A new direction............ Archery

[Brithunter]

What with rising costs, powders going through the roof along with the price of bullet, ammunition, not to mention fuel  at the moment a trip to the range uses about 4 gallons of fuel and at £4.76 per gallon that nearly £20 ($31 USD) I have had to cut back on my range visits 

Now for the last three years I had been saying that I wanted to try Archery again not having done it since school several decades ago  and in the village is a thriving Archery Club so a few weeks ago i took myself down there and gave it a go using some club equipment. After a few weeks of doing this of course I wanted my own bow so a few days scouring e-bay produced several that might do. After losing out of 4 setups by being outbid after reaching my self imposed price limit and just watching a few more as they soared way above my price range. I stumbled across one that no one had bid on  .

  now this set up, yep a complete outfit ready to go  , was more than i originally wanted to spend but it was a started bow like most of those I had been trying for and I think it was listed wrong as I only found it by doing a related search. So an e-mail enquiry later I bid on it with about 50 seconds to go and won it.

Then the fun started  It arrived on an Monday morning and I had to try it out of course  now it came with a set ( of Eastern platium arrows but I had ordered soem cheap ones to start with. 10 fibreglass and 10 Alloy ready mades so used them and promptly lost a fibreglass which we still have yet to find 

So on the Wednesday club night I take the bow and get it checked out, despite being claimed it's ready to shoot, the bracing height was wrong as was the tillering and the bow string was too short  . So the coach spent some time adjusting it as best he could and we got to shooting it. The Bow is a re-curve competition type with Internaional limb fittings, sight and long rod.

So after shooting it Wednesday and Thursady evenings it was left with the coaches (Father & Son team) to have a new string of the right length made up and the bow set up as it should be. The new string is a "Fastflite" and after settling down it seems to be a good one.

Due to the loss of light now in the evenings we have now moved indoors into the village hall to shoot the club nights and I am starting to get the arrows grouping together, at least some of the time  , but of course my technique requires a lot of work. My biggest problem it seems is grabbing the bow on release and torquing it and that causes wide and sometimes wild shots  so to help with this I have got hold of a buch of straw bales and built a butt stop, a straw wall, on our field to practice on and until I can get a proper compacted straw butt roundal from the club and make a stand to hold it it will do. I pinned a Shoot 'n' See Whitetail target on it for now and am slowly licking the grab and torque problem.

Now I have met a buch of new people, you never know might even make soem new friends  , and the village hall is only about 1 1/2 miles so the costs are greatly reduced not accounting the cost of my newly acquired equipment of course, but that should last me out .................... hopefully 

[Jacko]

Been into Archery for over 30 years , Welcome to the greatest sport / pastime man has ever devised . Archery is also a reflection of mans cutting edge technology throughout the ages - also welcome to spending a LOT more money than your thinking you should as well , I know from experience .

$100    for a roll of string material , but you gotta have a 2 colour string so that's $200  . A dozen carbon arrows , is that with an aluminium core or extruded carbon , there's another $240 , Oh No , you just smashed 6 when the wind blew the target bale over  there's another $120 , WOW! see that aircraft alloy riser that Bill used in last years world titles , awesome , another $750 and those carbon core recurve limbs reduced to only $595 . Then when you have the good gear there's travel / accomodation to and from Tournaments from one end of the land to the other - Love it ?

Which I was kidding Brithunter . I sincerly hope you get half as much out of your archery as I have - ENJOY

regards Jacko

ps just bought a new Marlin Lever Action .44 magnum cheaper than my last Bow cost me 

[Brithunter]

LOL  well the set up I brought has a 25" Spigarelli Riser (Black) with Spigeralli spring loaded rest, Shybyua button, Arten "Summit" sights, Arten Alloy Long rod. Hoyt Vector carbon Foam limbs 36lb draw weight, arm guard, A & F tab, 8x Eastern platinum 2016 ...XX75 arrows and a Bow stringer in a Field Locker hard case.

OH ................... and the elder club coach made me up a new "Fastflite" string to fit my bow as the one that came with it was too short messing up the bracing height for the grand price of ...................................... $6 USD  In a week or so they will make me up a second as a spare after checking the brace height again to make sure it's right with this string.

 Then brought 20 cheap arrows, 10X Allow Armex and 10X Fibreglass Armex. I am shooting the Allloy shafts which weigh 508 grains.

The riser is the first Spigarelli type I am told, they brought out a different model in 2001 or 2002 and recently a new type althougether so my Bow must be at least 5 years old or more assuming it could have been old stock. But it's more likely older and probably about 10 years old, I don't know when Hoyyt made the vectors but their not listed on their web site.

Now the whole shebang cost me less than a new marlin 1894CS or 336 would have, quite a bit less actually  And unless I have to pay out for replacements should something break then this set up should last me many years  Meanwhile I have a .222 Rem 1956 BSA Hunter to pay off and a .243 Win Parker-Hale Model 1000 with scope and mounts also to pay for. Have to get tme added to my licence first though  .