3D Archery Tourney provides Jurassic target practice

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

FLOYD — Velociraptors have been extinct for quite some time.

Mosquitos likely will be around forever.

Either way, both species were well represented at the 3D Archery Tournament held Sunday at Wendland’s Woods.

“I took a shot at one of them,” Paul Van Ausdale said of the insects which started to assert themselves amid the woods’ moist setting during the tournament’s final two hours.

They were almost hard to miss.

As for sticking the velociraptor, that took a little more expertise.

“It’s still in good shape, but it’s one of newer ones,” Troy Koresh said of the life-size  — according to paleontology records — dinosaur target the Double C (Charles City) Archery Club recently purchased for its 3D shoots held monthly at Wendland’s during the spring and summer.

“We hold them at the end of May, June, July … our final one is Aug. 28,” said Van Ausdale, a longtime member of the Double C Archery Club. “We try to hold them when there are no other archery events going on from neighboring clubs.

“We don’t hold any during September because that’s when squirrel hunting season begins. We don’t want to be out here disrupting the hunters.”

There were more than 40 targets set up within the woods, most well off the beaten trail.

“We try to make this a challenge,” said Koresh, while pointing to a mid-size boar target about 30 yards from the designated shooting spot and partially obscured by brush and tree branches.

“You can see, there is only a little opening where you can hit it,” Koresh said.

The scoring system ranges from 5 to 15 points based on where the arrow hits the target. Shooters only get one shot per target before retrieving their arrows — providing if they can locate missed shots — and moving on to the next stage.

Like golfers, archers keep their own scores before returning in their filled-out cards.

“When we get all the scores tabulated, we post them on our (Double C Archery) Facebook page,” Koresh said. “It’s not like we have a big awards ceremony.”

With a little less than a hour before the tournament’s conclusion, there were more than 50 shooters who participated.

“A good turnout is usually 30,” Van Ausdale said. “This is the best we’ve had in awhile.”

Though most of the targets, great or small, posed a challenge, Koresh pointed out that these were not the type of shots an ethical bowhunter would attempt while hunting real game.

“This is to make you a better hunter … to give you the chance to make challenging shots,” said Koresh, who with several other Double C Club members was out in the woods setting up the shooting range at 5 a.m. the morning of the tournament.

“But you don’t want shoot an arrow at a real deer 50 yards away,” Koresh said. “You’ve got to have respect for the animal you’re hunting. If you take a shot, you want it to finish the animal off … not to wound it and to have it run off suffering.

“People who take such long shots during real hunts give hunters a bad name.”