So! I’ve been back in the salle, doing Swordfit and cursing my muscles the day after. I’ve also been at the archery range in Burnaby, and I’ve swapped my Rakim Wildcat limbs for a set of Jando limbs that boost my bow’s weight from 18lbs to 25lbs. Increasing the bow weight has been an interesting experience, I’ll tell you that much. At 18lbs, the draw was pretty easy, but I never felt like my arrows had enough power to be accurate. At 25lbs, the draw is a lot more difficult – far more than I thought it would be, considering the increase is only 7lbs. But my arrows are more accurate in a way I didn’t expect them to be. They fly true and hit with a very satisfying thunk.
Random I know, but there you have it. I don’t know that my groupings are getting any better, but I’ve got my first bullseye, so I’m calling that a win.
Speaking of bullseyes… I’m enormously amused by the fact that 90% of the other archers I see on the range are clearly very serious about it. I’ve yet to see another archer with a bow as crappy as mine, being carried around in a $20 bag for baseball bats, who also shoots at a target that consists of a cross made of two strips of masking tape. Everyone else has nice, expensive compound bows, or at least very good-looking recurves or traditional bows, plus stands, sleek, patterned arrows, viewfinders, and all kinds of devices and whatnot that I don’t know the function of, stored in hardshell cases. And they shoot at proper targets.
I don’t know why, but I just find it really funny when I see all these ‘serious business’ archers doing their thing, carefully aiming every arrow with zen-like mastery, and I rock up with my crappy bow and crappy target going WHEEEE LET’S SHOOT THIS SHIT, and being happy if I hit the 8ft target at all.
I’m probably just easily amused.