The past couple of days have been models for archery. The sun was just right, warm but not too warm, and the wind was totally absent. Last night that changed. A cold front brought in heavy rain and wind that reeked vengeance on the reminder of what had been an otherwise calm week.
There was no time to drive into Elizabeth City to practice on the indoor range at PGF Outdoors. See, my wife, Brenda, has been out of town visiting friends on Mystic Island, Connecticut. Before she returned it seemed like a good idea to restore the house from a temporary bachelor pad back to the home she’d left.
In addition, she’d been eating seafood a lot, you know lobster and such, while on northern coast and I wanted to prepare for her a delicious red meat meal. I’d decided on beef bourguignon, wild rice, Brussels sprouts and fresh baked bread.
So, I cleaned, prepped food and began cooking. Those activities meant staying home and dealing with the wind.
It was obvious that shooting at 18-meters would be futile. Instead, I headed to the 3D range where I hoped the remaining Fall leaves would help block the worst of the gale.
I don’t shoot the same arrows for 18-meters as I do for 3D. That meant re-sighting my Elite Energy 35 for the shorter lighter arrows. I made a quick twist of the windage and took a shot aimed at a point on a block target. The arrow landed within a millimeter of where I’d aimed. Figuring that was a good sign I headed over a path that led to my 3D targets.
The 3D exercise was not as much fun as shooting and moving. The revised training plan was to shoot individual targets at 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 yards. At each yardage increment shoot 3 arrows, retrieve them and repeat at the same distance then move to the next point. Essentially, this is yardage practice.
Even in the woods the wind made shooting a challenge. No doubt, it was not as frustrating, as shooting in the open would have been.