This was my first visit to Kendal, despite knowing Tony very well as he had been the judge at all of our AGB field shoots over the last few years. I’d meant to go to an AGB shoot here, but never got around to it, so was excited to go for this NFAS shoot.
The excitement was put on hold the day before when I looked at the weather forecast. It was forecasting rain all morning, heavy at times…and it was not wrong. Let’s be honest it literally poured down prior to the shoot starting and if anything it got even heavier once we got on the pegs for the start.
But we’d driven two hours to get there, and we were not going to be put off by the rain. I started in a group of four but after just two targets two of our group packed in, so myself and Duncan joined the group of three that were behind us.
As it turned out Duncan knew everyone from the group, so it worked out well. In fact very well as all were very good archers, which really made me up my game.
As for the course and the shoot, I really enjoyed it, as it had more angled shots and slopes than I was expecting and there was a nice mix of shots. There was the dreaded ‘stoat’ target which I blanked on both occasions but apart from that I only blanked one more and that was my second target in the torrential rain. I got revenge later with a 20 on it second time around.
all of my group shot really well and I was happy with how I shot, only venturing to the blue peg on a few occasions. It was just as well because my group said they normally take the Mick if anyone gets to shoot off blue, but we’re being restrained as they’d just met me.
In fact everyone in my group ended up winning their class including me…yah.
The biggest shame was how many people canceled or just didn’t show because of the weather, which actually cleared up by lunchtime.
In all I thought the course worked well, with enough shots to make you think and enough point getters to keep your score moving. Tony and the team deserve a pat on the back and I will be back too.
Finally, a thank you to my group, Craig Smith, Rod Jaques, Duncan Jaques and Chris Plant.
