Central Florida 3-D Circuit Shoot @ Bunnell

All of the first place winners in their respective divisions.



This was only a 5-point shot, but I got her in the carotid artery. Can you say, a nice quick kill and plenty of blood, had she been flesh and blood? I probably got more anatomical kills than high-point shots, but what the heck, with the wind and bits of rain that turned my fletching into a post-bath Pomeranian, sometimes any foam is better than no foam!

I took first place in Traditional with 166/300 points and my opponent had 164/300. I also just found out that now that I've shot at 2 of the Central Florida Circuit 3-D shoots, I can qualify for Shooter of the Year. My opponent, an older gentleman who shoots a longbow, has also attended 2 tournaments and is slightly ahead of me in total points. I really want to attend the next shoot, which is on Sunday, June 24 in Zellwood, and then the July championships at Forest Archers in Ocala -- I think I stand a pretty good chance of getting Shooter of the Year in Traditional! My newly-found archrival is actually a better shot than I am, but our scores are close enough that I really want to battle this one out to the end.

A New Experiment Brews On

Time to see what broadhead/shaft combination gives me the best results. I'm fixin' to hunt me some deer or hogs this fall, assuming my experiments produce something useful and I can find a setup that yields the smallest possible variance and smallest possible error function in my model. So far, I've had 2 catastrophic misses that resulted in lost arrows in a nice patch of poison oak / huge nest wasps/hornets and they were both with my four-bladed. Flight was excellent, but the first two shots were my "let's see how close it is to my usual aim at 20 yards into a little block designed to stop broadheads".

Time to apply my statistical training! More as I make progress and hopefully I don't lose anymore shafts! I really need to find somewhere I can shoot broadheads without being harassed by humans or bugs with stingers...

Forgot I Had This Picture...

Cell phones with cameras on them are very useful sometimes! Good thing that wasn't a real hunting situation, or I would've been a dead archer. Ear piercings, anyone?

Bug-Swallow and Random AD&D Pondering

I swallowed a bug last night while jogging. I coughed and spluttered and out came bits and pieces of what might've been a pretty good-sized fly of sorts. It sure as heck wasn't the usual gnat that goes up my nose, but whoa, that was gross. It made me think of a cartoon I had seen recently -- "Bug-in-Mouth Disease" on the Homestar Runner website. Once I was able to talk again, the first words that escaped my mouth as I resumed my nightly constitutional was "Bug-swallow! Bug-swallow!". For the first time, I actually felt a bit of a bond with Homestar Runner (generally not so fond of him but I'm a huge fan of Strong Bad and Homsar) and then I contemplated all the possibilities of having swallowed a fly. The next thing I thought of was that song/story from elementary school, the one about the little old lady who swallowed a fly and how she swallows a menagerie of progressively larger animals to catch the one she swallowed before.

Out of the blue while pondering over regression trees, I suddenly had a flashback of the old AD&D games that came in gold boxes. For some reason, I thought about paladins, a character class that amuses my group to no end when it comes to tormenting them. They're pretty much your stereotyped knights in shining armor on a holy mission for those of you not so familiar with Dungeons and Dragons. Anyway, in AD&D, especially in the old games, paladins radiate a protection from evil, 10' radius spell at all times. The "official" explanation is that as their god(s) holy knight, they get a bit of protection. Here's some random thoughts that came up in my ranger-biased imagination:

-- It's really the fact that they reek and their fellow adventurers put up with them because they're used to it.
-- They eat lots of garlic, which may also for their ability to scare off or destroy undead creatures like vampires
-- That shiny armor is blinding
-- "My honor is my life" (well, at least for the Knights of Solamnia in Dragonlance)
-- They preach way too much and the party they travel with has learned how to screen out their preachy ways
-- Beans. Lots of beans in their diet.

Ok, time to go back to work. I just had to let that brain-fart out of my system before I laugh my head off too much. I can't wait to shoot another 3-D and another 300! Sorondil-Telcontar calls to me... as does the Monster (yes, that's what I call the Equalizer after someone in my office said "What is that monster?")... but it's mostly little Sorondil-Telcontar that calls after a wildly successful round last night where I scored 98/240 and a 3-D where I scored 114/200 earlier this week :) Oh and a 300 where I scored (with the Monster) 258/300 (ouch... I was reaching 270-280 on the Scott Sabertooth, that back-tension release is really whipping my butt!)

