What I Learned Today

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of attending some instructional sessions held by the Pasadena Roving Archers near the Rose Bowl. I took an archery class way back when, in grad school, but it’s been a long time. Luckily, the PRA welcomes anyone to a free introductory lesson, on Saturdays from 8:30 to 10 a.m. Sounds simple… but this is such a popular event that you have to arrive well before 8:30. More like 7:30, to get on the list and wait for an hour to see if you get in. (It took me two tries!)

The introductory lesson starts with a quick sighting test to determine your dominant eye, so that you can pick up a left- or right-handed bow as appropriate. You then strap on a forearm bracer (to avoid bowstring welts) and a bit of leather to protect the fingers used to draw the bow, and off you go. In small groups of six people, we learned some safety rules and then got to start shooting at a target 10 yards distant. After an hour or so of practice, we all joined up at the big range and shot as a crowd.

In a group of people armed with bows, some coordination is critical. In this setting, it is done with a whistle:

• Two blasts: step up to straddle the firing line, bow vertical with one tip resting on your shoe.
• One blast: draw and nock your first arrow and start firing. When done, move back from the line.
• Three blasts: everyone’s done firing, so you can approach your target and start extracting arrows.

Arrows are removed with a certain careful combination of safety and etiquette. Two archers are permitted at the target at any time, off to the side (never standing in front of it, where a misstep could conceivably lead you to fall onto the arrows). Archers with their arrows furthest from the bullseye go first, as those are the most accessible. Therefore, the best archers are the ones loitering around until the last. If another archer’s arrow is in your way, and it fell outside the paper (scoring) part of the target, you may remove it and stand it up, point down, leaning against the target. Otherwise you leave them where they are. If you need to get arrows from the other side of the target, you can call “switch” and switch sides with the other person, marking out a large berth around the pointy arrows still in the target.

The PRA also allows you to come back for subsequent class/practice sessions, which are held on Saturdays from 10:30 to noon, available to anyone who’s completed the first class and is willing to pay $5. Totally worth it! You get 4 arrows to shoot repeatedly for an hour and a half, and the choice of shooting from 10 or 20 yards.

On my first day at the range, my shooting was quite good for a beginner, surprisingly respectable. The second time, it was a lot more challenging, and I spent the whole time at the 10-yard line, working on improving my aim. It wasn’t until nearly the end of this session that I finally realized why the other archers kept going on and on about “groupings” and consistency. They really do want you to first learn to get all four arrows in the same place, then work on moving that place towards the bullseye. I’d instead been trying to make minute corrections each time to nudge my arrows towards the bullseye individually. But this meant I hadn’t really learned yet how to make an arrow go where I was aiming it, with precisely the same armhold, draw, sighting, and release. So next time I go, I’ll try that strategy: aim the bow so that the arrow appears to be touching some particular spot on the target, and shoot to hit the same place four times in a row. Then I can work on getting to the point-scoring locations!

One nice aspect of this repeat class was that, as one of the returning newbies, I got lots of individual attention and advice from the experienced folks. In terms of form, this includes:

• Stand in an archer’s T.
• Nock the arrow so that the colored vane points toward you (away from the bow). The arrow nocks just under the bead on the string, for reasons that escape me, but no doubt are primarily for consistency in position. (The bead doesn’t hold the arrow up; the nock sticks to the string itself.)
• Draw to your smile: drawing hand comes back to rest touching your jaw, forefinger touching the outside corner of your mouth. It doesn’t have to be this exact point, but anything you can consistently hit.
• Engage your back muscles in the draw, so it’s not all arms.
• Hold the bow loosely, with thumb and forefinger only. It’s tempting to grip it hard because you’re pulling against it, but this can throw off the arrow’s flight as it leaves the bow.

At the end of either class, there is a balloon race. One balloon is pinned to each of the six-or-so targets on the field, and everyone lines up on the 20-yard line. We each get two shots to try to pop one of the balloons, everyone shooting at the same time. So the goal is to fire quickly but accurately (no good getting the right spot if someone else’s arrow gets there first!). Imagine my delight when, at the end of my second class, I hit one of the balloons with my first arrow! It had to have partly been luck; I’d been shooting from 10 yards the whole time and hadn’t had a chance to test out shooting from twice the distance. But still, it was a treat to get to walk up with the other winners and retrieve the $1 bill that had fallen from my balloon as a prize!