What's it all about

You might be lucky enough to have seen Archery on the television at some time. The Archer, dressed in team colours of some description, firing arrows at a target of known distance, across a beautiful field, against archers of similar ability using similar equipment. This is great sport if you like that sort of thing, but there are people within the Archery fraternity who would rather get “back to nature” and therefore indulge their passion by taking part in a spot of "Field Archery" instead!

In Field Archery, you shoot on a course in small groups (normally no more than five people). Your group can be made up of archers of any age, sex and ability and will also contain a variety of shooting styles. Traditional English Longbows, Olympic-style recurve bows, American Flatbows, and compound bows (a bow with wheels and pulley systems) making up some of the styles. And this is by no means all the possible styles or types of bow. You will consequently always have a good mix in the group. You might even find entire families shooting together!

Where the Target Archer knows exactly how far they have to shoot their arrows, the Field Archer doesn’t have that luxury. The Archer will steps up to the "peg" and immediately find that they have to firstly search for the target in among the trees and undergrowth (the target could anything from a picture of a small animal to a life-size 3-D target of a bear – they are only models, honest!). The archer then needs to judge the distance to the target across, up (or down) hill, across water or between trees and not too thick vegetation, in order to shoot at the target. If you miss, don't panic, you just move forward to the next peg and have another go. You’ll get three shots at the target to score points. Basically, if you hit the target on the first shot, your score is higher than taking the maximum three shots (the fewer the number of shots, the higher your score will be!)

Field Archery Clubs are found the length and breadth of the UK, and many hold competitions where all comers are welcome to shoot to their hearts’ content. Competitors are divided into groups, but compete only within their shooting style and age (Cub, Junior and Adult). Therefore, you might shoot a Longbow and be in a group with Recurve and Compound shooters, but your score is only measured against all of the other Longbow archers. You can't be expected to outshoot someone with magnified sights and super-fast carbon arrows against a bow designed around 1,000 years ago, can you ?? Likewise a 9 year old cannot be expected to compete against someone who has been shooting for the last 30 years of their adult life (but some do come very close!!)

If you’d like to know more about this wonderful and entertaining sport, please contact our club secretary (details on the main page). If looking for a Field Archery Club in your local area, the National Field Archery Society (NFAS) may be able to help.