The Plans We Made

I gave you a teaser post last fall about mounted archery but never gave you the full story.  I had taken a community ed class winter/13, then over the summer was given a bow to play with from a family friend. I got myself a target, some arrows and a hip quiver.

My plan was to get good enough to post some video of our attempts.  Sadly, I got to shoot off of Junior only once.  There was SO much potential there.  He wasn't bothered even a tiny bit by the sound of the bow or the arrow hitting the target.  In fact, on our first day I started by shooting just standing, holding his rope.... he didn't even seem to notice, even though the bow made noise and it made many of the other horses alert to the sound of the arrow hitting the target. I mounted up bareback in a halter (yes, and a helmet, thank you, I'm not a complete fool) in the round pen just to see what would happen.  What happened is that we walked around and I shot a few dozen arrows, hitting the target nicely.  I kept the quiver on the gate and took three arrows at a time, shooting as I passed the target and reloaded.  I had been doing research on how to train for this so I was starting slow just to get the motions of loading and shooting down before attempting any sort of speed. I wasn't really interested in competing, and I haven't heard of any troupes nearby anyway, but I have a group of acquaintances who were getting together to shoot with their horses.
My bow was too long or my target was too low, or both, but we were going to work with what we had.  I have more interest in the plains tribes style rather than the Mongolian style you see in most of the competitions.

Junior was great.  I could maneuver him easily with my legs and he wasn't bothered a bit by any part of it. I had big plans for us.

We gathered a bit of a crowd that day, with a lot of strange looks, and I'm pretty sure some random lesson parent was taking cell photos.... I wonder where those ended up... and when the BO came by I made her take our picture, just for proof.

I sure wish it wasn't the only time we got to do this. :(  This would have been so much fun.

I know I may have an opportunity to get back to this goal, but like many so many other things it was something I wanted to do with Junior. He was so wonderful.