05/29/2010
This trip, which was organized by Robbie, is becoming an annual spring event for our troop and is so popular that we needed to separate the troop into two groups, one going on Saturday and the other on Sunday. Your historian attended the Sunday archery trip, which started with car pickups at around 10:00-10:30 am to drive to the facility in Dedham for an 11:30 am reservation.
Once we had all arrived, an instructor told the basics about how to knock your arrow and the safety instructions. “Knocking the arrow” means taking an arrow and attaching it to the bow so it is ready to be fired. Then we all received our equipment. There were three commands for us in the process of shooting the targets. The first was “strattle the yellow line” which meant to walk up to the line and face down range holding your bow. The second command was “begin” which meant we could take an arrow from the quiver knock it and fire. The “quiver” is a bag attached on your wasteband/beltloop that holds many arrows at a time. The third command was “clear to retrieve” which meant we could then walk down the range and retrieve our arrows.
At the very end we had some competitions with balloons on the bull’s eye and whoever hit their target got candy. The first person to hit would receive 3 candy bars and 5 dollars, the next 2 candy bars and 3 dollars, the next 1 candy bar and 2 dollars, and then there were no more prizes. We did three rounds of this competition. Not everyone hit their mark, but those who did enjoyed their candy and counting their winnings on the way home after a really fun archery trip.
Respectfully submitted,
Adam Benson