Yesterday club members Mary Louca, Sunil Kalra, and Nel and Marc Bax participated in the SCAS/BCAA clout archery championships. Though the range in Offord is too small to do any clout practice we did manage to produce two county champions: Mary Louca won the ladies barebow gold, and Marc Bax left his compound at home to win gents barebow gold. More importantly, a pleasant day engaged in a somewhat different form of archery was had by us all. We hope more members will join us on other clout shoots in the area!
What is clout archery?
In clout archery the target is a flag in the ground. The goal is to get your arrows to land close to the flag, in a scoring zone 24 feet (7.3m) across. If you land within a foot of the flag you score “a clout” – the maximum score of 5 points. The further away, the lower your score. It is a fact of life that for many archers the majority of their arrows will be misses.
One small point: The distance to the flag is much greater than your normal target distance. Ladies shoot at 140 yards, gentlemen at 180 yards. You don’t need a very powerful bow to reach such a distance, 30lb and carbon arrows will easily get to 180 yards. You’ll be aiming at the sky, hence why most archers shoot barebow or longbow.
Sussex archery has produced an excellent Cloud Archery Basics document for download.
