At the Archery Range

Paul has enjoyed archery at camp and at school and wanted a bow for Christmas.  After quite a bit of research we bought him this Genesis bow, the "official bow of the National Archery in Schools Program."   The blurb read like this:

The Genesis™ System, by elimination let-off on light draw weight bows (where let-off is unnecessary), eliminates specific draw length requirements. The result is a bow that fits virtually everybody (from 15" to 30").

Now, Ben and I didn't exactly know what that meant, but we did get the message that this was a "one bow fits all" style, which all of us could use, and since we wanted to shoot with Paul, decided to give it a try.

Paul was thrilled with his gift even though it came with the condition that he couldn't use it until we all took the safety course offered locally the first Saturday of each month by the Anne Arundel Archers Association.  The class was cancelled due to bad weather in January and February, which was disappointing.  But the weather this weekend has been delightfully warm and sunny, so yesterday we set off for the archery range.

After the orientation, the nice club officers helped us get started shooting, showed us how the bow worked and explained basic form.  They said we had chosen a great starter bow for the family and sure enough, the bow worked well for all of us.

The range was very well organized and clearly will be a lot of fun to shoot at, but today we looked around our yard, found the perfect spot to safely set up a shooting lane, and pondered different ways of acquiring a target and backdrop.  As spring begins to move in, we are taken by the idea of having a convenient spot to do some fun and relaxing family archery in the early evenings.