9th Pagoda Shoot (Albion), Richmond Archery Club - 13th April 2008
The Pagoda shoot in 2007 was the first outdoor target shoot away from the club I'd attended in my first year in archery and it was nice to go back there as my first outing of 2008. I was concerned that there would be lots of traffic because of the London Marathon that was happening on the same morning but there was no traffic at all and I duly arrived there at 7.50am! This gave me enough time to leisurely put the tent up and have a chat to Leigh Walmsley the Lady Paramount as she arrived. So by 8.40 I'd finished putting up the tent and setting my equipment up so I and then went to register! But I got side-tracked by an enormous bacon and sausage sarnie instead.
I couldn't find Leigh to register but as she'd seen me I didn't think there would be a problem, next thing you know there was a flash of purple highlighter on a purple clip board and both me and Andy Fish from GOA were signed in standing in our tents! Shoot Registration comes to you! We like that!
It all started disasterously really as I thought there were two ends of sighters when infact there was only one end of 6, so a first end of 46. Then on the next end I decided to concentrate a bit more and put that little mistake behind me. So next arrow aimed and off it went heading straight for the gold. Looked in my scope but I could only see my two fellow shooters arrows! Moved the scope down looked in the grass incase it had bounced out but I couldn't see a thing. Black arrow black fletching hmmmm so I spoke to the judge who wasn't far away, saying something along the lines of I think I've had a pass through or bouncer! She said you can shoot another arrow but if its not you'll lose your highest score as well. So I left it thinking hopefully all would be revealed, and it was! The arrow was visable just outside the gold on the target to the left. Arrrrgggghhhh!
As it was I was actually shooting well beyond what I'd ever done before and when the leader board went up at 3 dozen I was in second place by 2 points! The biggest concern at this point was a strange noise from the bow when its normally dead quiet, everyone was noticing it behind me and it wasn't there at the start!
60yds didn't start well as I was still a bit nervous about the new louder clanging noise coming from the bow on release. Something wasn't right but the scores were still going in. 60yds then got better and the opening end was followed with some nice 54s and 50s. The wind was now getting up and I was noticing more and more the bow moving around especially as I was on target 3 and 1 and 2 were targets with longbow shooters so as I was getting to arrow number 2 there was no one behind me as they'd managed to go through two details of archers and I was now getting the full brunt of the wind as they were shooting so quickly. At the start of the 50 yards I managed to see a difference in the bow brace height and the string strands were starting to look as if they were separating above the serving but only one of them and in all it looked like a strand in the string wasn't so taunt. I didn't have another one on me as it was a custom GIGA string so I decided to shoot on. The brace height on the bow had also dropped by 2 mm. I was thinking a knot has possibly come undone under the serving or something similar but it will be disregarded after the shoot.
The weather worsened and the shoot was stopped for 15 mins for a horrendous cloud burst but I had all my wet gear so I was alright and managed to stay in the tent and keep warm.
50yds went well ish I also finished with a perfect 108 last doz despite the very loud string. So to the prize giving and it turned out I'd scored a personal best of 867 and topped the old club record of 840 set at the Diana shoot last year by Jonathan. A new PB by a whopping margin a new club record and good enough for 3rd place in the Gents Recurve overall beating some very good archers in the process. So would the missed arrow have got me any higher!? Yes at least one place but it didn't matter as I couldn't take it back so realised straight away it didnt matter anymore although I was annoyed with myself! So I put it behind me and got on with the rest of the shoot. I'm very happy with the result and is testament to the progress I've made at Westcott in the last year as I came 28th with a score of 741 in 2007. It's an encouraging start to the season and as long as I don't shoot on too many other peoples targets too often I should get some pleasing results this year.
Jock Murray