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I had promised some time back that I would run the archery range for a big Boy Scout camp this last weekend. Between then and now I managed to twist my knee and retare my rotator cuff, but a promise is a promise so saturday found me teaching scouts how to shoot . When they shut the range down for lunch the fellows helping me headed down to eat. I chose to stay at the range and try to rest my leg as it was really giving me fits. I was setting in a chair when a voice asks " hay Mister, you sleeping?" I replied "Yes" . He asked if he could shoot a bow. I told him the range was closed and that I was not really a Boy Scout guy anyway, so we might get in trouble if he was shooting with just me there. I had never even opened my eyes. After a couple of quite minutes I can feel him looking at me so I open one eye. There stands this little 10 year old kid looking all sad. I set up and ask in my grouchiest voice. "What?"
He started talking 90 miles an hour about how his dad had told him they were going to be shooting bows today but everybody in his group was a lot older and bigger than him so he just sucked at everything, O please couldn't I just show him how to shoot a bow so he would be able to do good at least at one of the stations?
Well I eased up and hopped over to him on my one good leg and just set butt down in the grass and went to work. I figured if the other fellows came back and said anything it would give me an excuse to leave anyway.
We spend a solid hour with me teaching him everything I knew to get an arrow on the target in a hurry. 3 under gun barrel style. By the time the other campers started back from lunch, we had it going on. He cut out before any of his group could see what he was up to.
It was a hour or so before he and his group made it back around. It had been my practice to start at one end of the shooting line and work my way down helping every kid a little , as best I could but not with his group.
I stationed myself right behind him and softly coached him thru all 10 of his arrows. He was so nervous on the first one that it looked like somebody zapped him when it arched up and smacked right in the middle of the target, he shook all over. He never missed a arrow , all 10 in the target. He was proud as a Peacock.
Everyone was 4 or 5 years older and a full head taller, they could run faster and jump higher but by golly he was the only one to have all his arrows in the target.
Topic: Archery The Great Equalizer (Read 464 times)
