The GroundBlog By Duncan Mills
Duncan Mills's WebLog from GroundSide

Inspired by a fantastic mornings shooting outdoors on Sunday, I've finally finished setting up the Romsey Archers Web site www.romseyarchers.org. A refreshingly simple POH (Plain Old HTML) site. We run on infrastructure kindly donated by Hampshire County Council who host local clubs and voluntary organizations for free. I have to say one of the more inspired and e-savvy government organizations in the UK.

So, the last time I was in the States I though that I'd take advantage of the rather favorable exchange rates at the moment and invest in a release aid for the compound I haven't brought yet :-)
So I popped along to see the nice folks at Pacifica Archery near San Francisco to see what could be found.
Well to cut a long story short, indeed I did find something to my likeing and came away with a freebie t-shirt and an Ultra Xtreme (Caliper Jaw) from TRU. A very sweet release aid and one that fits my hand well. It's highly sensitive so takes adjustment and a little getting used to, but in the last few weeks of use I've only misfired once(and at least that was in the correct general direction....).
Has it improved my shooting? - without a doubt yes, its reliable and well engineered, release just happens and it's consistant - just the anchoring, aim and strength to work on then!

Sunday saw my first public competition entry at the annual Merdon Arrow shoot in Hampshire. Great venue if somewhat hard to find. The competition was 6 dozen arrows at 50 meters on an 80cm face. My final score was a respectible (in my view) 482 out of a possible 720 (72 hits, no misses, 5 golds) which placed me just short of the medals in 4th place for gents compound. Not bad for a first time out - quietly chuffed :-)

I'm just about there with the new bow now, everthing is pretty tuned up for basic day-to-day use, although there's probably much more tweeking possible. The basic set up has not changed, except that I've reduced the size of the peep sight to a micro and refletched my arrows with smaller flights The old flights where about a mil wider and the right hand one had begun to warp as it just brushed past the riser on release . All of this has improved my groupings nicely with the majority of arrows now scoring 9s or compound 10s at 20 yards.
I managed to destroy my first arrow last night (I've damaged other peoples arrows before - as you do with multiple compounds shooting on the same target), but getting one of your own is a sure sign that the groupings are getting more consistent. In this case the second arrow followed exactly the same path as the first, shattered it's nock and neatly expanded the nocking collar to take the shaft of the second arrow. Surprisingly the first arrow did not split so the hit must have been dead-on. The first of many I'm sure, and a good reason to assemble your own arrows in the first place, things start to get expensive otherwise. At least I can recycle the point, although I can see that I'm going to have to buy in a larger stock of bare shafts.