions). However, specific to archery/difference from hand-to-hand and/or firearm use:
   1. You can “push” into a win with H-t-H, and firearms too, with pure aggression, speed, and a certain, will-to-power. My perception is this is not really possible and certainly not practical in archery.
   2. Zanshin is of course originally I think related to archery, though it is the same element and it plays out slightly differently in each martial art, the essence of it is always the same. In archery at least for me, now, it needs to be calm, serious, deliberate. In other things, H-t-H, shooting, generic fighting, I can slip into it almost instantly and on the move. Not so here. Maybe not possible in the respect I mean it, but… and this is the good thing:
   3. If performed correctly, it sets the mind for a while. Which was instinctively my purpose of taking up archery, despite my total ignorance of it. And firing the shots first thing, early morning, before any work, was definitely helpful to set the tone for later. It’s maybe the best way for people like me to have a kind of prayer time. Attune. Focus. Calm. And that element of… what? Kill-shot. Execution of something that touches on the edges of life and death. Practicing for it until there is little distinction between the practice and the thing itself. Makes the mundane irritants of everyday life fade considerably.
2. The injury/pain as well as the intent of wanting to “win”, are all net negatives in terms of accuracy, efficiency of execution, and so on. As usual, I overdid it and inflamed the injury a bit more. Made it worse. But that too has a lesson. Zanshin required in healing too. Also a reminder to use Systema breathing to fix the injury. Why do I forget important stuff like that? The rush to do. The rush to chase some external need to finish quickly, carry out my duties, etc. etc. But as usual, the truth is: If you’re in a rush… go slow. Need to learn this; and archery definitely lends itself to this attitude.
3. The fletching is definitely an issue and the error margin it introduces is too much to be acceptable. I ordered another dozen arrows with feather fletching, so in due course I should have two dozen of them.

Philosophical Musings

Go Rin No Sho , remains, to my mind, superior to The Art of War by Sun Tzu, On War by Clausewitz, and The Prince by Machiavelli. And the fifth book of it, The Void , remains the absolute apex of the concept of battle/life and death action/mental and physical flow. I of course elaborated in my own view of things in my own book Systema , but that being a manual primarily did not distill my own perception of such things as fighting, shooting, or all things martial-related.

One of the truest statements concerning such things is that Myamoto Mushashi wrote words to the effect that the art and science of war and strategy was among one of the (I think ten) holy skills.

And I agree. Counter-intuitive as it may seem initially, the Catholic perspective on this, is extremely similar to the Samurai one.

In our fallen, corrupt, Satanic-ruled world, the Way of the Warrior, is, unfortunate as it may be, almost inevitably necessary . And since it is that, those who walk such a path need to somehow balance in their humanity, spirituality, sense of justice, ethics, and God’s laws, love and mercy, against the occasional need to kill the enemies of all that is good and just.

In Catholic thought, killing is always wrong. We know it is not the optimum Way. Nevertheless, sometimes it is required . And if it be required, the least one can do, is be serious, calm, certain, and definitive as well as efficient when such requirements come up. Penitence for the “sinful” part, will be our private matter between us, our souls, and God. Even a violent act that is not condemned by Church dogma (defending innocents or the weak is a dogmatic principle of Catholicism, as is the death penalty) carries a certain level of stain on our soul. Yet, if we are to be just, defenders of the faith and protectors of our betters who more perfectly exemplify God’s love, then it is incumbent upon us to be utterly ruthless with those who would harm them, us, and our way of life, religion, or disparage our Lord.

The Paradox is apparent only to external unbelievers.

To faithful Catholics, the concept is perfectly logical. And the Samurai had similar basic principles. If you are to be a Samurai, you had best be the best version of a warrior that you can be. Measured, calm, sure, educated, humble (if not in a false way) free of fear of death, or cowardice, and absolutely definitive when acting in capacity of someone now going to war.

Archery, possibly best encompasses the correct attitude more than any other martial endeavour. Long range shooting is a little similar, but… the Samurai were right… comparatively, it is a cowardly weapon. For all that I love it and now it is even outdated by even more cowardly weapons like drones.

And it is vastly different from hand-to-hand or melee combat with weapons. They are barbaric, vicious, and even if disciplined and dignified at their vertices, 1 the inevitable entanglement of blood spatter, viscera, and the brutal reality of a fight with hand-weapons, makes it a hellish thing when compared to the equally deadly and nasty death from a razor-sharp arrow through your lung, which nevertheless, has some measure of detachment from the gurgling death of the target.

A man capable of killing other men needs, of course, to be mired in the trenches of the vicious and brutal aspects of war, best embodied in corps-a-corps, of course, because not being so makes you only an observer from afar. But after that, the better warrior, will refine his skill and his art, and his own soul too, by learning the aspects that come from pursuits such as poetry, meditating on a flower or a bee, painting or drawing, or, indeed, archery.

There is a peace in the trajectory of the aging fighter after all. It is a natural and serene progression, even if the way may well be through the valley of fear, death, brutality and alarm.

I can only suggest archery to all those of you who may have been too long in the trenches, clubbing away at the enemies. Whatever shape your trenches may have taken.

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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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This post was originally published on my Substack. Link here