© Companions of the Longbow

Reminders

If you missed last week’s news it may be worth popping back and going over it because you’d have missed some of the latest dates for events (which are also posted up on the Calendar page) and the T-shirt competition.  Click here to read last week’s news.

Companions Challenge

This week’s Challenge was a repeat of Challenge Number 20 called “Downpour”.  The challenge was inspired by the pre-amble before the Battle of Crécy (1346) where it is recorded that a short rain storm caused the Genoese crossbow men fighting for the opposing French army against the English major problems by soaking their crossbow strings and shortening their effective range.  The archers in the English army on the other hand were quickly able to unstring their bows and stow their bowstrings under their hats, helmets and in pouches until the rain stopped.  Once the rain had passed they restrung their longbows and with their dry strings and with the longer range were able to shoot down the crossbow men.  But how easy is it to unstring, string again and shoot your longbow when the pressure is on?

The last time we tried this challenge we divided the archers into two categories but this time the archers were divided into three categories.  The categories were; those that string their bows with a stringer, those that string their bows using the push-pull method and those that couldn’t or didn’t want to take part in the main challenge  Only the two categories that were stringing their bows were part of the Challenge but the third but the final group did have a chance to shoot and win this week’s Prize of Dubious Worth.

Of the two stringing groups the first group consisting of those archers who use the push-pull method went first.  They had five seconds from standing to string their unstrung bow and those that could not do so were excluded from the second round where actual shooting would take place (this first round just made sure the archers could safely string their bows under pressure).  The second group that used stringers were next and they had twenty five seconds to string their bows.  The third group obviously weren’t part of the Challenge so they got to hang around and watch …  

For the second round the archers started on a shooting line at 30 paces from a our standing bear target.  All archers were told they must start with their bows unstrung and the challenge was to re-string their bows and shoot two or more arrows into the bear target within the allotted time.  From the first time we tried this Challenge (which was successfully completed) the time limits have been changed slightly to make it harder so let’s ask the usual question of how did they do?

The group that went first was the people who don’t use stringers and they had twenty five seconds (down from the 30 seconds they had the first time).  Of this group Lewis managed to re-string and get two arrows into the standing bear target, although there were plenty of arrows shot by everyone else (must be that pressure!)  The next group were the people who use stringers and they had thirty five seconds (down from 40 seconds they had the first time).  Now there was a little bit of controversy for this second group as none of the archers managed to re-string and shoot two arrows into the standing bear target (this making the Challenge a fail) but to be fair all three of the archers taking part in this second group had very high draw weight bows (some had warbows for example).  Perhaps with hindsight thirty five seconds was pushing it a bit but at least one archer from the group managed to shoot two arrows even if they weren’t accurate shots …  If this Challenge were to be repeated again I think the times for the stringers might need a bit more tweaking.

So this left the archers who weren’t taking part in the main Challenge and they had fifteen seconds to shoot at least two arrows into the standing bear target of which John and Alex managed to get two in.  Finally, for the Prize of Dubious Worth, for the archers who managed to get two arrows into the bear there was a closest to the bear’s heart shoot off with six arrows.  Alex eventually won and received her Prize of Dubious Worth (an ant farm!), so congratulations!

Left to right:  A slightly sun blitzed shot of the shooting line, the standing bear target after the “stringers” group had had their try and finally Alex opening her Prize of Dubious Worth