My partner and I spent a day at Wye Valley Archery this weekend and I thought you guys might like to hear about it.
As a London archer, used only to shooting indoors or out in sports fields in nice weather, it was completely different to anything that I'd done before. No stuffy competitions, no stupid rules and regulations about what you have to wear, no whistles and no silly old nonsense about what kind of bow you can and can't use.
Instead, there were a whole bunch of people, from little kids with loaner bows, right up to hairy bikers with war bows and everything in between. As long as you observed the basic safety rules, you could shoot what you liked, how you liked. The owner, Lee, made us hugely welcome and took us round the course personally - cracking jokes and giving us hits and tips as we went. He was using a lovely one-piece hunting recurve, but he shoots all sorts and I was fascinated to see his son, who shoots a high-poundage hunting compound bow off his gloved fingers!
There's a regular target range and a 'roving' range (complete with knights of various nationalities to engage) but after a few ends on the GNAS targets, we went off into the woods to play. The 3D course is awesome - it's packed with all sorts of real world archery challenges, shooting a variety of animal shaped objects at unknown ranges, with elevations, dead ground, multiple targets and other obstacles designed to make you think like a hunter, not like a target archer. For instance, when you walk into the woods for the first time, here's the very first thing you're confronted with:
The life size foam rubber targets mean that you can shoot at them all day with surprisingly little damage when you pull the arrow out. Bit of luck really, the big ones are many hundreds of pounds to replace.
They're marked with a kill zone which corresponds to where you'd need to put your arrow to drop them if they were real. Although to be fair, if they were real, you couldn't do this:
And you're unlikely to do this:
Although I have a lovely little Samick SKB short bare bow pulling 45lbs that I bought on here - I can't shoot for toffee with it. So instead, I used my Martin target compound setup with a regular scope. Not a field or hunting bow, but it let me be pretty accurate - although I left the posh carbon arrows at home because shooting in the woods is a great way to break and lose your best gear:
My partner shot a hired recurve bow without sights and had no problems making sure that Harry Potter wasn't getting his mail that evening:
It was just the best fun that I've had out in the woods for ages. Lots of the fun of hunting without the tiresome necessity of clearing up gibbly bits afterwards. Hell, I even got to shoot Bambi. Repeatedly. From 40 metres. Being horribly vain, I had to pose for one of those American bowhunting 'look what I shot' photos:
Sorry - that was gratuitous
So if you're in the market for a splendid day out just over the M4 bridge into Wales, I highly recommend giving Lee a call. He caters for all ages, standards, individuals and groups. He even says he'll do sessions for birthdays and stag parties, which I think is a great way of having some fun with your mates for not an awful lot of cash.
It's a shame it's such a long drive for us or I'd be down there much more. All I need to do now is to work out how to justify another day down there as a 'team building' jolly with my colleagues...
As a London archer, used only to shooting indoors or out in sports fields in nice weather, it was completely different to anything that I'd done before. No stuffy competitions, no stupid rules and regulations about what you have to wear, no whistles and no silly old nonsense about what kind of bow you can and can't use.
Instead, there were a whole bunch of people, from little kids with loaner bows, right up to hairy bikers with war bows and everything in between. As long as you observed the basic safety rules, you could shoot what you liked, how you liked. The owner, Lee, made us hugely welcome and took us round the course personally - cracking jokes and giving us hits and tips as we went. He was using a lovely one-piece hunting recurve, but he shoots all sorts and I was fascinated to see his son, who shoots a high-poundage hunting compound bow off his gloved fingers!
There's a regular target range and a 'roving' range (complete with knights of various nationalities to engage) but after a few ends on the GNAS targets, we went off into the woods to play. The 3D course is awesome - it's packed with all sorts of real world archery challenges, shooting a variety of animal shaped objects at unknown ranges, with elevations, dead ground, multiple targets and other obstacles designed to make you think like a hunter, not like a target archer. For instance, when you walk into the woods for the first time, here's the very first thing you're confronted with:
The life size foam rubber targets mean that you can shoot at them all day with surprisingly little damage when you pull the arrow out. Bit of luck really, the big ones are many hundreds of pounds to replace.
They're marked with a kill zone which corresponds to where you'd need to put your arrow to drop them if they were real. Although to be fair, if they were real, you couldn't do this:
And you're unlikely to do this:
Although I have a lovely little Samick SKB short bare bow pulling 45lbs that I bought on here - I can't shoot for toffee with it. So instead, I used my Martin target compound setup with a regular scope. Not a field or hunting bow, but it let me be pretty accurate - although I left the posh carbon arrows at home because shooting in the woods is a great way to break and lose your best gear:
My partner shot a hired recurve bow without sights and had no problems making sure that Harry Potter wasn't getting his mail that evening:
It was just the best fun that I've had out in the woods for ages. Lots of the fun of hunting without the tiresome necessity of clearing up gibbly bits afterwards. Hell, I even got to shoot Bambi. Repeatedly. From 40 metres. Being horribly vain, I had to pose for one of those American bowhunting 'look what I shot' photos:
Sorry - that was gratuitous
So if you're in the market for a splendid day out just over the M4 bridge into Wales, I highly recommend giving Lee a call. He caters for all ages, standards, individuals and groups. He even says he'll do sessions for birthdays and stag parties, which I think is a great way of having some fun with your mates for not an awful lot of cash.
It's a shame it's such a long drive for us or I'd be down there much more. All I need to do now is to work out how to justify another day down there as a 'team building' jolly with my colleagues...
