
April was the Barony of Starkhafn’s annual Anniversary. We always try to make archery as fun and unusual as possible and this year was no exception. The theme of the event was The Hunt, so we came up with five ‘animal’ targets to shoot at. The first was a deer, a static target on a bale. The rest…well, they were more creative.
A foam backed target on a mower deck, the objective was to hit the fox, but not the hounds chasing it. This was a timed shoot on a pulley and line, archery could shoot as long as it was visible between two bales, about 25 seconds.
Floral foam, cut into the shape of fish and covered in ducttape. The archer stood up on top of a hay bale to shoot down at the fish
The PVC tree(complete with leaves!) had the soft side of velcro attached at various points on the branches. Burlap and fake fur squirrels were attached to shoelace/jacket cord stops that had the hook side of the velcro on them. A good hit would either piece a squirrel, or provide enough force to overcome the velcro and knock it off the tree which was also worth points.
For this, we had flu flu arrows. The cable pull was staked out and a line assistant would reset the pin, and when the archer was ready, pull the cord to launch the foam disks straight up a good 15 yards. We had very few hits, but a lot of fun with this one.
To recognize all the ranks in archery, we scored people only against their same rank, and handed out awards for the top archer in each rank. Yellow for Bowmaster, Red for Forrester, Blue for Yeoman, Black for Bowman, White for Novice. Plus, an award for Most Amusing Shot(which was killing the tire of the mower deck) and one for Youth.
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What do you think?