It is that time of year again when the NFAS or National Field Archery Society to give its full title open the doors to voting by its members on various rule changes or amendments. It is a great way for the membership to contribute and offer ideas for change. This year is a little different though as the NFAS committee has called on its members to support one rules change or rather, as the committee have put it, a rules clarification.

The amendment is to the shooting rules and is to clarify that archers are not allowed to use binoculars. It is this which I am a little conflicted over.
I want to show my support for the committee, who are all volunteers and are doing what they believe is in the best interests of the society. They want to remove any possible confusion concerning the rules which does make sense.

However, I have for a number of years been supportive to the idea of using binoculars. This I know is unpopular with some in the society who have a different opinion. It is my belief that with the tendency for some course layers to push targets further and further back, making it harder and harder to see if the arrow is scoring or not. I see this being a particular problem with paper faces as with a 3D you can normally tell if you are in by the sound of the arrow hitting the 3D. After all the sound of an arrow impacting a paper face is the same if it’s in the scoring area or not.
My feeling is that binoculars could help this by removing some of the ambiguity allowing an archer to see if they are in or not and potentially resulting in archers not having to take multiple arrows. I know some say it will slow a shoot down, but having shot at the 3DA competition where binoculars are allowed it didn’t appear to slow anyone down.

Can you see it?

So there is my quandary do I support the committee and vote for the proposal or against the committee and vote to reject the proposal and in turn possibly have binoculars in the society.
I’m really not sure.

Thanks for reading