I also need to do a lot of arrow repairs and apartment clean-up... My place is starting to look like a linear combination of Howl's moving castle and the room in the music video for "Drama" by Erasure. I think I might also want to get my hands on some extra 1814 X7 Eclipses -- they're actually doing pretty well after spending a bit more time with them and putting more emphasis on back-tension in shooting traditional. The cedars are still more reliable for me as far as the magnitude of the error functions go, but the Eclipses are doing well with keeping a very consistent bias even if it's very easy to over-compensate. I really should be doing a more thorough analysis of their behavior!

Where's the Writing?

Let's just say as far as the Dunheasa series goes, I've hit a bit of a road-block. As a sneak quasi-preview, suffice to say that in terms of the story, I'm standing in an enchanted forest that sprung forth in what was once Newins-Ziegler Hall at UF... and one of the young heroes is watching a master compound bow shooter undergo a mysterious transformation in the moonlight...

I'm hoping the inspiration will come back soon now that I've survived the boot-camp semester. Who knows, maybe something else will pop up. Killer Parakeet, anyone?

Fun at Camp Boggy Creek

About a week ago, I got an e-mail from a friend from TBoF (Traditional Bowhunters of Florida) about doing maintenance and repairing archery equipment at Camp Boggy Creek in Eustis, FL, 100ish miles from me. If there's anything I have a hard time resisting, it's playing with traditional bows and learning how to repair and maintain them. So I go to Camp Boggy Creek and after braving the terrors of road construction and scary tourist buses filled with what looks like Oakland, CA (or Richmond or the crappy parts of LA or any number of these hell-holes called big cities), I finally arrive at the camp, which is a camp for kids and teenagers with serious (and possibly fatal) illnesses. It's a neat camp that lets otherwise indoor potatoes have a chance to enjoy the wilderness. Anyway, some of my friends from TBoF are tinkering with their own high-end custom-made bows. There's a pretty neat-looking take-down longbow that happens to be made by Four Winds Archery. The bowyer for Four Winds Archery, by the way, is local to me -- he lives in Silver Springs, FL, which is just east of Ocala, FL. I don't blame my friend, an ogre of an Englishman transplanted in Florida, for insisting that he would never part with the bow. It shoots and aims well, but whew, it's got a bit of a vibration and really likes my arm! I also tried a few other custom-made bows, but even if they do aim a bit more easily than my little Chek-Mate, they still give me a bit of vibration that travels up to my funny bone, which isn't quite so funny anymore.

The real fun, besides playing with bows and repairing them in the wilderness, was talking about the local ecology, especially the plants. One of my friends did have to remind me that I was no longer under a certain professor's reign of terror when I was running around trying to identify all these trees. I think some of these trees have been permanently burned into my mind. I have a strong feeling that a future story may have various scientific names embedded into character names and locations.

Highlights from Today's Lesson

All in all, it was a successful lesson. I had 4 students -- a fellow forester, a colleague from botany and her husband and son -- and they were a pretty good group. Aside from minor arrow damage and my students realizing there some muscles they've never really used, it was a nice, casualty-free gathering. I think I did a good job of scaring people away from shooting a high-end compound, although the second-hand Mini-Genesis that I've been tinkering with to hone in on my own bow mechanic skills did come in very handy. It's a real blast teaching basic archery, especially traditional. I think I also made some people's days by letting them have a taste of Lord of the Rings and realizing that it's not as out of reach as it seems to be. Sure, I got a lot of orc jokes about the Equalizer, but I also got a lot of comments about being like an elf with the longbow!


Gotta train the little one too! We're the fighting Uruk-hai! Rawr!!!


Gotta work on my follow-up a bit...


I'm gonna shoot that little spot! (I would also hit my own arrows... thank goodness for these tough X7 Eclipses!)


Ouch! I just hit my arm!


Where's the big dot?


I challenge you to a duel! Closest to the target wins!

