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Sam Fowler Memorial Shoot – 7th October

This year’s Sam Fowler Memorial Shoot will be held on Sunday 7th October at the field. The committee invites you to come along to help raise money for her charity Iain Rennie Hospice at Home. If you came last year you will know what’s involved, if you didn’t please come for a few hours of fun and laughter, that’s all you need to know, you’ll pick it up easily – provided whoever you are following knows what they’re doing!

Sorry- No Compounds, but there will be other bows to borrow.

As we are raising funds for charity, although club members can enter for free, there will be a donation box and we would suggest around £5 each but we will be more concerned with making up the numbers needed. There will also be a raffle where prizes include a bow sight, arrow puller and water bottle, all donated by Quicks, a £10 gift voucher from M&S and various other prizes.

There will be soup and rolls before we start to warm us up so please assemble in good time. Shooting will start at 10.30. I’m unsure how long we will be shooting for so please bring a standby lunch.

There are pictures from last year on our website where you will see a number of us wearing yellow, this was Sam’s favourite colour, wear it if you can.

Please let me or Peter know if you want to join in this hilarious but very worthwhile day asap
Oh! and there’s a lovey trophy to be won also – Gary please bring it back.

Hope to be hearing from you soon
Valerie Davey
Club Secretary.

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Longbow Indoor Postal

Calling all BL-BS archers.

Last year we entered the BL-BS longbow postal Indoor team tournament. Unfortunately, other events got in the way, so we didn’t do very well.

However, the tournament is open to any individual BL-BS archers.
This is just like the BA Postal that we, the club, enter for recurves, except it’s for longbows.

Indoor or outdoor Portsmouth rounds. You can shoot as many as you like and enter the best two scores per month.

If anyone is interested please let me know and I’ll put your name on the entry form.

I will also forward detail.
Yours,
Peter.

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Whiteleaf Bowmen Club Longbow Day

When you consider there are only about six dedicated longbow archers in the club at the moment, a turnout of seventeen is pretty impressive. The fact that most of them did, in fact, posses a longbow, is even more impressive.!
We were blessed with a fine day for the middle of September and the morning was soon well underway with the National round. No one seemed particularly concerned with scores as we were shooting to BL-BS rules :- Most hits =1st place ; highest score = 2nd ; most Golds = 3rd.

The petticoat sweep was initially forgotten, but after the third end the subject was brought up and agreed upon, starting from that moment, much to the chagrin of Alun, who already had 2 petticoats. Neil at once started aiming at the very edge of the boss instead of the flag; the rest of us just, sort of, aimed.

We had wrapped up the National by about 12.30, so we took an early lunch break while the field party set out the Mini Pope and Young.

One of the advantages, and they are few indeed, of being Tournament Officer, is you get to practice the art of ‘delegation’. I suppose I should have known better when I delegated the job of finding and selecting the animal target faces for the P&Y. Alun expressed his intense dislike for the bear, that had alluded his arrows last year, so the bear was chosen…

Another animal picked was a duck; one I had never seen before. Suffice it to say, the duck was about a tenth the size of any of the other chosen animals, and as such became the sole target (sic) of Neil’s desires.

Out of the assembled multitude, there was only one who didn’t know the Pope and Young, and that was John Hall. Being a quick-witted sort of chap he soon got the idea.

As we were all shooting, (no spectators,) and after a bit of persuasion, it fell to the lovely Carol to act as timer and scorer. James assisted his Gran with the technicalities of the timer on his phone, but, that conquered, we were soon ready to get cracking. So as not to cause too much aggro before we had started, we went for a 40 second first round. This seemed to go off well and the scores were soon mounting.

Adrian and Matthew were soon putting some of the old hands to shame.

Alun, once again was bemoaning the force-field around the bear and Neil was determined to have duck for tea.

The shooting was so hap-hazard that we soon decided to remove all the non-scoring arrows from the bosses before scoring. Things whizzed along after that..!

The 30 second round started to sort the men/women from the boys/girls. (Don’t you just love PC…?) The final round at 20 seconds tended to disintegrate into chaos; which is as it should be. It was in the midst of this chaos that yours truly, while at full draw was suddenly shocked into a premature release by Carols whistle. The arrow hit the DUCK..! This piece of amazing archery was rewarded by boos and cries of “cheat”, and “15 points penalty”. No amount of mitigation was accepted, and I was forced to submit to the very unfair sentence of loosing 15 points.

Relief on all sides as the Pope and Young concluded and we all queued up to have a go at splitting the wand. Sue T, as recognised master, or should that be mistress, of the wand, led us off. The first round of archers produced no result, nor did the second. The third round, however, did. James showed us that a borrowed bow and borrowed arrow could result in a split wand. In fact, the arrow struck the wand with a resounding clonk, dispelling any chance of a dispute. The remaining archers couldn’t match his skill and we gratefully called it a day and made our way to the club house for tea.

Carol, not only did sterling service with the timer and scores on the P&Y, but also, as is her wont, produces a splendid tea. No less that six delicious cakes…. Over tea the results were worked out and the field taken down. I got the impression the day was enjoyed by all, which is the whole idea.

