End of 2024 update

October

Our Autumn Beginners Course finished in mid October with 18 archers all passing the course and many taking up their free membership, here’s a somewhat belated ... well done and welcome to one and all.

Our competing archers continued to do themselves proud at various competitions with a number of medals won as well as Steve Allam setting new National Records in a Field Event for one day and two days in the 50+ and Senior categories, congratulations Steve Allam.

We had a fun indoor shoot for Halloween, including a darkened room 3D challenge shooting single arrows at “Colin the Werewolf” which was won by Steve Allam, although owing to his good form over the previous couple of months and new record scores, it was almost a foregone conclusion ;-)

November

We ran an “Improvers Session” at the start of the month which was well attended and well received by lots of our newer members, with plenty of Coaches and Experienced Archers on hand to provide some coaching advice, tips, and answering lots of archery related questions to help many of our newer members improve.

The OvBA 2024/25 Winter Field League commenced with a 12 target field round and 42 archers tackling the gentle slopes of The Warren.

Once the ‘Adjusted Scores’ came out:

Ollie Hicks came out on top for Barebow and first overall,

Steve Allam came out on top for Traditional and second overall,

Dan Hawley came out on top for Longbow and third overall,

Richard Buckner came out on top for Recurve and fifth overall,

Katy Hawley came out on top for AFB and 10th overall,

Stewart Reilly came out on top for Compound and 12th overall,

David Mahers came out on top for Asiatic and 28th overall.

Our competing members continued to represent the club and themselves well with more medals at various field, 3D and target competitions.

We had some challenges on three Wednesday Indoor nights at Testbourne, there was a questions and answers and demonstration evening one week with Rob Cornelius showing us how to make wooden arrows and Eric Dunlop showing us how to use a string jig to make a bow string. There were cakes and lots of questions put to several of our more experienced archers.

On another couple of Wednesday Indoor nights we did some 8m shoots in the Dance Studio while we were unable to shoot in the main Sports Hall.

Some ‘Fort Purbrook’ rounds were shot, namely their ‘Indoor’ round, which is 36 arrows at 8m onto a 40cm 10zone target face and their 8m ‘Bunny Bonanza’ round which is 36 arrows at 8m onto 20cm field faces (hence Bunny Bonanza).

Top scores from our first night of this format were:

Ed Pockett (Barebow) scoring 356 for the ‘Indoor’,

Richard Buckner (Recurve) scoring 353 for the ‘Indoor’,

Steve Allam (Traditional) scoring 347 for the ‘Indoor’,

Ed Pockett (Barebow) scoring 186 for the ‘Bunny Bonanza’,

Richard Buckner (Recurve) scoring 182 for the ‘Bunny Bonanza’,

Steve Allam (Traditional) scoring 167 for the ‘Bunny Bonanza’.

Everyone was very pleased with the first evening of this as almost everyone shot personal bests for both rounds and for once, a Barebow archer topped the scores at both rounds.

December

Winter Field League

The OvBA 2024/25 Winter Field League continued with a 12 target 3D round and 37 archers tackling the gentle slopes of The Warren.

Katy Hawley came out on top for AFB and first overall,

Steve Allam came out on top for Traditional and second overall,

Jason Budden came out on top for Asiatic and third overall,

Mark Almond came out on top for Longbow and fourth overall,

Jed Cullen came out on top for Barebow and eighth overall,

Kevin Cassidy came out on top for Compound and 19th overall,

Joseph Elliot came out on top for Recurve and 22nd overall.

Christmas Indoor Fun Shoot

We had a fun Indoor Christmas shoot at Testbourne the week before the actual day itself, plenty of fun shooting balloons to win some raffle prizes, the Chairman once again somehow managed to take away a bag of Brussel Sprouts ... for the second year running.

We also played archery versions of Battleships and Noughts and Crosses and the Slight Worry of Foam Christmas Challenge returned with the Champions Hat for top archer this year being won by Steve White, beating Richard Buckner in a final one arrow shoot-off.

There were a couple of 3D ‘almost in the dark’ challenges, the first shoot off of ‘sighted archers’ being won by Paul Williams with the second shoot off of ‘non-sighted archers’ being won by Bill Jones.

Laverstoke Target Range ... Christmas Fun ‘Field Archery Shoot’

There was a fun 12 target ‘Field Archery’ session held at Laverstoke between Christmas and New Year, 24 archers shot from red, blue and white pegs at various field archery target faces at various distances from 5m to 55m following the distance guides for the various peg colours.

It was hopefully a fun, friendly and flat introduction to field archery for those archers who were interested to try, but for whatever reason have not felt ready to try field archery on the slopes and hills of The Warren.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the event and we intend to run this sort of event from time to time as it is something different for people to try as well as being an easy way for newer members to ‘dip their toe’ into Field Archery.

We hope everyone enjoyed the Festive Season and we look forward to seeing lots of archers on the shooting line in 2025.