Archery

Kestrels is a Target Archery Club, this is the form of archery used in competitions such as the Olympics. It involves shooting fixed numbers of arrows at targets from known distances in the open, this is known as shooting a round. Target distances vary up to 90m or 100yds, the sizes and types of target and methods of scoring also vary.

The other main forms of Archery are Field and Clout.

In Field archery targets are set out in a course over differing terrain, such as woodland, the targets are set at various distances and the archer often does not know how far away they are.

Clout shooting is similar to Target archery, but the distances are longer, up to 180yds and the target is laid out on the ground with a flag to mark the centre.

It should be noted that hunting with bows in this country is illegal.

Basically there are three types of bow used in modern archery, the traditional Longbow - as used to great effect by the English at the Battle of Agincourt, the Recurve - also called the Olympic bow, as used in Olympic archery, and the Compound bow - highly accurate and complicated looking bows with cams.

At Kestrels we have expert archers in all of these different types of bow, including qualified coaches to help younger or less experienced archers.