Estrella/Vegas '09 - Part 5, More Shooty Goodness

[jamesq]

Saturday was, in many ways, Estrella's big day. More on why in a later post, because this post is about archery.

While the others went off and did there own thing, I decided to go shoot. Partly this was to contribute to the war, but it was also to teach SA, who wanted to try it. She had tried it briefly earlier, but was using conejita_diabla's Mongolian horse bow which may have been too heavy a draw for her. I brought alone my combat bow which is a slightly lighter draw and has a shelf, thus making it a bit easier to use then a horse bow. Sadly she never showed up. C'est la vie.

I had several hours to kill so I shot a very good near-royal round (I didn't have anyone to time me for the speed round). A stranger observed me nailing the bull's eye repeatedly and gave me what I consider a damn fine compliment: "You look like someone who knows what he's doing". To be recognized as someone who knows something pleases me greatly and give my INTP nature a warm feeling. He then asked me the finer points of shooting traditional bows (He normally used a modern compound bow, so knew the basics of shooting). Mostly we discussed canting the bow as a way of relieving Archer's Paradox. I worked with him a bit and he put together the different methods fairly quickly.

Along about this time a girl walked up to the organizers and volunteered to marshal. The told her to come back in a couple hours and did so in a dismissive way that soured her (and me) to volunteering. It was pretty clear that they wanted it to be their show. I'm of two minds now. First, I think they should have allowed some outsider marshaling simply because it would have improved things. OTOH I might personally be wary of a stranger marshaling at an Avacal event - but then I know all of the Avacal marshals and we have pretty high standards. Bottom line: They weren't interested in outsiders marshaling. Oh well.

I started the first of the two war shoots and got 2/3 of the way through it when conejita_diabla joined me. She seemed pretty wiped from having fought in some of the armoured scenarios earlier in the day, but she plays hard and wants to do it all. She came out and shot respectably, surpassing her previous day's score by 1. This is a greater achievement then it sounds. I was shooting much better in general on Saturday then on Friday and my score dropped 20 points. Each day had unique targets and Saturday's were simply harder.

Or possibly my archery OCD kicked in - one target was a 3D armoured fighter and you got more points for head shots(6) then torso (4) or limb (2) shots. Naturally I shot at the head, missing it by an inch four times and hitting it once between the eyes and once in the clavicle. Had I gone for the body shots I'd have gotten more points overall, but I had to show off. Go hard or go home.

Speaking of the 3D target, there were two kids, probably tweens or not much older, shooting at it. They had not picked up a bow before that day and had just enough knowledge to be dangerous. They clearly needed to be supervised because they were being loud and a little rowdy. Normally I'd just shrug this off as "kids being kids", but they were disturbing people who were actually competing (they were shooting the 3D target just for fun since the range was not terribly crowded).

Then they got bored of that and decided to try clout shooting (high angle shooting for nailing very distant targets from above) for fun. a little background: They had been shooting for less then an hour, ever - they were green as grass. They were in the middle range of three. From left to right was the the Speed scenario range, then the static target scenario range, then the practice range. Between each range was a "neutral zone" about 15 metres wide which allowed archers in one range to retrieve their arrows without having to stop every archer on the entire field. Normally this would be sufficient since there were no official clout shoots for the event. Also, An Tir rules don't give specific dimension rules for range set up, only guidelines (what the Atenveldt rules are I don't know).

Mistake one: They shot clout when they shouldn't have.

Mistake two: They were clout shooting when archers in the neighboring range were retrieving arrows that had over-shot the target. That is to say, there were archers searching the grass for lost arrows in exactly the part of the range where a mis-shot to the right would have put them in danger. Lucky no one got shot.

Mistake three: One of their arrows did, in fact, land in the neighboring range and they went to retrieve it when that range was shooting. The practice range marshal noticed and called hold.

At this point I resolved to have a word with them if the static range marshal did not. He did have a word with them, though I don't know what was said. Coincidentally the range was closing down around then so I don't know if they packed up because they were told to leave or because they couldn't shoot anymore anyway.

The Atenveldt marshals varied in their ability. Some (notably the ones on the speed field) where both conscious of safety and kept the lines moving. One (the lady who was in charge of the practice field both days I shot) where only concerned with safety, but couldn't keep a line moving to save her life. Others (the static range marshal), weren't that good at either, as the incident with the two kids can attest.

thekillerb69 suggested that I should have demanded to see his marshaling authorization card. I had no idea you could do that. Knowing that I can, I'm coming around to his way of thinking.

Ultimately, I'm thinking of simply volunteering to marshal for a few hours next year to show them how it's done. This also give me a chance to do some teaching, which is also fun to do at an event.

conejita_diabla and I chatted a bit with what I took to be one of the hot Atenveldt archers. We traded some archery horror stories. For example, he knew some jackass that pulled his arrows at 90 degrees then lowered the bow to aim. One slip of the fingers and he'd have shot an arrow straight up. Hiawatha is not someone I'd want to share a range with. I got the feeling that he could have beaten me on a good day, but not an average one. It would have been fun to test that theory.

Comments

[thekillerb69.livejournal.com]

To clarify, I don't recommend asking to see a marshal's card unless you've tried other avenues to see if they knew or cared about what they were doing. Though I do think it's a great way to be completely insulting under the guise of clarifying matters of safety :)

[jamesq]

I understood that to be what you meant. I explained it poorly though.