the target at 20 yards

Mr Speed has krafted a practice target, and measured out a range in our backyard! After researching materials and a few failed foam-buying attempts, he used cardboard and tightly wadded old clothes to create a very satisfactory and serviceable target.

the target, cardboard and wadded up old clothes

It is mildly amusing for two designers to shoot arrows at a Mac Pro box. I still need to make some bullseye designs, but we were so keen on practicing in our own backyard. I already know what will be on the first one: a deer tick.

giant bunny target (not currently in use)

On Freddy’s invitation, we went to Narragansett Bow Hunters to watch their indoor league shoot 3D targets. The NBH clubhouse is a long rectangular no-frills building at the end of a hard-packed dirt road through the North Kingstown woods, and is “Rhode Island’s only club devoted exclusively to Archery”. Freddy is the very friendly, incredibly knowledgeable and helpful godfather of archery we met at Tangy’s. Like our teacher Mr. Dean, Freddy is a great storyteller, absolutely hilarious. As for 3D targets… well. I am a rank n00b, but they really are a world unto themselves.

Totally conflicted here, being an animal lover, as in alive and furry and wild and free, but also an animal flesh eater, as in venison and wild boar are two of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. 3D targets, in archery, are a means to an end — the skillful dispatching of an edible animal to a cooking pot or the elimination of a noxious competitor for your garden. But also, 3D targets are made of molded, painted foam with replaceable “vital” areas, and are just surreal to look at, on a par with slightly sinister manikins at amusement park exhibits. 3D targets are sad and icky, but that’s not really the point. Archers are shooting at what they represent, not what they actually are. I’m trying not to over-think this, but it was, like, the first time I’ve ever seen a room full of them — with parts of fake Christmas trees set up as shrubbery — and it made an impression.

Of course the best part of the evening was meeting and talking with some of the league members. There were 30 or so men and their sons, of every age, shape, size and style you can imagine in a small-town, small-state club. Their range of equipment and accessories ran several gamuts, too, from handmade exquisite to functional and utilitarian, from basic to hi tech to super ultra magical. One gentleman held his black-and-white fletched arrows in a quiver he had made from an entire skunk; another had one made from a raccoon. They were beautiful. I saw at least 30 different bows and styles of shooting. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly, a gathering of outwardly very different people who, for all their various reasons, love archery.

Clearly, I have much to learn. I don’t know if I’ll ever shoot my arrows at 3D targets. But I do like shooting arrows, and I feel there is a place somewhere for me here in the greater archery community. The short story is that I downloaded the forms, and Mr Speed and I have applied for membership at Narragansett Bow Hunters.

discarded and abused canoe, West Warwick, Rhode Island

Our archery range is located in downtown West Warwick, in the very large basement of a building on Main Street.

the backside of a building that is not Tangy’s Archery, on Main Street

Mr Speed has temporarily solved my continuing inability to wink my right eye — and therefore my ability to aim — by popping out the left lens on a pair of reading glasses, and gluing black felt over the right. They work quite well, far better than the pathetic band-aid I desperately tried using last week (much to the amusement of all archers present), and more comfortable and less dramatic than the eye patch I attempted wearing. What a difference focus makes!

Mr. Dean gave us a few stabilizers — a weighted rod that sticks out off the front of a bow — to try out, and I was very pleased that the one I liked best was the one with the coolest design (at least in our price range): a 30-inch, multi-rod Cartel Balkan Al/Carbon. And, they both fit in our case, on the arrows side.

Then we were told that we need bowstring wax, to keep our strings… waxed (and “clean and healthy”). Later, I learned

“Waxing the bowstring is necessary for a number of reasons. First, under high magnification, the fiber make-up of the string is visually different from what you may think. Millions of extremely fine fibers going in many directions make up a single strand. The general flow is unidirectional lengthwise with a clockwise twist. All those millions of fibers need a lubricant between each other in order to not create friction or any other force to compromise their integrity. The more unidirectional fiber flow, the better the string.”

I never, ever want to compromise the integrity of my bowstring, and I totally seek unidirectional fiber flow, so we got some special bowstring wax, too. Actually, Mr. Dean gave us a tube.

Case is getting heavy!

Harder than you think
it is — if you’ve thought at all —
this mirror gazing

an homage to Loteria!

Mine are the tasteful gray and yellow; Mr Speed’s are the garish black and bright pink. (When I showed them to a small group of friends and asked them to identify which ones were whose, they all instantly guessed correctly.) Here’s an amazing fact about these arrows: the tips never need sharpening.