3-Arrow Gulch (church festival archery)

by AaronB, Thursday, November 01, 2012, 09:55 (4407 days ago)

Just like every year at my church, all the small groups were asked to own a game booth for the Fall Family Festival, which is essentially a church carnival that provides alternative programming to Halloween. We have hot dogs and cotton candy, french fries, games, a moonwalk, a hay ride, a bonfire, and live music.

For the small groups, the wooden booth for the game is provided, but we get creative license with the decorations and the choice of game. This year the theme was "The Old West."

The gun shooting games were already spoken for by the time we got to choose. We'd thought to do something with horseshoes, but when my wife hit the stores the week before to pick up a kid's rubber horseshoes set, you think we could find one? Turns out that's considered a summer game, and the stores don't carry it in the fall.

With just a few days left until the 31st and no horseshoes to be found, we had to improvise. Younger son had a couple of bows, target recurves, but only three useable arrows; all the others had the nocks busted off of them. "Okay, three arrows it is," I thought. So I had my wife pick up a bag of bottle corks. I drilled a 1/4-inch hole in the narrow end of the cork, then stuck the thing over the arrow's field point with a generous dollop of hot-melt glue. The result was a light, fairly durable blunt-tipped arrow.

I had Elder son (who is taking a community college class in graphic design) make up two signs, one with "3-ARROW GULCH" in an old-timey typeface, and the other with the rules (including ONLY POINT ARROWS AT THE TARGETS). We hung a blanket up for a backstop, and I put a tall stool in front of it with a brown plastic 16-ounce root beer bottle on top of the stool. You get a piece of candy just for playing, but if you knock the bottle down you win a prize.

Those kids lined up for almost three solid hours to shoot those danged bows. I had to have someone fill in for me a couple of times while I repaired tips (I brought a handful of pre-drilled corks and the glue gun), but from the time the first kid stepped up at 6:00 PM until the event ended at 8:30, we were continuously busy. I can't tell you how many times I said "Don't pull on the arrow, pull on the string" and "Don't make a fist!" (with your release hand).

Almost every kid got a mini-lesson on how to do it, so they could be successful. The youngest kid to shoot was probably three. I noticed a real trend among the pre-teen girls taking an interest, too. Some of these girls were the better shots, because they would listen to my instructions and follow them.

The last kid to shoot fired his arrows while people were actually dismantling the booth. A good time was had by all, especially me.

-AaronB