A Guide to Archery

Target Archery

The main divisions or styles of Target Archery are Recurve, Compound, Barebow and Longbow.

Metric Rounds: These are what you see shot at the Olympics, World Championships and tournaments abroad. They are shot using the rules of World Archery (the international federation for archery). They use 10-zone scoring and are a little more formal, with stricter regulations and timings in place. The Olympic events are shot at a 70 metre distance.

Imperial Rounds: These tend to use five-zone scoring and are governed by the Archery GB Rules of Shooting. They commonly fall into ‘families’ – groups of different rounds held on the same field, at the same time, in which all involve the same number of arrows but at different distances. This means that you can choose the round that best suits your ability. Target Archery when shot outdoors is generally shot on a level field with targets at one end and archers on a shooting line at the other. All Archers shoot at the same time within a reasonable time limit and then arrows are scored and collected and the next end is shot.

Field Archery

The main divisions of field archery are freestyle, bowhunter and barebow, and within these divisions are different male and female age groups and bow types (recurve bows, compound bows). There are also historical bow, longbow and traditional recurve bow which also have age and gender subdivisions.

Three main competition disciplines (or rounds) are shot, namely Field, Hunter and Animal.

Each round consists of shooting around 28 targets, set out at distances of from 20ft up to 80yds on varied sizes of target faces.

Adults shoot the maximum distances of 80yds.

Juniors (aged 13 to 16 years) shoot only up to 50 yards

Cubs (aged 13 and under) up to 30yds.

A system of internationally adopted colour codes are used to signify the round and whether the distance indicator is for Adult, Junior or Cub. Marker stakes bearing these colours indicate the point from which the shot must be made.

Walk-up, Fan, 2×2, and 4×1 are terms for variations of shooting disciplines. A walk-up shot allows one shot from a coded marker, then walking up to shoot a second arrow at the next distance, then forward to a third and so on. A Fan is shot left to right laterally, with four markers at one common distance, one shot from each. Field and Hunter faces are roundels, with scoring values of 5 for centre, 4 for inner and 3 for the outer zone.

Face sizes are 65cm, 50cm, 35cm and 20cm. Each 28 target field range will take up to 112 archers, shooting in foursomes. Play is as in golf where you “tee-off”, score your arrows, and move on to the next station. This ensures everyone shoots each target in turn, with a maximum score of 560 points per round.