National
Field Archery Society
Field Archery
You
might be have seen Archery on the Olympic Games coverage at
some time. The Archer, dressed in a uniform of sorts, firing
arrows at a distant round target across a beautifully manicured
field, spotting their shots with a telescope. Great sport
if you like that sort of thing, but there are people within
the Archery fraternity who prefer getting “back to nature”
and consequently indulge their passion by partaking in a spot
of Field Archery instead!
In Field Archery, you will be shooting a course in small
groups (normally a maximum of five people). Your group can
be made up of shooters of any age, sex and ability and will
also contain a variety of shooting styles. Traditional English
Longbows, Olympic-style recurve bows, American Flatbows, and
compound bows (with all the wheels and pulley systems) make
up some of the styles contained within Field Archery. Given
this, you’ll always have a good mix in the group. You
might even find entire families shooting together!
Whereas
the Target Archer knows exactly how far they are sending their
arrows downrange, the Field Archer doesn’t have that
luxury. The Archer will step up to the mark and find that
they have to firstly find the target in among the trees and
undergrowth (the target could anything from a picture of an
animal to a life-size 3-D crocodile – we promise they
are only models, honestly!). They will then need to judge
the distance to the target across dead ground, up (or down)
hill, across water or between trees and vegetation in order
to shoot at their quarry. If you miss with your shot, no panic,
you simply move forward to the next “peg” and
have another go. You’ll get three chances to hit the
target and score some points. In a nutshell, if you hit the
target first time, your score will be higher than it would
be for taking the maximum three shots (not dissimilar to golf,
the lower the number of shots, the higher your score will
be!)
Field
Archery Clubs can be found across the length and breadth of
the UK and Europe, and many hold their own “Open”
competitions where all comers are welcome to book in advance
and shoot to their hearts’ content. Competitors are
divided into the type of groups described earlier, but compete
only within their shooting style. Therefore, you might shoot
a Longbow and be in a group with Recurve and Compound shooters,
however your score is only measured against all of the other
Longbow shooters in other groups. After all, we wouldn’t
expect you to necessarily outshoot someone with magnified
sights and super-fast carbon arrows with a bow designed around
1,000 years ago (although some do come close on occasions!)
If you’d like to know more about this fascinating and
entertaining sport, contact the National Field Archery Society
via our Website; National
Field Archery Society and we’ll let you know
if there is a club in your local area.
Photos property of Long Eaton Field Archers
Please mention Try My Sport when contacting this sports association.
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