Archery

Last Christmas we gave Will a compound bow.  Winter is not really archery season, though, so it remained hanging on his bedroom wall for months.  Recently, however, he has pulled it down and gotten enthused about shooting stuff again.  Just the other day Helena drove him down to Humphries to get a fishing barb point for one of his arrows.  He hopes to take the bow with him next time he goes fishing with his friend, Cody.  I say 'good luck with that'.

Yesterday, Will wanted to practice shooting in the back yard.  My initial thoughts were "over my dead body!"  After all, we have a gorgeous new vinyl fence that I don't want holes in.  Also, weapons and back yard seem like a really bad mixture, if you know what I mean.

But then, I remembered all the hours of fun I had as a kid shooting a recurve bow in my parents' back yard.  Granted, there was no fancy fence to worry about back then.  But it was still weapons in the back yard and nobody died then, so the odds seemed in my son's favor that no one would be killed this time, either.  I told him to go set up the safest arrangement he could think of and show it to me for final judgement.  When he brought me out, I saw that he had placed plywood sheets in front of a pile of flagstone, then placed his target in front of that.  He was only standing 15 feet away, so he'd have to be a really terrible shot to miss the plywood completely.  I gave him the green light.

Then, of course, Will asked his sister if she wanted to try.  Who would refuse the opportunity to shoot a bow and arrow?  Helena did pretty well on her first two draws on the string, but seemed to lose all her muscles on the third attempt.  A compound bow is hard to pull until you get past a certain point on the draw, then it becomes easy to hold in place while you aim and release.  So much easier than the recurve, which requires full muscle strength the entire time!  Anyways, she couldn't seem to get to that easy hold point on that third try.  From looking at the picture, I'd say that her stance probably has something to do with it.  The rest of her body is not helping her, she is trying to do it with her arms alone.

Of course, I had to take a turn, too!  My aim was terrible, but at least I hit the target more often than not... even if the arrow hit a different spot than the one I aimed for.

It should be noted as a post script that today Will came inside very distraught and confessed to me that he accidentally shot an arrow into the fence.  Sort of a George Washington and the Cherry Tree kind of moment.  He was so upset that he couldn't stop apologizing, even after I told him to stop.  To be honest, I am not mad at him for it.  How can I be?  I am the one who let him do it.  I knew that the fence would most likely be a casualty at some point.

He insisted he would pay to repair the fence, but I told him that since the hole is in the lower half, we'd probably just plant something in front of it to hide the hole.  He amended his offer to paying for the plant at that point.  He also asked that I let him tell his dad about the hole.  Apparently Bill had threatened to take away the bow if he shot holes in the fence.  That was eating Will up inside, but it didn't stop him from confessing to his dad the moment Bill got home from work.  The beauty of it is that Bill feels the same way I do about the incident and did NOT take the bow away.  I really do love my husband!