Had a great weekend! (It's a long read so feel free to skip it if you want.)

While I'm sure all of you were totally unaware of it, yesterday, Saturday the 10th of March, 2018 was an international holiday. It was the 2018 Shelby County Bow Hunters Association, Inc. annual bow shoot / cookout / beer fest.. The Shelby County Bow Hunters mostly live in Shelby County, TN, but our clubhouse is just outside the border of Wattensaw WMA in Prairie County, AR.

After years of shooting a Mathews Heli-m, I bought a new Mathews Triax a few weeks ago. I had been shooting the Heli-m at 60 pounds but I had Jody at Mack's Prairie Wings set the Triax up at 65 pounds. I also switched from a 100 grain insert to a 50 grain insert. (I have no idea what my arrow speed is.)

Anyway, I hooked up my travel trailer to my truck and headed out early Friday morning. On Friday we pitched horseshoes, drank beer and took more than a few practice shots. I was the "last man standing" at around 11:30 Friday night.

I got up at 6:00 am, drank a beer to flush the cobwebs out of my head, cooked breakfast for the crew and the 3D shoot kicked off at around 10:00 am. We only had eight 3D targets, so we shot one round of eight and then one of the non-shooting members moved the flags back somewhere around 10 to 15 yards and we shot a second round of eight.

This sequence is followed by two shots at the infamous "running deer" target with the shots taken from the second floor porch of the cabin. The running deer target is a burlap bag deer mounted on a frame with two pulleys. We have a steel cable that we set up like a zip-line and it's the great equalizer in these shoots. I have to say that before this year I had never hit that stupid target.

This year we added a new target after the running deer. We took one of those 10" throwing ball targets, tied it to a rope and threw it over a tree limb around 25 feet high. The "thrower" pulls the ball back and lets it go and the shooters have to wait until it makes the two initial swings and then it's game on but you only have two swings to let 'er fly.

So, there were 20 shots total.

I ended up winning the first place award, which this year was an engraved Buck classing folding knife.

I ended up dropping 10 total points on the first two rounds. On the "running deer" my first shot was a 10 and my second was 5. I missed the swinging ball both times.

After the compound shoot we had an 11 target recurve shoot. I ended up winning first place on that shoot also and pocketed $40 and, of course, earned bragging rights for the next year.

If you've actually read all of this and make it to this point then you'll learn that this is the last time I'll be shooting any bow for at least four months. This Friday I'm scheduled to have surgery on my arthritic left thumb. I believe the procedure is called an LRTI. I'm not looking forward to it, but I can't keep going with my left hand in this condition.

Anyway, it was a fantastic weekend. While the Mathews Triax is a fantastic shooting bow I don't think that was what helped me win. I think it was the Fast Eddie XL sight coupled with a bigger peep sight that let me center the sight housing which I've actually never done before.

I doubt I'll be on here for a while since it'll be hard to type with one hand through a pain killer induced haze.

You folks have a great spring and summer!

 

I'll try to post some pics tomorrow when I get to a PC instead of a Mac and figure out why the new forum doesn't have the normal pic attachment links.

 

Thanks guys. It was an absolute blast and everyone there had a great time. A couple of our members can play guitar, mandolin and banjo so we even had some live rural Arkansas entertainment.

 

Here's a pic of the knife and my scorecard. Shots 17 & 18 were the running deer at 25 yards. The two goose eggs at the end were at the swinging 10" ball target. A couple of guys actually hit it but I wasn't one of them.

The knife is really nice, but what everyone in that group REALLY wants is the bragging rights for the year.

 

We even had some live entertainment under the awning of my travel trailer.

 

I believe you'll love that sight when it arrives. I know it's made a huge difference in my accuracy.

 

Congrats and good luck with the surgery.

 

Thanks brother. I appreciate it.