Did some playing around with the chronograph and my new arrow scales. I did all speed testing with a 320gn arrow. I used one close to 620gn in my previous tests. The standout today was my girlfriend's new 25# sanlida x8 ilf recurve. That little 25# bow was slinging that 320gn arrow 148fps. Her little 20# long bow did 135 for me and 129 for her. My new 37# long bow did 168, my vintage 35# York recurve did 158, and my 30# shatterproof long bow did 155. The craziest thing happened though. My adult stepdaughter was visiting and shooting with us today, she also shot with us a couple days ago. She actually shot well enough today to give me some competition. The crazy part was that I asked her to guess what the speed of the bow I was about to check, would be. I shot the bows in order by descending draw weight. I shot the 37 and 35 before I asked, so she asked what they shot. She nailed it dead on for both the 30 and 25#. She was 5 off on the 20# at 140. I tried to explain that it was going to be a bigger drop because it is also a slower limb design.
We had a couple that we've been trying to get to come shoot with us. We were finally able to get them here, they live a mile away, but everyone usually meets at their house. They ended up bringing a whole crew after church. I hadn't planned on giving so many lessons.
I had one poor student (not pictured) that I had to take the bow from. I gave her 2 chances, but she is just retarded and instructions go in one ear and out the other. She also wasn't invited, but I tried to tolerate her. Everyone else came to shoot the bows, we've been trying to get together for archery for over a month. After I took the bow from Bill (she turns into 'wild bill' when she drinks) she started asking about guns. I said yes we have guns and no we're not shooting them. Then she wanted to know why. I just said that I don't want to. I didn't feel like explaining why I wasn't going to let a crazy woman waste my ammo. Besides that, we were there for archery.
We had a 8 year old choose to put away his compound and work his way from a 20# longbow to a 25# horse bow. They said something about making it a regular Sunday thing, but I don't think I can tolerate Bill that often.
I went to my first 3d shoot at Horse Creek Traditional Archery Club. They have a 30 target course. https://www.horsecreekarchery.com/
That bobcat was up in the air on a teeter-totter pole. This was from the pin. You don't want to miss high and lose your arrow in the swamp behind.
I went back on Sunday with my girlfriend. It was her first time going. I was 20 points behind 3rd place, I think first place shot 232. I shot with the 3rd place archer, we were tied and trading the lead for our group for the first half of the course. I choked on a couple targets and fell behind. I wasn't concerned with placing in the tournament, but now I have a personal baseline to try to improve. My girlfriend did ok. She's had shoulder surgery and says that shooting makes her shoulders feel better. She doesn't really practice seriously and just shoots our closest target, which I have been slowly moving farther. I think it's at about 14 yards now. I'm not qualified to coach her and don't want to teach her wrong. I guess the good thing is most of her arrows are easy to find since she tends to miss under and not over. Sometimes they stick in a tree. She made a trick shot towards the end. She let a tree limb interfere with her bow, and the arrow went pinballing off everything. I found it in a piece of deadfall that was leaning on a tree. She enjoyed it and liked most of the people, we did cross paths with one couple that made her want to help look for arrows. The rest of the group agreed that we needed to move on and create some distance. I was off pulling arrows and didn't hear, but apparently they were complaining about President Trump being a dictator. It's funny watching some of the different shooting styles. Two of the guys in our group were using thumb rings, but one of them was shooting a long bow. He was a tall guy with a fairly short bow that he was drawing 33". The 3rd dude was fun to watch. He's a commercial fisherman, I believe 86 years old. He looks like he's just shooting from the hip. He would basically just stand there holding the bow straight out in front of him and draw back to his chest and let it go. Looked just like an old timer with a slingshot. On one target after scoring a 10 like that, he asked, want me to do it left handed? It took him a second to remember what to do with which hand. It's super awkward changing hands, because everything is opposite, and then throw in eye dominance. He shot the same way left handed and just bounced the arrow off the target's back above the kill zone.
Saturday I shot my first round with some guys from "Ye olde farts and sore losers " from Tennessee. They are actually the first group that I ever shot with. I started late and shot solo last time. Being seasoned veterans, I couldn't have asked for a better group to show me the way. I shot my second round with a group of church band mates. They were a lot of fun, most of them are young and just into their second year except for the one that's been shooting all his life. I forgot to mention, and the last post was already long about ESEE that I spotted. I carried my 3 in the leg pocket of my 5.11 pants on Saturday. I needed to do laundry and switched to a zt 0350 in a pair of chinos for Sunday. The tall guy with the long bow and thumb ring was carrying an Izula 2. I also saw one Esee at the previous shoot as I was leaving. There is a chance it was the same one, but I don't think it was.
I found a picture of Roger the fisherman on FB. I'm not sure if he was putting the rain coat back on or taking it off for good. He ended up carrying it more than he wore it.
