[Archers] Xbow Griefing

[Jonathas]

Correct the longtime crossbow shooters are used to the ribbing. But their
were two noted differences at Royal Archery this weekend; First, the
comments were not the normal "stubby bow" and "short/broken arrow" but
rather "cheater" which can be used in a joking manner but can also quickly
cross into the realm of being meant/taken seriously.  Second, it wasn't from
the usual crowd, of top level handbow to top level crossbow (which
admittedly that repartee gets fun) but from the general populace to all
levels of crossbow shooters.  I will freely admit that using a crossbow, it
is much easier to move from Novice to Bowmen, however the climb from Bowmen
to Grand Bowman, then to Grand Bowmen Elite takes the same level of
dedication, practice, time, and skill with any longbow, recurve, or
crossbow.

I also heard several comments on the "balance" of the shoot, I chose to
respond to Baroness Sorcha's email to the Storvik list only because it was
on a public forum so would reach a wider audience and was not attempting to
single her Excellency out in any way.  These balance comments probably stem
from the fact that the semi finals were 100% crossbows, and not only
undermine crossbow shooters, but also the overall fairness of the shoot.
This I have a serious problem with as the shoot was wonderful and
challenging but still left plenty for the novice archers to have fun with
(which is the most important thing to balance).  Taking the top ten archers
on the day, and you end up with 5 handbows and 5 crossbows.  Even taking the
original top eight seeding (before any passes) and you have 4 handbows and 4
crossbows.  This points to an incredibly well balanced shoot.  The finals
are always anyone's game.

Remove those bleepity-bleeping snakes (which also where the undoing of most
of the crossbows) and I could easily believe the semi finals having three
handbows and only one crossbow, as in each of the first rounds with a
handbow, the handbow held a one or two arrow lead over the crossbow (hey,
I'll admit it, I thought I was about to get bumped off at the beginning of
the first round).  Last year the "tough" target were those candles
(admittedly a crossbow friendly target) yet the handbows swept the semi
finals.

Ignoring the Outlands, where a Atlantia exported Earl Mika to (another GBE
crossbow), Atlantia is the only kingdom where crossbows dominant the top
rank.  For some reason we have a large population of exceptionally good
crossbows, to go along with the huge pile of renowned handbows, and we have
many who use both.  We could take every other archer on our lists and still
have more archers, at every level, then most of the other kingdoms.
Atlantia has a exceptional archery program which we should all be very proud
of, regardless of the tool used to get the arrow down range.

Jonathas


On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 8:54 PM, Jay Nardone <jaynardone at comcast.net> wrote:

> I can’t think of any of these folks that now shoot X-bows that were not
> excellent shots with a hand bow prior. With that said, I don’t think any of
> them don’t understand that the comments are just teasing. Having come from
> the gun world and being a competitive shooter in both handguns and rifle, I
> can say the X-bow is simply a tool to be used by the shooter just like a
> hand bow. There are obvious things with a hand bow that cause precision to
> be more complicated but it in no way diminishes the challenge of a X-Bow. As
> said prior, it is the shooter not the bow that is making the difference. Any
> of you that understand archery also understand that it is mainly a mental
> game, and when we have our off days a golden bow will not help us any more
> than our normal ones. After all this challenge showcased our top shooters in
> the Kingdom and I was grateful to be part of it and see such a great
> competition. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Janyn
>
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