Archers take aim during indoor shoot

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/01/2019 (2439 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The neon green bow Drayson Brown holds, right hand pulling back the arrow, left hand gripping the bow, is almost taller than him.

The six-year-old took aim at a bunny rabbit target inside the Keystone Centre on Sunday during the annual Brandon Wildlife Indoor 3-D Shoot.

“Finger to the corner of your mouth, feet straight,” his father, Neil Brown said, coaching his son from behind the line.

Drayson is still fresh to the archery scene, having first taken up the sport back in June.

“He just saw us doing it and he wanted to get into it,” Brown said. “So, I took him down to Jo-Brook (Outdoors) here in Brandon and we bought him his first bow for his sixth birthday.”

Sunday was a chance for him and approximately 100 other archers to practise their skills. The Manitoba Room inside the Keystone Centre was sectioned off for the event. One side was for the youth, with kids aiming their arrows at various targets, including zombies.

“You’ll see everything from bunny rabbits, to turkeys to zombies,” said Brian Brownlie, vice-president of the Brandon Wildlife Association. “The youth love to shoot zombies.”

The area for the indoor shoot was set up to look as realistic as possible. Every year, they take discarded old Christmas trees, and create a temporary display inside the building.

“We try to create a little natural forest, and have the animals standing there looking around the Spruce trees,” Brownlie said.

The event, which has been going on for approximately 15 years, marks the first indoor shoot of the year in the province.

It was started so archers could get their practice indoors when the weather outside may be less than ideal, he said.

“Generally there’s outdoor shoots, but then you get that whole long winter season with nothing to do,” he said. “Someone said, ‘What if we took all our targets and stood them up (inside),’” he said. “So, we worked through the logistics, we borrowed pallets from a place in town and so then we had to create stands to hold the targets up.”

From there, the Archers & Bowhunters Association of Manitoba gave them some rules and regulations, and they created a more structured shoot. On the competition side, points are scored based on where the arrow hits the target.

One of the competitors, archer Jolie Bootsman from Rapid City, aimed her pink arrow at a deer in the back corner of the room. She has been shooting for about a year, and Sunday was her second time at the event.

“I grew up hunting and quite often just shooting guns, but I thought this is maybe a little bit trickier, and something to get more precision with,” Bootsman said.

When the round was over, she brought her scorecard and pencil out into the firing zone to find her arrows.

She marked her points down on the score sheet, and then ripped her pink arrow out of the chest of a deer.

She has improved a lot since last year, she said.

“I was looking back at my scores, and I’ve gotten quite a lot better,” she said. “You’re (always) challenging yourself, trying to get better each round. “It’s kind of competing against yourself each time.”

The sport takes a lot of skill, Brownlie said.

“There’s so many dynamics to it,” he said. “Traditional archery it is like throwing a baseball — you look where you want it to go, and some people can throw the ball right in there, and some people can’t.”

» mverge@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @Melverge5