With the summer, such as it was, crashing to a halt, Sunday’s Long Haul Trophy may well have been the last Outdoor shoot of the season. The Long Haul is one of the Club’s special rounds, devised by the late Nev Mason to test the archer’s skill in its purest form, with the bow stripped back to a ‘stick’ and a string. The round consists of 72 arrows shot at each of two distances 60 & 40 yards, on full size faces but with metric scoring. It is meant to be fun.
Unlike conventional Barebow rounds which allow the addition of weights to provide stability to the bow, as long as they pass through a certain diameter ring, Nev’s rules prohibit the use of any ‘aids to shooting’. The rules state that aids can be used but a certain number of penalty points are applied depending on what is added: a sight -100 points, rods/weights -50 points per rod/weight and so on. When the Records Officer conducted the equipment inspection before the shoot she pointed this out with the result that Pete Mumford, voicing his displeasure at what he called victimisation, removed two weights from his Barebow set-up rather than take the points deduction. His grumbling continued loud and long as he cast aspersions at other archers whose bows had been passed as fit. Aggrieved and rattled Pete put several of his sighters into the grass, a prolonged search failed to discover two of those missing until Pete realised they were still in the boot of his car and he hadn’t shot them at all! Sadly Dave Moore was off-island at the weekend as his comments on the situation would have been fun to hear. Dave’s style of barracking, a staple of the Long Haul of previous years, was much missed.
It came as no surprise that the Barebow specialists Colin Moore and Johnathan Gordon were in a league of their own. The trophy was obviously going to go to one of them and the real fight was for third place. Colin had the honour of hitting the first X of the day but couldn’t quite match Johnathan’s pace and by the end of the first distance he was 20 points down. Both men found the second distance a breeze but Johnathan again had the edge and he extended his lead over Colin to take the win. After a poor start David Craine found his range and was lying in third place ahead of the disgruntled Pete Mumford. The rest of the field found that while the target was hard to hit, the flags on top of the bosses used to indicate wind speed/direction were not, and the poor things were peppered with arrows. Peter Howland took the destruction prize however, by actually snapping the stick of the boss flag with one his efforts.
At the halfway stage, the big surprise of the day was that Barbara Harris was not last. Unable to get a single arrow to count at the first distance last year, Barbara found herself at the giddy height of seventh out of a field of ten. Sadly her new found aptitude did not last and the second distance proved her undoing. Adding just another 37 points to her total Barbara plummeted to the bottom of the table. There is always next year. Mary Hainge and Les Corran who had struggled at 60 yards, found 40 yards much easier, as did Pete Mumford who put in a surge to overtake David Craine and claim third spot. Charlotte George lying fifth at the halfway point just could not get her head around the shorter distance and slipped to seventh. Rhys Moore finished a respectable fifth, with Peter Howland in sixth.
Ethan Corran and Erin Hainge went head-to-head in the junior version, known as the Short Haul. The same number of arrows but shot at distances of 40 & 20 yards. Ethan put up a good fight, but Erin’s greater experience overpowered the relative newcomer and she finished 40 points clear to lift the trophy.
Results Nev Mason Long Haul: 1.J.Gordon 71/543/13/4, 2.C.Moore 68/511/3/1, 3.P.Mumford 63/422/3/1, 4.D.Craine 57/350/3/2, 5.R.Moore 58/288/3/2, 6.P.Howland 56/272/2/0, 7.C.George 45/214/1/0, 8.L.Corran 40/212/1/0, 9.M.Hainge 29/154/1/1, 10.B.Harris 25/110/0/0. Short Haul: 1.E.Hainge 63/465/4/1, 2.E.Corran 66/425/4/2.
Isle of Man Archery Club 