The 300 Test

Well, I did some intensive testing on the two back-tension releases and so far, I'm preferring the Carter Evolution over the TRU Ball Sweet Spot II. I know my experimental design has some issues because I literally did two 300 rounds (12 ends of 5 arrows on a 5-spot target from 20 yards away) back-to-back with only a short break in between. My scores sucked on both 300s, especially compared to what I was getting with the caliper release and a draw weight in the mid-high 40 lbs. Just to give you an idea of my suckage, I got 252/300 with 10/60 arrows in the X ring with the Evolution and 219/300 with 4/60 in the X with the Sweet Spot II. As far as comfort for extended periods of time go, I actually like the Sweet Spot II better, but for control even when my stamina's running low, the Evolution wins out. If there was a 4-finger version of the Evolution, that would be the ultimate release for me based on what I've tried (and witnessed) -- I'm still not quite brave enough to try a lot of the other back-tension releases after a good friend of mine told me about his trip to the ER (and resulting stitches) after his release went off prematurely and he punched himself in the face really badly. My friend is also missing some teeth in front because of this accident.

I'm definitely nowhere near ready to compete with a compound, at least in anything remotely competetive! But as far as traditional goes, I think I'm ready to hunt some foam animals again and maybe with some training over the summer with some experimentation, I might even be ready to join my friends on the trail or in the tree-stand to get myself some quality deer or wild hog meat!

And the Battle Rages On...

Which will it be? The Carter Evolution or the Tru-Ball Sweet-Spot II, 4-fingers version?

The epic will continue!

Fun Right Before the Liquid Sunset

I went shooting some of my colleagues today and shared the joys of archery with them. It was a real blast, especially considering two of us had just finished finals. Our trusty photographer (not in the pics) also survived his qualifier exams so it seemed fitting that he goofed off. The only down-side I think is that I may have to be a lot more protective of my little Chek-Mate -- the post-doc in our group instantly fell in love with Sorondil-Telcontar as soon as he took a few shots on it. I don't blame him (or the rest of the party) for drooling at my bow. I have to admit, the post-doc has some nice bows himself, including a pair of classic Fred Bear bows, both a recurve and a compound. It was also a photograph moment watching everyone's faces when they saw me shooting the compound, even if it also got a lot of "whoa, that looks like a torture device"-type comments. It was a well spent afternoon with my colleagues and just being vegetables with weapons. Archery is indeed addictive!

Another Cool Invention

The fishing vest is a work of genius. It's great for carrying lots of small objects and it's very comfortable to wear. I used one the last few days for my little jogging excursions and it's just as comfortable as a fanny pack, except much less likely to have a zipper open and lose something. It holds my house keys, cell phone, and iPod very nicely as well as a bit of change if I suddenly decide that my bottle of water wasn't enough to make it back home on or if I get a serious case of the munchies about 2-3 miles out. It's also great for carrying writing instruments and flash drives without worrying about squishing them, losing them, or otherwise overcooking them from body heat. It also does wonders for archery practice, at least until I can get a quiver that actually has a supplementary pocket without a huge hole in the bottom for carrying my release and repair kit. Yeah, fishing vests also rule. So do overalls and camouflage hunting pants.

And now back to writing up my term project for my simulations class. I'm trying to build a really nice little neural network to predict net ecosystem exchange (NEE) using micrometeorological variables. It's a pretty nifty model with five hidden neurons in one layer. I think I might've overfitted it considering I had 8 inputs and it couldn't predict the test data worth crap even if I got an r^2 of about 0.85 when I trained it. Lesson learned and hopefully a mistake I can avoid when I do it for real with my dissertation!

Once this semester's over, I'm going to have to spend some serious quality time shooting. I want to see if I can do some serious butt-kicking in 3-D with trusty little Sorondil-Telcontar and master shooting with a back-tension release so I can also do some serious butt-kicking in spot-shooting. Hopefully my butt doesn't expand to get molded to the chair and/or engulf my poor bike seat by the time I'm done with finals. My gut's already struggling to fit into a lot of the desks in the classroom and my butt's engulfed one chair on campus already.

Ok, exercise and then work on my project. I hate it when I'm in danger of getting my butt impaled by my bike seat or when I block the doorway with my corpulent self.