F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Hunger Games

A Return to the Straight and Arrow—Traditional Archery, Day 3—Or Going “Obi-Wan”

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Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi
Aim Without Aiming, Frank (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I had my first-ever archery instruction yesterday, and it was eye-opening.

You’d think, gee, a stick, a string, and an arrow. How much “tuning” does a “stick and string” require?

How about bracing height, nock point, arrow rest thickness? Throw in a string waxing for good measure.

I’m not going to get into all those, those can be found with some Internet searches, and it wasn’t about all the bow tuning. It was all about the “Instinctive Training.” It was fascinating. How to shoot without aiming. I told him he was getting all “Obi-Wan Kenobi” on me.

Heh-heh.

Yeah, we had a good laugh, then this weird look came across his face, there was a wave of his hands (or something), and I kinda lost track of what I was saying….

But it’s true. And how is this best explained?

Like throwing a ball.

That’s it. And how do you get better? By throwing more and more balls. That’s the trick. Shooting more and more arrows.

We talked about stance  (look at the picture of the archer in this link; see how the archer’s head and torso are angled?), canting the bow (look at the picture of the archer in this link; see how the bow’s angled?), best and worse anchor points, dragging that damned hand along the face after release. I had some difficulty with that one. The rest of my form is fine, but I seem to have issues with “just relaxing the fingers” and letting the string go (perhaps a Zen analogy on life...?), not plucking the string (okay, nock it off with the Zen, already!). Sometime my fingers “fling out,” but I think most times they touch my shoulder. The other times they do go in the general direction and, yes, I can “scratch behind my ear.”

Practice.

Targets?

We don’t need to no stinkin’ targets.

We shoot at “nothing” (there is no spoon…) or part of an exploded balloon at 20 yards (later we moved it in to 10, to work more on the form and finger release issues). I liked that. I had two hours of instruction, then stayed another hour, and I only put up a target in the last 15-20 minutes, just to do so, but I was tired by then, so the hits on the paper don’t near do just to how much frigging better I did and felt over the course of the instruction. The whole “lift-aim-cant-release” I found extremely cool, not-to-mention quite helpful, and, admittedly, reminded me of all those “cool shots” in movies nowadays, where villains no longer shoot a handgun upright anymore, but turn em 45 or 90 degrees to take the shot (though, of course,  I didn’t tell Obi-Wan any of this—I did want to remember some of my instruction…).

But, I was grouping! And in a good way!

And, not only that, but there were several distinct moments during all this grouping and tiny balloon-shard, non-spoon targeting (we never actually targeted anything on purpose, it was all about the form;getting close to the balloon was bonus work), that it all actually felt right.

There, I got all Obi-Wan on myself.

Yeah, I could actually get that internal, Zen feeling as I stood there—at arrow release—that everything fell into place and the shot was near perfect (well, at least in my book). It was a cool feeling. It’s like when a writer’s “in the zone,” and it all just flows, you’re lost in the act. You’re not “a writer,” you’re the writing.

Aim without aiming, my friends!

A Return to the Straight and Arrow –Day 1.

A Return to the Straight and Arrow –Day 2.

A Return to the Straight and Arrow—Traditional Archery, Day 2

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Still All Over, Still Pulling Left, But Grouping Better!

Ouch.

Turns out my right ring finger is still quite, well…”annoyed.” I talked with my soon-to-be instructor about it and he recommended the “tab” (archers use “tabs” or “gloves” to pull back the bow string, it’s much easier on the flesh, since we’re all not superheros nor nineteenth century woodspeople…) I use should be at least two, preferably three layers in thickness. I believe mine is considered “two,” with one felt and one plastic layer. But my concern with the numb finger is to get the most “twang for my buck (heh-heh, like that!), come instruction time. I don’t want to be focusing on pain and improper physical ability if I’m paying money to learn how to do this right, and I can’t do “the right” if my body ain’t cooperatin’. I can muscle through it, sure, did so for an hour yesterday and through half of my first session, Monday (and you can see how well those went…), but I don’t want to waste my time and money, nor my instructor’s time, if my body isn’t “working right” to properly follow instruction. So, no more range until I see him late next week, and I’ll be looking at a thicker tab.