Very many thanks to Carol, the field party, and everyone who turned up.
The results, and in no particular order, are as follows:-

 

Sue Tutty 4th O/A Lady and Most golds unrewarded
Jan O’Keeffe 2nd O/A Lady
Val Davey 1st O/A Lady
John O’Keeffe 3rd O/A Gent
Peter King 1st O/A Gent and Pope and Young
Julie Morling 3rd O/A Lady
Andrew Clark Joint 8th Gent
Neil Allen 6th O/A Gent and Highest Score Unrewarded
Adrien Powell 4th Gent
Matthew Powell 7th O/A Gent
Alun Pugh 2nd O/A Gent
Barry Tutty Joint 8th Gent
John Hall 5th O/A Gent
James White Joint 8th Gent and Split the Wand.
Sue Cook 5th O/A Lady

Roger and Jim joined us shooting a Short National, morning only.

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Club Championships 2018 – Report and Results

The forecast had predicted rain from about 11.00am onwards. It was right.!

Not to be controlled by such a trivial thing as rain, a few hardy club members turned up, determined to make the Club Champs a good days’ shooting.

Chris Roberts dug out the waterproof faces, (that’s target faces…) and we got going as soon as we could, with the proviso that if the weather became too bad we could truncate the round from a full day Hereford to a morning Long National.

We managed to get almost two dozen in before the rain appeared and another dozen before it started to make an appreciable impact. (namely, when Julie dived into her tent to do a quick striptease and reappear fully clad in oilskins..)

The offer of stopping after the fourth dozen was firmly turned down and we squelched on to complete the round. Even the stoutest of us agreed that that was enough…

Carol the unstoppable, turned up just before we called it a day, with cakes and similar goodies; so we were able to enjoy the fruits of her labours while supping some very welcome hot tea. John sorted out the scores and in no time at all we had the presentation, Carol very kindly agreeing to act as Lady P for the day.

The results are as follows:

 

1st Lady Recurve 415 Julie Morling
1st Gent Recurve 413 Kevin Jones
1st Lady Barebow 249 Sue Cook
1st Gent Barebow 253 Tim Griffiths
Best Gold Kevin Jones
Worst White Peter King
Gehler Greening Trophy Sue Cook

Remember the next club event is the Head 2 Head on the 9th September, then the Longbow Day on the 16th September

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Sam Fowler Memorial Shoot 2017

8th October 2017

One of the problems with running a shoot for the first time, is you are not quite sure what you are doing, or if what you do will work. Well, we did know what we were doing, (sort of) and it did work; mostly thanks to the rest of the club members, Carol, and the lovely Joanna.

The weather was kind and the incredibly complicated setting out seemed to go without a hitch. The entry names got ticked off with great rapidity and before we knew it, the clock said 10.15 and it was time for assembly. In spite of my misgivings a couple of weeks ago, we ended up with a full house of 25 names.

The shoot was explained to all the assembled multitude and I then plucked up the courage to say “Any questions?” What.. only one question, easily answered… had they all actually read and understood the shoot explanation… It seemed so.! Wow…

10.30 and the shoot started. At this point Jo took over and following her “Ready” and the blast on the whistle, chaos reigned…

Very soon we were all happily moving shooting points, collecting arrows, mostly from the grass, and generally getting into the swing of things. Before very long we have reached the end of the 40 second session and it was time to have a well earned soup break…

I almost thought I detected a desire to get back to the shooting; I do know everyone was waiting to start again before the quarter of an hour break was up… Someone must have been enjoying it. At this point Justyn arrived and said a few words about Sam and their association with the club. A real inspiration…

We were soon romping along again, but now at the slightly more demanding 35 seconds. Before long, and much sooner than I expected, that time session was over and once again we were enjoying another mug of soup and a roll. Carol was doing her stuff, producing teas and coffees on demand…

The 30 second spell really sorted the men from the boys (or the politically correct equivalent). Do you shoot three arrows and try and score all three, or do you try snapping off all five and maybe miss them all…. Decisions.. decisions.!

The final whistle blew to a universal sigh of relief. We had been shooting for about four hours. The offer of going on to try 25 seconds was not met with favour, but the idea of a one arrow wand shoot appealed to all.

The wand was set up in the middle of the field and in turn, all archers shot one arrow at it. The first round resulted in no hits, so we kept going. Suddenly Alison got a hit. The remaining archers kept going to try and match her skill. The closest was an arrow that clipped, but refused to stick in. (Life is so unfair)

The tea and yummy cakes produced by Carol were very welcome and the raffle prizes also were exceptional.

All in all, I think a good time was had by all, perhaps a bit more than ‘good’.

Thanks, once again to the lovely Jo, the equally lovely Carol and a particular ‘thank you’ to Justyn from all at the club for doing his stuff as Lord P.

As for the results, if anyone is interested, they are below.

We plan to run this shoot again next year. For all the archers who joined in, please let us know what, if anything, could be improved on. All comments welcome.

Spread the word…

Results

John Bedford 6
Jan Burns 14
Dave Churchyard 5
Alan Crowe 10
Sue Crowe 18
Josh Cudworth 12
Rachel Dixon 15
Neville Freedman 3
Ronan Kelly 15
Peter King 28
Gary Martin 49 1st.
Jan O’Keeffe 12
John O’Keeffe 21
Chris Roberts 45 2nd.
Mark Sharratt 25
Alison Shearer 17
Nick Skegg 6
Val Davey 13
Adrian Powell 31 5th.
Matthew Powell 19
Stefan White 43 3rd.
Jonathan Semus 7
Paul Semus 34 4th.

The most important RESULT is that we raised £271.00 for Iain Rennie Hospice. Well done All…!

‘Till next year.

 

Peter