Club

Sunday 28th April 2019 – Double National

Twenty four archers competed in the annual Longbow open tournament at Whiteleaf Bowmen this April. The weather held dry for the event with an overcast and windy start to the day, easing off in the afternoon.

Congratulations to all our winners & a special thanks to Carol and Pauline for the teas and cakes, Stuart and John for the BBQ, John the Lord Patron and all who helped setting up and then clearing the field. Well done to Andy and Georgina for running the shoot and hopefully see every again next year.

The summary results from the Longbow Open (28th April 2019) are shown below & the full version attached here.

Gents

1. Roger Spellane (Aquarius AC) – score: 775 (Gold)
2. Peter King (Whiteleaf Bowmen) – score: 721 (Silver)
3. Pete Price (Aquarius AC) – score: 705 (Bronze)
4. Allun Pugh (Whiteleaf Bowmen) – score: 635 (Best Arrow Average, unrewarded)

Ladies

1. Sue Crowe (South Bucks Archers) – score: 389 (Gold)
2. Jan O’Keeffe (Whiteleaf Bowmen) – score: 383 (Silver)
3. Sue Tutty (Whiteleaf Bowmen) – score: 267 (Bronze)

U18s

1. Matthew Powell (Whiteleaf Bowmen) – score: 120 (Gold)

Sometimes, things just work out as you hoped they would. Last Sunday was one such occasion.

After a dire Saturday full of rain and cold winds, we were blessed with a rare October day on Sunday. The frost had long gone by the time we all started to gather at the field. A beautiful blue sky and no more than a zephyr of a breeze bade well for a perfect day. Even the setting out proved to be no problem at all, and that’s a first!

By necessity this shoot, the Pope and Young, can only accommodate a maximum of 25 archers, and 20 is a very manageable number, so I was delighted when the target list was full just before the start time. It was unfortunate that we had a couple of no-shows, but made up for it by late comers.

Soup and rolls were on offer before the start and tea and coffee on tap, so to speak. The assembly was opened by our Chairman, Chris Roberts, and, after a short introduction, he handed the proceedings over to the Tournament Officer. The ribald comments and banter started at that point and, as far as I remember, continued throughout the shoot. What better way to start.

The complexities of the shoot were explained and after only a couple of questions, everybody seemed to get the idea; in theory, anyway.

The first detail took their places and, on the whistle, shooting began. It might have taken a few ends to get the hang of things in practice, but soon we were romping along. A sure sign of the improved quality of the shooting was the reduction in the time taken looking for arrows after each end.

The first session (40 seconds) ended with a collective sigh of relief, coupled with a distinct feeling of anticipation. What we lost in time on the second session (35 seconds) we gained in experience. The lovely Jo was having to work quite hard on the scores, there being more hits than misses.

We had a very welcome lunch break at the end of the 35 second session and once more the soup and rolls were available. (Just enough Chicken and Mushroom….phew..)

The last and hardest session began, (30 seconds) and this really sorted us out. If you were lucky, you could get off all five arrows. If you were very good you could get three of them scoring.

I know I would have loved to have gone on to 25 seconds, but time was getting on and some of us had plans made for the evening.

The raffle was followed by the awards. This shoot was meant to be fun, and I’m pretty sure we all enjoyed it. I know I received many comments to that effect. I was a bit surprised, therefore, when the awards had been distributed, that a lot of the entrants asked to see their scores. Well, as promised, here they are in full:-

Very special thanks to Jo for doing the timing and scoring, a mammoth task. Thanks also to the wonderful catering team, Carol and Pauline. Also the Whiteleaf ‘field party’ for want of a better word, who did all the hard graft. They all know who they are…

It was very nice to have Justin there as a spectator in the afternoon, our link to Sam.

Sam’s charity, Iain Rennie Hospice at Home, benefitted by £297, an increase of £26 on last year so a massive thank you to everyone who contributed by donations and raffle prizes. Swarovski, Quicks Archery and M&S also made generous contributions

Look forward to seeing you all again next year.

Pictures…

Find out more about the Whiteleaf Bowmen 252 Award Scheme here…

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.

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.

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:-

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

Indoor Calendar 2018 to 2019

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:

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