Ever since posting about the Modified Animal Round that I’ve been working on, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to some of the issues I’m facing. Most notably, how many shooting positions am I willing to pound into the ground before a given shoot?
I approached my father with my dilemma. Like my Grandfather, my Father was also very involved in Wapiti Archers at one point in time. He no longer shoots but he is a wealth of information on the way the club used to run.
He explained that Wapiti only ever had two sets of stakes. One for adults and one for kids. Granted, there were fans and walk-ups but all of the adults were on an equal playing field.
Naturally, I asked “Well, if your classification was based on an arbitrary score, how did you make it fair for all divisions? For instance, how would you expect a barebow shooter to compete against a guy with a scope?”
His response surprised me. “So what you’re saying is that you want to make it easier for a barebow shooter by inflating their score with shorter distance shots?” Why would you want to do that?
I tried explaining that many of the guys we have shooting 3D aren’t looking to shoot thier recurve out past 30 yards. Even the fixed pin Bowhunters want to be inside of 40 yards. How could I appeal to the Traditional shooters if I asked them to shoot upwards of 60 yards?
He seemed baffled and explained that shooters back in his day loved that kind of stuff. In fact, Wapiti used to have an 80 yards target and the only reason they did away with it was because the company printing the paper elephants and rhinos went out of business (they had to use double bails to make the target fit)
He was right, after all. If each division was only competing against themselves, what difference did it make if their scores weren’t as high as the Freestyle Division? For this reason, I went in and re-worked my Divisions and Classifications.
I eliminated the max shooting distances and stake colors for each division. Now everyone, with the exception of Youth and Cub, will shoot from the adult stakes. These will be the yellow markers that are already set for an Animal Round (marked yardage).
For Youth I set a 50-yard max and will need to figure out how to make that work. I know we have a 50-yard marker on some stations but I’m not sure if they all have them. I set a 20-yard max distance for Cubs, which I’ll need to research and adjust.
Knowing that this would create some clumping in scores and classifications, I added Master class and tightened up the percentages a bit. This will mean more awards but I like it better this way.
I made a couple of minor tweaks to the in-progress-rulebook and updated my score cards with the new classification breakdown. The next order of business will be to get out and shoot the Modified Animal Round a couple of times to see if I run into any additional issues. From there I’ll need a test group to shoot it with me before presenting it to the club for inclusion in our events calendar.
Modified Animal Round Target Distances
Modified Animal Round – Revision 1 Rules
Download PDF Score Card
Additional Reading
- Building an Archery Series: Modified Animal Round
- Building an Archery Series: Modified Animal Round (Rules Revision 1)
- Building an Archery Series: Estimating Costs
- Building an Archery Series: Putting it all Together
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