Pope Young

If I said lets shoot a Pope Young, you might not know what I meant. Neither did I when someone said it to me. It’s actually the name of an archery round. This round differs from a normal round in target archery in that there are 6 targets numbered 1 through 6 accordingly and 6 shooting positions arranged in an arc, again numbered from 1 through 6.

Starting at position 1 you get 45 seconds in total (or a minute in our case as the field captain was feeling generous) to shoot one arrow at each of the targets in turn before scoring, retrieving arrows and moving to the next shooting position to do it again. It’s fast and furious with hardly any time to load then shoot the arrow so using a clicker and any sight adjustment was out of the question.

It was great fun and I hope to do it again soon. I imagine it’s similar to a field shoot in that you have to estimate the distance and aim at a distant twig or cloud to get it right. I think I’m going to look into doing a field shoot.