So…went out to the range yesterday to see if I could do any better with the replaced arrow rest (see comments from Day 1), and I kinda did, though it may not look all that different from my first target, but around 4 or 5 “ends” in (Lune, a commenter, was kind enough to point out [pardon the pun] that a “sessions with arrows,” when you run out and put down the bow to retrieve them, is called an “end”–thanks, again, Lune!), among a couple other groupings, I actually had a grouping of THREE arrows in the center yellow (the inverted “L” at the bottom center of the yellow). I must have been doing something right. And, BTW, I never once hit the backstop, this go-around.

Overall, I felt much more confident and feel I did a heckuva a lot better shooting this time—and I was actually grouping arrows, though am still somewhat pulling to the left.

I really have to say, I love the feeling of the bow.

It has been so long, but I love the feel of it all—nocking arrows, drawing the string, targeting. Watching the arrows as they fly through the air and head for the target. That thump! as they strike the target.

Nothing like it.

A Return to the Straight and Arrow–Day 1.

A Return to the Straight and Arrow–Day 3.

A Return to the Straight and Arrow—Traditional Archery, Day 1

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First Target Shoot –all OVER the place….

Yesterday I decided to do something I haven’t done in nearly 30 years: target shoot with my 50-pound Bear recurve bow.

What fun!

What I was doing is called “traditional” archery…using a bow with no gadgets attached, no pulleys, no sights. Select the “traditional” link above, for a more complete description. But like the article says, I do like the nostalgia and the “history of it,” and one guy did comment “nice bow” when I was out there. I was the only one on the range using a recurve (my recurve has no gadgets attached, like stabilizers or sites, and is made totally out of wood).

I started at 10 yards (or the lady who set me up on the range put me at 10 yards–she likes “success” she told me) to get the feel back, then after a few “rounds” (don’t know what each “session of arrows” is called) moved the target out to 20 for the rest of my time there. As you can see, I’m kinda all over the place…pulling a little to the left, actually. According to what I’ve read, that could be any of a couple of things, like “plucking” the string (probably; right ring finger is pretty sore, making this fun to type), “pulling” the bow, et cetera.

I had such a blast, I wished I’d kept up on this all these years. Of course, after a good hour and a half, though, my bow arm was getting a bit “used” (and, as I mentioned above, my right ring finger is a bit numb), and I shot two arrows into the wall behind and above the target, literally missing the entire target sheet (I’d actually shot a total of three into the backstop [left an arrow point there, even with the help of an arrow puller…], but two at the end, in my last round, when I was getting tired, so figured it was time to call it quits).

I’ve always been interested in bow and arrow use, always preferring the recurve to any other. I don’t know why–I just like it, and like that mine is made of wood. I’m a “wood” kinda guy. Love the smell, feel, and heft of it. Love working it, the couple of times I’ve worked with it (only so many hours in a day, you know!). I’ve never shot compound bows (but have drawn them) or any other versions of bows (not counting the kid-version of the bow and their suction-cup-tipped arrows…), but would love to someday, but I really love shooting the recurve. It’s all you, baby.

Over all these years I’ve been looking to my bow and its case my Dad hand tooled out of leather, and kept trying to find time to use it, and well, “life” got in the way, I guess. Maybe reading The Hunger Games re-ignited my passion, don’t know, but I know I’d always promised myself one day I’d again take it out and shoot some arrows, and yesterday was that day.

And I liked it.

Liked it a lot.

If you’ve never tried this before, I highly recommend it. There’s something primal about it, especially after sitting behind technology all day, to go out and do something like this. To pull back that string and sight a target 20 yards out and let loose a projectile to see where it strikes. I’m not a hunter, so have zero plans in doing that, but I loved the fun of target shooting, and I seem to do so little just for the “fun” of it.

I’ve never had formal instruction, but next week, I have my first lesson. I’ll post that target and see if things got any better.  That near-perfect bull’s-eye was from 20 yards and toward the end of my range time, as I was finally really “getting” how to target the, uh…target, but my bow arm and ring finger both about had it. I think I had about 7 or so in the yellow, and about half each were from 10 and 20 yards.

But, damn, that was so cool.

A Return to the Straight and Arrow–Day 2.

A Return to the Straight and Arrow–Day 3.

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