Santa Cruz Archery

Growing up, I loved reading stories about Robin Hood and William Tell in western folk stores. Chinese history also have its fair share of famous archer: 后羿, 李广, 花荣.

However, the only time I had shot an arrow was years ago at Formosan Aboriginal Village in Taiwan. So, when I found out there was going to be an archery lessons in Santa Cruz, I eagerly signed up.

We met at UCSC and drove to DeLaveaga Park. The route we took to the range took us through some residential neighbourhood in Santa Cruz on the east side of Highway 1, then we drove along a very narrow and winding road to the archery range. At the range, we went indoors and met with Henry and Randy. They are both members of Santa Cruz Archers, as well as our instructor for the lesson.

Since an archery range can be a dangerous place if rules are not followed, we were quickly taught three commands. "Archers to the line", when we were allowed to pick up our bows and straddled the firing line, "Clear", when we were allowed to pick arrows out from the ground quiver and start firing and finally "All Clear", when all arrows were fired and we were allowed to retrieve our arrows. There was also "Hold" command, which meant stop shooting and released the draw.

Next we learned the standard archery technique. Before he started, Henry made a point that there are excellent archers who do not follow any of the techniques we were going to learn, so all techniques he taught us were optional.

The standard stance we learned involve standing feet parallel to the firing line, then moving the fore foot a feet inches back. The left hip should be over the left ankle. The right hand holding the bow (I am left handed) with the first three fingers and the last two fingers curled and relaxed. The right arm should be slightly bend and turned away from the bow so when the string was released, it would not hit the arm.

We used aluminum arrows with plastic feather for this shoot. The arrows had a plastic cap with a notch on the back and we would slide notch into the string. There was a small bead on the string which guide where the arrow should be notched. We were using a modern recurve bow for this shoot, and there was a small notched on the right side of the bow, just above the handle where the front of the arrow rested.

As beginner, I was given a 20lb bow, which means drawing the bow open required 20lb of force. When drawing the bow, the middle three fingers were used and the string should be drawn fully until the pointer touches the mouth, and the back of the left hand fitted on the jaw. In the anchor position, the body should be relaxed, except the upper back.

The release was basically letting the string slipped forward while sliding the left hand backwards to act as a counter weight. Modern bows are fairly delicate and releasing the bow without an arrow could break the bow.

Other equipment used, besides the bow and arrow, was an arm guard to protect the fore arm from the released string and a finger guard, so that while drawing the bow, the string would not cut into the fingers.

As we were all beginners, we started with blind baling. We shot at bales of hay with no target at short distances. Randy and Henry helped correct our stance while we shot. Since there was no target, we were asked to shoot in the same manner so all the arrows landed near each other to form a grouping. I am happy to report I had decent grouping on my first few tries.

After several rounds of blind baling at short distances, Henry moved the firing line to about 20 feet and put up paper plates as targets. Turns out, due to parallax error, we needed to aim away from the target for the arrow to actually hit the target.

My first shot at the target was left and high by a large distance! I corrected my aim for my second shot and was able to hit the edge of the paper plate. But I missed again on my final shot in the first round.

We did one round of shooting at paper plates when Henry decided to make things interesting. He pulled out a bag of balloons. We were going to pop the balloons with our shots!

I went to the line and starting firing. On both rounds, I was able to pop a balloon on my second shot. However, my first shot and third shot were way off.

The lesson ended with a pop! Shooting arrows were surprisingly a lot of fun. Henry told us the range is open to public every Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4pm. Equipment rentals are only $3. In spite of the distance, I think I will come back...