Day 285 – Archery

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at archery. It’s a sport I have no interest in watching, but I always think it would be fun to try. I’m purely basing this on my experience of using a bow and arrow in video games – Wii Sports Resort, any Zelda game – but I also think it would just feel really cool.

A couple of friends had gone to an archery place close-by last year, but seeing as we’re living in stranger times, I decided to go and try in the woods with the nearest thing we had – a large, wooden toy, with suction cups on the arrows leftover from a work thing. The lovely woodland animals needn’t fear!

I have to tell you, I felt like a complete badass holding this! I knew it was a toy, but it felt real and I think it looked pretty bloody cool. We went into the forest quite early on a Sunday morning to avoid worrying people, but we still got quite a few funny looks from passing joggers, dog walkers, and cyclists. I was very keen to avoid any unwanted attention and went as deep into the forest as I dared.

I placed my imaginary target on a tree around 5 metres in front of me and took aim. It did not go well. I don’t how many times I fired those arrows, I only managed to hit the flipping tree once! It always seemed to veer to the right, so I changed my stance and aim to try and compensate, but I still couldn’t hit it. This was much easier in those games…

Despite the near-constant misses, we had a great time. I was right, it was so much fun! We stayed in our little spot in the forest quite a long time until there was an incident.

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Day 284 – I tried my hand at archery ⁠ ⁠ I enjoyed this so, so much! I would love to try this for real one day, but for now, we took a toy bow and arrow into the woods and fired at some trees. Please swipe to see the video, you'll see that I definitely wouldn't fair too well in The Hunger Games 🤣 ⁠ …or maybe I would 🤔 ⁠ #archery #woodenbowandarrow #badaim #youvebeenframed #forestfun #newdaynewthing #tryingnewthings #somethingneweveryday #365firstschallenge #newthingstotry #somethingnewchallenge #somethingnewtotry #newblogpost #smallblogger #onenewthingeveryday #newdaynewchallenge #newdaynewexperience #trysomethingneweveryday #newthingeverydayforayear

A post shared by New Day, New Thing (@newday_newthing) on Oct 13, 2020 at 5:11am PDT

Yep, I nearly offed my husband! Thank god we were only messing about with the suction cup arrows. I found this so, so funny. I would crease up with laughter every time I thought about it afterwards, and just watching the video then really made me giggle. I was just concentrating so much on that tree, and then the arrow flew and hit James who wasn’t stood near! So I’m not great at archery but I enjoyed it so much. When life begins to flirt with normality again I will definitely try it at a proper place. No more near-misses in the forest for me!