Archery

On the way back from the cycling fiasco, I was stopped by a bodyguard, saying something in Dzongkha. At first I thought he was asking for a lift to some village down the road, but realised that he was probably fit enough to run there before I could double him over these hills. When he pulled another car over, I guessed that there was danger ahead. I looked down the hill and saw about 6 men lying down at one end of what looked like an archery range. ‘Boom,’ I asked, and got a nod in reply. Six booms followed, a bust of static on the radio, and then we were signaled to leave. I wondered if there was anything left of the target they were shooting at.

Much closer to home, not having seen Marie pushing her bike along and feeling more comfortable that she’d found a ride, I stopped at another archery range. There was a group there practising with traditional bamboo bows. I watched for a while until they acknowledged me, then got into a small, often interrupted conversation. They were practising for a tournament in 2 weeks time.

I found out some interesting facts about the range and the rules. Firstly, the shooting range for traditional bows is only 2m shorter than the one for reflex hunting bows. That’s about 150m and far enough that the arrow disappears before reaching the target. A team gets 3 points for a bullseye, which is too small to see, 2 points for hitting the target board, and 1 point for hitting the ground within 1 arrow length of the target. There’s a proviso on the last. Only one person can get the 1 pointer per round, so it’s the person closest to the target if there is more than one arrow within the arrow-length range. When a team reaches 20 points, they win the match.

These people are completely careless around the shooting range. They’ll stand about 3m from the target when a team is shooting from the other end of the range. Because of the distance, you can only get a lock on the arrow when it’s reached somewhere near the half-way point, leaving only a half second or so to dodge if it’s coming at you. Many of the archers started walking towards the target before the rest had started shooting, their backs to the archers. When one landed within feet of such a walker, he turned around and shouted at the archer as though it was the other’s fault he’d almost been pierced. A bamboo arrow isn’t such a danger, but a graphite arrow fired from a hunting bow can kill, yet they’re only just realising that 3m is too close to stand given the length of the range. They’ll have to redesign the tournament ranges soon to avoid more deaths.