I just got back from the Bonnevile Salt Flats in Utah. We hold our annual flight shooting contest there each year at this time. Seems every year we have a few less attendees. This is an ancient sport that has died and been reborn in the 20th century. After having a few decades of popularity for the past 20 years it seems to be dieing a slow death again. Having no recruitment policies or public relation policies we are finding that fewer and fewer folks have even heard of it. On an individual basis some of us have attempted to recruit flight shooters from the ranks of archery target shooters and archery hunters and bow builders with very little luck. Flight shooting is the drag racing of archery. I am convinced we have been looking in the wrong places for future fligth shooters. Flight shooters take an intellectual approach to archery and design. It seems that a hodgepodge of artists, engineers, Drs, proffessors and other proffessions seem to be the heart of thsi organization. Any questions please feeel free to ask
So, uh, what’s flight shooting? Archers on a plane or some other vehicle? What’s the “design” element?
I hadn’t heard of it either, and I used to be fairly active in archery when I was a teenager.
I googled it and found out that it’s a competition where instead of trying to hit a target you are instead just trying to shoot the longest distance without regard for accuracy.
I can see why you are having trouble recruiting from hunters and archery target shooters. They spend their entire lives trying to accurately hit a target and now you tell them there’s no target. It’s a completely different style of archery. You’d probably have better luck recruiting among the medieval re-enactor crowd.
A web site with pictures of events and a message board for those who are interested in it might also help build a following. A google search right now only gets you a few encyclopedia sites, a couple of news events, and a small number of youtube videos.
I’m a bit confused–wouldn’t this just come down to using the heaviest draw you can manage and shooting at a 45 degree angle? Presumably (as the wiki confirms) you’d eke out whatever additional yards you could through specialized arrows, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much there there.
At first glance it may appear this way but in reality the challenge is converting the human energy put into the bow by drawing it into kinetic energy in the arrow.
So building bows that can effciently accomplish this is a big part of the challenege, constant but incremental improvements here continue to be made.
Shooters form and release tecniques play another large part.The science of arrow aero dynamics is at least equally important as the efficiency of the bow and generations of flight archers continue to seek out the perfect design. How much weight you can draw has very little to do with it.
So how far can you/they shoot?
There are a lot of different classes and all of them have different sets of rules that allow them to shoot different distances, The formula one of flight archery is known as regular flight with very short recurve bows and knitting needle size arrows, they have shot arrows u to about a mile. My particular interest is primitive self bows which are all wood and shoot longer heavier arrows. We have both broadhead classes and flight classes. The broadhead classes shoot anywhere from 200 to 300 yards depending on weight class where the regular flight primiitive classes have shot as far as 600 something yards. I tried to regain my title in the 50# self broadhead class on sunday and fell 9" short. Ignoring small details and over confidence can cost us titles just as in any sport.
I used to practice archery, and I can see the problem. You could probably convince me to do a number of weird things with a bow…but only as long as it involves targeting something (or at least pretending to). If for some reason, the only option was “flight shooting archery” (never heard of it before), I’d probably convert to shooting guns instead.
I’m not sure should what be the right crowd to target, but I suspect it still will be archers. Even though most will have no interest in it, most people in other venues will have no interest in practicing any kind of archery.
By the way, I’m impressed that one can shoot an arrow at a distance of about a mile. I would have guessed much less, regardless of the technique used or the kind of bow/ arrow.
Now, looking for your lost kniting needle sized arrow that landed somewhere a mile away must be a pain in the ass.
I was an archer in high school* but wasn’t into making my own equipment, so I wouldn’t be the target audience.
There are guys who make their own cannons and such. I’d think those are the type of people to aim for. I think it’s a shorter flight to go from making your own equipment in another field than to get traditional archers to release their ideas and let go of targets.
*Took state, actually, but it was a small state.
I can recall an event at summer camp (quite some time ago) which was called flight shooting, but was clearly a hybrid: The target was concentric rings on the ground (separated by about 6 ft) at a range of around 120 yds. You had to shoot using a high trajectory, and the event was scored for accuracy (in the same way as if shooting at a normal target).
That sounds like Clout-Shooting.
[Sorry, no credit cards involved.]
As a change-of-pace exercise, my college Archery instructor put a bunch of ballons on the football field, had us stand at the other end-zone, and cloutshoot the mess. She told us it was Clout-Shooting and implied the technique was like the take-out-the-attacking-barbarians-in-warfare stuff with a wall of arrows swarming over the unlucky intruders. Aim is less of a consideration than get-it-out-there-and-hope-it- hits-someone.
Are Kyuudo practitioners welcome? I had heard the Kyuu was known for 1+ mile ranges back in Enlightenment or Industrial times.
I vaguely recall there’s a special archery event at San-ju-san gen-do temple in Kyoto, as well. I don’t think it’s distance they’re going for at that one.
=—>G!
Cupid, draw back your bow
And let your arrow go
. --Sam Cooke (The Supremes)
. Cupid, Draw Back Your Bow
You are right - I seem to have mis-remembered the name.
Clout shooting has some similarities to flight shooting. Flight shooting is all about setting distance records in various classes. All shots are measured at 90 degrees to the shooting line so accuracy in shooting straight is required.
The appeal of flight shooting is usually based on designing bows that will have an optimum efficiency and design for shooting very light arrows, and designing aero dynamic arrows that will achieve maximum distance. After centuries of human trial and error small advances are still being made and records continue to fall. Mechanical types and engineer types seem heavily attracted to this sport. But, Dr's, lawyers and judges find it facinating as well. I know of few if any serious business men who get involved for some reason. Artistic types are well represented also.
Shooting a arrow up to a mile sounds pretty impressive.
Back in the mid 50’s one of our neighbors at the lake made a bow that was huge, mounted to a set of shoes, used about a 6-`7 foot arrow. He shot it from a position of laying on his back.
Got right at 3/4 mile distance with it regular.
He was always doing different stuff like that…
Lots of kids around in the summer to help hunt the arrow.
We thought is was great…
That is the spirit of flight shooting, one of my goals is to shoot a “very” small telephone poll over the grandcanyon. This would require close to 100,000# of kinetic energy in the arrow shot from a bow that if 25% efficient would need to store close to 400,000 ft #'s of energy. As the years pass the reality of my goal is somewhat fading but I have not given up hope yet. I may downgrade the arrow size as a compromise.