This weekend is the annual traditional archery shoot at the Rapids Archery Club and my gang is going on Father's Day as we usually do - a walk through the woods and dunes with stops to test our skill on challengingly-placed, three-dimensional targets.  It's  a traditional archery shoot so "old fashioned" longbows and recurves only, no sights, no stabilizers, no compound bows, and no bawdy redneck douches. This is the soul crowd, the low-key nature-lovers, the lone hunters, those who enjoy the connection to history and understand the difficulty of getting close enough to an animal to get off an instinctive - draw and shoot in one motion - shot.  I don't hunt but I understand the differences between pulling a longbow and pulling a trigger.

I'll shoot archery my whole life for the same reason I'll ride a snowboard forever.  After a period of focus and practice years ago - even though I've only strung it up a couple times since we hiked the courses last year,  by the third round into the garage hay bale tonight I was eighty percent as good as I've ever been.