Saturday 1st September saw 4 club archers go to Pontefract Castle to shoot in the Pomfret 60.

This is a longbow only fun shoot inside the castle walls (or what are left of them).  There is on average 50-60 archers shoot the tournament.

It consists of 10 dozen arrows shot at a target at a distance of between 50 and 60 yards, 5 dozen in the morning and 5 dozen in the afternoon.  There is a medal awarded each end for the best gold.
At the lunch break, there is couple of mini events
Wand Shoot – a target is places at 20 yards, with a thin plank of wood,around 6″ wide, running thorugh it vertically.  You have 3 arrows to split the wand.  If you hit it, you go through to the next round, with only 2 arrows to shoot, then again onto the next round with 1 arrow.  Bryan Haynes managed to get through to shoot  head to head with another archer.  Despite being announced that he had won the shoot, when the target was inspected, his shot had split the wood so wide, one side of it hit the opponents arrow which had now split the wand.  Another round of head to head was shot, with Bryan missing by aournd 1cm, and the opponent just clipping the wand by around 1mm.  Oh well, there is always next year (a similar thing happend last year on the bear shoot)

The Bear Shoot – a 3′ high foam grizzly bear is placed at 20 yards. Again, it is a selection shoot with 3 arrows to hit the bear, then if you hit it, you go to the next round with 2 arrows to hit am small target around 12″ Wide on it’s chest. After that, it is on to a 1 arrow shoot to hit the gold – around 4″.  If you get through that, it is a closest to the black spot in the middle of the Gold (around the size of a 5p piece). This time, it was the turn of Bear Hunter Tony Emery to get through to the head to head at the end, narrowly being defeated.

The third event at lunch is a speed shoot.  A target is placed at 20 yards and you have 30 seconds to hit it with as many arrows as you can.  It was won by Trevor Astley of Arrowflight archers with 8 arrows,   Bryan managed to shoot 6 arrows and hit with 4 (last year it was 6 with 6 hits).

After the 5 dozen arrows in the afternoon, the day is capped of with an Agincourt Volley.  All archers are invited to the shooting line together, the judge in charge calls “Nock”, an arrow is nocked, “Draw”, all archers draw  “Loose”, all archers loose an arrow at the same time.  The sound of 60 bows being shot makes the hair on the back of your head stand up, it makes you wonder what a thousand bows being shot at the same time was like at the Battle of Agincourt!  The closes to the gold wins, not surprisingly, it was birthday boy Colin Hope of Chantry Bowen who won again.

Martin Jones and Tony the Bear Hunter both shot personal bests, Bryan was a small handfull points behind his best, meanwhile the club honours were up held by Peter Emery who won the Junior Gents Longbow award.

Peter Emery winning the Junior Gents Longbow

Martin Jones shooting at the Bear in the 2010 Pomfret 60

Cuts hit home as the West Yorkshire Police Armed Response Unit are trained at Pontefract Castle