Etiquette #2

"Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential." - Will Cuppy

So here we are again with some more things to do or don't do when you be doing the shootie. Its been said that our etiquette is overly constraining, particularly by experienced archers, but this usually comes from a position of familiarity breeding contempt*. Archery is (by US insurance company figures) at least THREE TIMES safer than golf** so don't expect etiquette to slacken off any time soon. It's keeping you safe. After reading this article, please read our previous article on etiquette as well. We can't be too safe when sharp, pointy things flying at hundreds of feet per second are involved.

able to turn confident people into nervy wrecks in one blast

Whistles: Its said that archers can feel whistles at the genetic level. Its certainly something that can cause the heart rate to jump and the adrenalin to surge. The full whistle system isn't always applied at club level but you should know what the full process is. An end would progress like this. First .. Two Blasts for the first wave to approach the line. 10 seconds later One Blast to begin shooting which you have a set time to complete. If there's a second wave, Two Blasts means the first detail must retire and the second may approach the line. One Blast 10 seconds later for the second wave to begin shooting and finally Three Blasts to down bows and go score. The two-one-two-one-three system is pretty formal and only really used at competitions. Normally club shooting is a bit less formal with One Blast to start and Three Blasts to stop with people filtering on and off the line as they take their turn. It is extremely rude to hog the shooting line shooting endless arrows if there is an archer waiting to join the line and you are blocking them.

Fast: So there's barely a session that goes by at any club that doesn't have a FAST call at least once. Someone has been forgetful as to which line is the shooting line. Someone is hidden behind a boss when the whistle has been blown. Some random animal or walker pops up behind our targets. It's there for the unexpected. You should know from your beginners class, even you grizzled veterans, that when FAST is called .. everyone should repeat the fast call, remove arrows from bows, step off the line, move to the waiting line and then look around for the guilty party, mocking or sighing as required. But why do we call fast and not STOP or something more linguistically recent?
Archery lore has it as being an abbreviation for "Stand Fast" or "Hold Fast", the medieval military commands for "gonnie no" or "gonnie stop n that" .. and as archers always we should always give a nod to traditions.

Last article on etiquette we touched on being on The Line .. but in archery there are many lines and you need to know what they all are. Obviously, the most important is The Shooting Line. This is the line we all must straddle - one foot either side - when shooting to ensure that no-one gets out in front what is essentially a medieval skirmish line. Until shooting is concluded NO-ONE crosses this line. If they do for any reason, FAST requires to be called. However, there are several other lines worth considering. The Three Meter Line is 3 meters (oddly enough) in front of the shooting line. Until an arrow has crossed this line, it is not considered shot. This means if an arrow falls off your bow,crosses the shooting line but doesn't cross the 3m line .. That one doesn't count as shot. You get a make up arrow. The Equipment or Waiting Line lies some meters behind the shooting line. All kit should be back behind this line as should you be unless you are shooting, coaching, judging or line captaining. The gap between the shooting and equipment lines is to aid the line captain's visibility and determination that all is safe. Outdoors, behind the equipment line, we have The Tent Line which is where the tents are pitched and where Captain Sausage creates his magic. Behind the tents is where all the really dodgy gossip is exchanged at competitions and a fly smoke/vape can be had. Smoking is referred to in AGB rules (5.(a) and 5.(b)) so this location tends to be tacitly accepted. And gossip is what archers do. (The stories that our editor can tell about things heard back there would curl your tab!)

Hey Geo .. that noob that touched your bow .. have you seen them?

Touching other peoples bows: This is literally the most heinous thing you can do in archery. Cheating on your scores is bad. Costing another archer points by touching their arrows pre scored is really bad. But this? You are, to a serious archer, in the same ballpark here as slapping their child, possibly even worse knowing how protective some archers are of their bows. It's so easy to knock off the bows set up and knobble an opponent, that any contact will be viewed as significantly dodgy. Even GA's biggest clowns and jokers don't touch each others bows. There are specific rules in World Archery*** to prevent this happening and encouragingly, we've been unable to find documented proof of it actually occurring at any international level competitive event (unlike the blatant cheating in every single game of modern soccer ever). However, there are endless, possibly apocryphal, stories shared of knobbling attempts at much lesser events.

TLDR: This is an absolute anathema to archers! So, don't ever. Not even for LOL's. Seriously .. No!

*          *          *

* Where an extensive knowledge of or close association with someone or something leads to a loss of respect for them or it.
** The National Safety Council, the Insurance Groups and Consumer Safety companies in the US consistently rank archery in the top safest sports – Archery's Emergency Room annual injury rates vary between 1.4 injuries and 2.3 injuries per 100,000 participants.
*** WA Rule 12.7: No athlete may touch the equipment of another without the latter’s consent. <Oh Matron!> Serious cases may lead to penalties being applied.