Come With Me...

This past weekend saw the return of my beloved pastime, that glorious sport that consists of wandering into the woods with a quiver on my back and a longbow in my hand.

I was in Arkansas again. I know, the second time in two weeks, but hey, three hours isn’t really that far. This time, I was there specifically for an archery shoot. There were many people there, and the weather could hardly have been more perfect. There was a slight breeze, but I never saw it really affect our arrows. I was shooting with an SCA friend of mine and his six year old grandson. Kolr (pronounced “Cole”) is undoubtedly the finest archer in the kingdom of Gleann Abhann, but this was a mundane shoot.

It strikes me that almost every archery shoot I have attended has been populated with some of the friendliest people I have ever met, and I cannot help but wonder if that is because the sport of archery attracts that sort of people, or the forest attracts that sort, or a combination of the two of them. In any case, no matter how badly I shot, I could tell almost instantly that I was going to have fun (which I almost always do when I shoot anyway).

It was not Sun Tzu, but a contemporary Chinese man of that time that said “When an archer is shooting for enjoyment, he has all his skill. When he shoots for a brass buckle, he becomes nervous, and when he shoots for a prize of gold, he begins to see two targets.” That lesson has been ingrained in my head for years, and I credit it more than anything else with being able to shoot as well as I do. When you have fun, you do your best, and when you have fun, it encourages you to practice, which means more skill, which means more fun, which encourages practice, which means more skill, etc. ad infinitum!

I was having fun, which meant I was shooting very well. Better than I had hoped or thought I would do! There were thirty targets, and if our first shot missed, we were allowed to shoot a second arrow. I only had to do so once. A perfect score was 300, and my goal was to break 200, though I would have been perfectly happy with 150. When we finished, and my score was finally tallied, my jaw dropped. I had shot a 236.

After that first time around the course, Kolr drove his grandson home, and I was left at the shoot for a while. A man named Rocky had already been around once and was looking for people to go around again with him, so I volunteered. This time, I did not bring a scorecard, knowing I would do much better.

And I did. Rocky and I had a good time, shooting and talking politics, education and archery. He was shooting a recurve, and also hoped to break 200, but had shot a 186 with his longbow. I did not tell him my score right off.

By the time we hit target number 28, I felt I could snuff a candle from 30 feet. I shot my arrow, it scored well, and Rocky said “You should have brought a scorecard.” I told him that I had not because I knew I would be doing better this time, and I did not want to beat myself up, thinking “Now WHY couldn’t I have shot this well the first time around?!”

To which he finally asked me my score. Sheepishly, I admitted it, and he teased me for having held out on him. “Shooting a 236 with a traditional longbow and wooden arrows!”

When we got back to the clubhouse, Kolr handed me a second-place medal. Of the five other shooters in my division (men’s traditional longbow) only one had scored higher than me, a 255, and my closest competition was 202.

There were 53 shooters in the competition that shot targets from the same distance I did. Only fourteen of them scored better than me, one of them being Kolr (247). The high score of the day was 270, but I hasten to point out that of those fourteen, only one was in my division (255) and another used a more primitive version of my bow (242). All the rest were using either modern take-down longbows (where you had the option of shooting wooden, aluminum or carbon arrows) or recurves (which, in my opinion, are easier to shoot anyway).

I am proud of how well I did, but more than that, I am happy to have spent so much time shooting and wandering the woods again with such good company. Part of the magic of archery is its resilience. The art is so widespread, having been practiced by nearly every culture in the world. The art is so old, dating back to Biblical times, and yet we have it still! From the fields of France and the forests of Wales to a little walking trail just north of Conway, Arkansas, the men of the bow have survived despite the decline of their use in combat.

(Incidentally, I learned that the last instance of a longbow being used in a combative sense was as late as 1940! An English officer, Captain Jack Churchill, who had competed in Oslo at the World Championships, happened to have his bow with him and killed a German soldier with it at something like 30 yards. Before that, in 1791, two men stood apart from each other for a duel and each fired three arrows. No blood was drawn.)

I shoot well because I enjoy shooting so much. I enjoy shooting for many reasons, and one of them is because it’s so simple, and yet it’s results, when compounded, can be absolutely devastating!

I have noted before that I enjoy the feeling of knowing that on this day, somewhere on Earth, exactly a thousand years before me, someone exactly like me was doing the exact same thing, whether it be sitting around a campfire with my friends telling jokes and stories or singing songs, or throwing axes, knives or spears, or making a new bowstring, or yes, shooting my longbow. I revel in this feeling, this connection with a past that is mine because I share a tradition with it. It is my time travel into History, and I am always eager to introduce someone else to this magnificent experience that is traditional archery.

Why not you?

Walk with me.

Journey by my side, and I will show you a world a classroom can never show you. Instead of looking at History, step into History, and I promise you, it will come alive as you would never have believed.