What is Competitive Archery?

Competitive archery might well have begun with a couple of archers out of the Stone Age with too much time on their hands who wanted to learn who could shoot the furthest or the most accurately. Today's competitive archery runs the full gamut of bows and shooting styles.

There are flight bows which are used to shoot for pure distance. Competitive archery permits off-the-shelf bows to be used as well as customized or specialized bows made to shoot arrows enormous distances. At the time of this writing, the world record for an arrow's single flight is 1327 yards. Flight shoots are typically held in places such as airfields, dry lake beds, and desert plateaus to give the archers the space they need.

Field archery is a great way of bringing back to yourself the spark of adventure. With field archery you are shooting at targets out in the wilds such as forests. Archers who get into this format of competitive archery, in spite lost and damaged arrows, have a great time. Different disciplines in field archery permit archers to shoot at pre-known distances or at targets that need distance to be estimated in order to hit them.

3D archery is similar in many ways to field archery. The target course is always in a forest or wooded setting so as to allow for some very challenging placements of targets. What the targets are are plastic foam animal replicas. 3D competitive archery began in the United States but has been expanding with great success to various other parts of the globe.

Target archery in modern times began with Prince Regent of England who later came to be know as George the IV. The target, its size, and colors were established in the 1800s and today are largely unchanged. Archery competitions were originally shot with the longbow and target arrows. Some of the records set in target archery still remain unbroken. Some of these belong to England's Horace Ford, who was the single greatest longbowman target archer of his era. In 1972 the FITA world record for most points scored in competitive target archery was 1204. As of this writing, that record is now 1361 points. Clearly the skills of the archers have been evolving.

Competitive archery is shot indoors at the World level. This is actually one of the few sports on the globe which permits women and the disabled to compete on equal terms with male archers of sound body.

There are new forms of competitive archery being developed for the purpose of bringing archery to a wider audience. There are now head-to-head competitions with archers getting eliminated at each successive stage. It all leads up to showdown finale. These competitions are now being used at the World level. Many archery clubs are also beginning to host them. There is a wide array of forms of archery. If you are new to the sport, you will not be let down and you will find something that sparks your interest.