Etiquette #1

"Better good manners than good looks."

What happens if I touch your potential match winning line-cutter?  OW! .. HE PUNCHED ME!

Archery is a sport that relies quite heavily on etiquette. There are a lot of us plus a lot of expensive kit crammed behind the waiting line. We all want to approach the line to shoot at the same time. We need a target. People are moving about all the time. We are armed in a similar way to a medieval English army. Having a few rules to stop chaos is absolutely a good idea and so we have archery etiquette. Over the next few months we're going to publish an occasional article or two highlighting the sort of things that archers have ground rules for but aren't always obvious. So lets start at the beginning:

Joining a target: If a boss has been set up, its likely that there is/are people already intending to shoot at that target. They probably set it up and it should be considered theirs. This is where its polite to ask the "owner" of that boss can you join them. Normally this should not be an issue as your polite approach will be appreciated and on busy evenings all targets will need to be fully occupied. However, the target may already be full or not capable of taking the face you want to shoot. On less busy days when things are quiet and we have space to spare, that archer might want to shoot alone working on form, blank bossing or even tackling a technical problem. Don't be offended if they reject your request, odds are they don't hate you...... Then again they might. Archers do be weird!

On the line: Especially indoors, if three or four of you are shooting a single target, shoot in two waves. Alternating which pair/detail shoots first will even out the chance of any one person's arrows being damaged from clashes/robin hoods. Outdoors, its fine to have three archers shooting a target at the same time as we have more room to play with. However, Indoors with its cramped spaces/short distances, two waves is best. That gives adequate elbow room and prevents people shooting cramped or on bizarre  and potentially dangerous diagonals when 3 or 4 try to shoot the same boss simultaneously at 18m.

If you go, there will be trouble .. and if you stay, it will be double.

Scoring arrows: Newer archers fall foul of this all the time till they learn better .. or they leave the hall crying. When scoring arrows, point at each arrow in turn and say the score you are claiming for that arrow - highest down to lowest in three arrow groups ie 9 9 7 .... 8 7 6. Don't touch the arrow or indeed the boss. Reason for this is, if someone has a line-cutter and you paw it, they won't get the higher score because you interfered with it. You just cost another archer points and there are few things other than touching their bows that annoys archers more.This affects all archers on the target equally. Get handsy on peoples arrows pre scoring and the entire target will turn savage on you. You will get snarled at (as a minimum) should this happen and that/those archer(s) potentially will hate you forever .. possibly longer!

Approaching the line: If an archer next to your slot on the line is at full draw, don't join or leave the line til they have shot their arrow .. Or in John's case, has decided to come down. This is to prevent distracting the archer in the midst of shooting.
Some archers .. like Geo .. don't care and actually would rather you leave immediately you have shot your last arrow*. Here it pays to ask but assume not joining or not leaving as a wise default till told otherwise.

These are four significant etiquette rules of the range for you to consider. There are more. They help stop friction on the field/in the hall, keep us and our kit safe from preventable issues and retain the illusion that archery is a polite sport when we all know its a seething pressure cooker of unbridled rage interspersed with bouts of Tourette's.

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* He has a commendation for promoting social archery ... you'd never know it would you!