Pride Park – Saturday

Home and after a hot bath along with some sleep and then some more sleep, we are nearly unpacked following a weekend long archery competition.  It was the annual NFAS 3D championships and it proved to be a really great weekend, despite the best efforts of the British weather to drown us all. For those of you reading this and don’t know the 3D champs are one of 3 championships the NFAS run throughout the year. It is normally well attended with over 700 archers,this year there were a few less though, probably due to the economic climate.

Sorry but having re-read this, it is really long post

We’d decided to camp for the weekend rather than driving up each day, so headed to just outside Osmaston Park, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire on Friday night to pitch tent and meet up with everyone. We joined up with the Artemis guys in their marquee and had  some food and a few drinks. Thanks guys.

This year there were 4 courses in total A&B for wooden arrows, X&Y course for metal / carbon arrows. By splitting it in this way courses can be tailored to suit class.

Before I go any further can I say a big  thanks to Hanson club who provided the catering at Admin and Y course, it was great to have hot food and not just burgers, but steaks, cakes, and fantastic apple pie. They started at 7:30 am and went on until gone 7 pm. Thank you so much.

Over the course of the weekend archers shoot 2 courses 1 on Saturday and 1 Sunday. Each course consists of 40 3D targets of varying sizes shot over a range of unmarked distances and elevations. The 2 courses I shoot were, course A laid by Cheshire Oak and Course B was done by Pride Park.

Think A course was fortunate enough to have the better terrain to work with as the problem B course had been a large fenced off area which was off-limits. This limited long shots so they worked on using dead ground and foliage to trick archers and frame shots.

One of the hardest shots is shown here. Wendy is taking her second go at it, but you can just make out the brown bear in the trees. I was really happy to just hit this one

Brown bear in the trees

I went up to a few target and thought this was easy and then needed a second arrow or third.

Long elk this was the only target I blanked all weekend

The course was designed so you passed catering twice so you could grab some food. After our first break the target below was what greeted us, a velociraptor 3D at an angle. I later found out it was over 50 yards away, so I was really happy when I got it with the first arrow. Below you can see Mark about to shoot it with his longbow.

First shot after lunch

The only problem with the venue was the sheer distance from the camp site to the courses. Archers once they had finished had to walk over a mile to get back to Admin to hand cards in. Made for a couple of long days as you had to register by 9:30 and walking out at 10 am,  Sharon didn’t get back to Admin until nearly 7 pm both days

The walk back on Saturday – not in the rain thankfully

Sunday was wet, very very wet, quite a few people retired due to the weather and this is why there are no photos of Sunday, wanted to try to keep phone dry. I would have liked to shoot the Cheshire oak course in the dry as Sunday resembled a monsoon at times. Glad I took a large brolly.

I lost quite  a few arrows in the rhododendron bushes which was a bit of a pain but really enjoyed the 2 days. I heard that a few people retired early from the competition due to a combination of the very poor weather  and losing too many arrows

B Course – Score card only 1 blank

Very wet score card from Sunday