I think I just set a new record for myself today. I've maimed 4 lizards today, 1 of which I know was fatal. As I was pulling my arrows, I've had the following occur:
-- What looked like a smooth, thin twig fell out of the target, except it was twitching violently. This happened twice.
-- A butt, tail, and hind legs with blood on them came out as I was pulling one arrow out. It was followed by the rest of the little critter. My camera was dead by then, so sorry, no picture :(
-- A lizard with a mangled-looking leg/foot running away from me when I went to pull the arrows.
I managed to catch 3 lizard too -- they were unusually slow today. One of them actually shed the tip of its tail. I swear, I am NEVER going to pick up another lizard by the tip of its tail again! The tail actually fell off like a really weak rubber band. Then there was one lizard that peed/pooped so I just let it go. Then there was one lizard that I was able to hang onto long enough to take pictures of it. It was pretty neat actually because once I let it near my arrow, it latched on like velcro. I was extremely tempted to take it with me, but I decided against it and just let it run off and do whatever things lizards do after the terror of being caught by an archer who's probably killed many of its buddies. They should be grateful that I wasn't shooting traditional, which has a much larger error function and is more likely to hit them! Most of the lizards seem to be smart enough to avoid the bull's eye area, which protects them from most compound shooters. If there's a lizard god, I'm probably going to go straight to lizard hell for all the lizards I've maimed or killed!
Here's some of my highlights from today: A 36-36-36-36 yard fan and a 64-59-55-52 yard walk-up. I seem to be a lot stronger in the hunter side, although targets 22-26 seem to always give me trouble, probably from my stamina flagging a bit before my energy comes back at targets 27 and 28, which are so close that even I can see where I hit. I did go past 500 today -- got a 503, although I know there were several targets I could've easily done a lot better on, especially all of the under 35 yard targets, where I have a tendency to give away points by either taking my shot too soon or having my left wrist twitch at the last instant. All in all, though, I'm happy that I'm starting to close that gap between me and my shooting group -- with enough practice, I should soon find myself slowly approaching a perfect 560... not sure how long that will take, but it's a goal as long as my academics will let me outdoors! I'm not exactly thrilled about having early morning classes, late afternoon seminars, and class/seminar chopping my afternoon so I can't even sneak off campus, and most likely, most of my weekends being taken over too, but heck, I'm here for my education and to contribute to the field of ecology... and that takes priority over everything else, even over my own mental and physical health. I already miss having those night-time geography classes!
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