Archery

Okay, so I found this non-posted post in my drafts, so here's what you missed out on a fortnight ago!

I really need to think up some better titles for my posts. I mean really, Archery - honestly. Then again, it's 12:30am and I'm watching soppy movies.

Right. I mentioned archery, so I shall speak on archery! Now - as some of you readers might know, I'm a member of JOAS, the local medieval reenactment group. I think it stands for Juvenis of Accendo Sarcalogos.. and I've no idea what that means. Having said that, it's not relevant anyway. But our focus is on 13th century France at any rate, so our dream goal is to dress up like Frenchmen.

We also fight like them, which is fortunate. Back then the Franks didn't shy away from a fight. Now, our training days are on Sundays but we mostly train with melee weapons - swords, shields, daggers, spears, axes, etc. This Sunday (edit: a couple of weeks ago) was different however! We took the trip to the C monsters place (Craig and Cherilyn), set up some hay bails and started to launch arrows at them. We had a brief demonstration of the various bows, their weight (laymans terms - how strong the bow is), how to fire and how to aim. I, naturally, picked the most awkward bow I could to start off with.

A little bit of history - for the most part, combat archery is enacted using 30lb bows with blunted arrows. Very blunt. You know those rubber knobs on the bottom of some chairs? The arrows have those on 'em. So, we fire those at each other. A 30lb bow is pretty standard - there's enough weight to hit something hard, not enough to kill someone unless you're using field arrows. So.. a 55lb bow is fairly tough if you're not used to any real archery. Luckily, I didn't choose the 55lb bow. I chose the 80lb bow, and god my fingers were bleeding by the time I was done. Gah. Long story short, I gave up on that, stole somebody else's 30lb bow and had a shot at the crossbow that was dragged out.

OH! And we found a lucky lambs foot. Not so lucky for the lamb, I picked the damned thing up by the wet end. Ugh.