It was an early start on Sunday as we packed the car and headed north up the motorway. No bright spring sunshine instead we had a grey start to the day, though the heavy showers forecast stayed away until our journey home.

We were heading to the Wolverine club which is based not far from Stoke-on-Trent and is a club we have visited a few times (previous shoot reports can be found here 2013, 2012)
Indirectly we did suffer a little from the heavy rain which had fallen overnight as the parking field got very slippery and provided an interesting experience to get out of. The course paths too were very slippery under foot with a few people falling, fortunately no one was seriously injured.
The club had laid on a 40 target course with a mix of 3ds and paper faces. Of course Kong was out in the field.  Even managed to hit it this time, although it was with a third arrow.

There were over 150 archers braving the weather and hillside climbs that made the Sunday trek.

Our shooting group on the day included myself, Sharon, Sue from Long Eaton club who we had shot with before and Rich from DW longbow who was only on his second open shoot.

Wolverine’s grounds are in 2 woods on a  hillside with a small field half way down. This made for lots of walking up and down the hillside which left everyone tired by the end of the day. It also allowed the club to set up some very nice up and downhill shots. If you have read my past reports you will know that Wolverine always have a lunch break for their shoots as the course ground doesn’t allow for a shoot through. This meant lots of archers trekked up the slope for lunch and then back to start the second half.

My only criticism of the course is they had a few targets with the boss frame on the top and bottom. This resulted in us and others spending time digging out arrows which had missed the target but stuck in the wood frame.

The course was a challenging one with the mix of uphill and downhill shots, with archers working for every point. Targets were hittable so long as you kept your focus. The only hold ups we encountered were down to the group in front having to dig out stray arrows on a couple of target so in all it flowed well.

My shoulder is definitely playing up as I struggled a bit with back twinges in the latter half of the day but in all had a good day. Probably not helped by helping at our club on Saturday to shift heavy stuff before our shoot next week.

Sharon came away with a first in ladies Hunting Tackle (HT). I managed a second place in Gents HT.

Thanks for reading. Next weekend we will be helping to marshal our club shoot.