And it hit me like never before

It is the middle of the shooting season and the Scottish weather certainly is showing that. I was at Banchory this weekend with wet and cold on the Saturday, and warm (but not hot) on the Sunday. This is mid July, how can archers get any decent scores if the weather doesn't play ball.

Anyway, this short note is not about my angst at the weather, it's about something all together more worrying.

As long as I can remember, Banchory has been one of the jewels in the crown of Scottish archery. It's a good shooting field, right in the middle of town, with its only fickleness being a gap in the trees between 70m and 90m that can give the gents some issues sometimes.

It has informal, and well used, camping, lots of eateries and is even easily accessible by public transport. It has always been well run, with a raffle to boot. So, what's the beef?

Just 12 targets were filled at the weekend, and no junior ones at that. The field looked lonely, with the usually fence to fence line of bosses sadly depleted.

I won't even start to guess at the reasons for this, but I guess that you look at all sorts of things and see just a gradual change and then something like Banchory comes along and "it hit me like never before" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0as2GKhmuA)

Up the Pole

I promised a few words on crossbows.

These bows are all individually hand made by a local craftsman. From what I could gather, there are hundreds of crossbow guilds (clubs) across the eastern Netherlands and into Germany, and there are quite a number of local artisans who make the equipment.

The target is a 5cm disc on top of a hollow scaffold pole and it is attached to a rope that runs through the centre. The pole is on top of a wooden mast so that the disc is 12.5m off the ground. When you knock the disc off, you have scored and just pull the other end of the rope to get it back on the top.

Shooting consists of standing a little way out from the mast and shooting vertically up with a blunt. The round is a number of shots taken singly at one mast and then doing the same at another mast.

This whole episode takes about 20-30 minutes and then that is shooting finished for the night. The rest of the evening consist of drinking coffee or beer, and talking.

More information on the guild we visited can be found at http://www.schuttersgilde-eersel.nl/ and a directory of all guilds can be found at http://schuttersgilden.startpagina.nl/ (both in Dutch, but have pictures).

Also, if you want to hear a Guilds song, as well as see their uniforms, then visit http://stsebastiaanmierlo.spydar.com/. (thought, once we have chosen a new logo for the SAA, what about a song ...)