Now I am become Death

...destroyer of beverage containers.

One of the more awesome things here in Portland is a place called "Trackers". It's a sort of post-hippie/pre-Apocalyptic-wasteland-skills-learning-center thing, where kids (and adults) can learn to smith blades, skin critters, build boats, track animals, and raise chickens. Plus there's live-action-roleplaying. It's damn good fun, is what it is.

There's also an indoor bow range, which is where I enjoy Saturday mornings letting the gray goose (or, in this case, the primary-colored-plastic) fly.

We used to do this as a family but, sadly, like so many of our other "family" things, the rest of the gang slipped away. The Boy never did have any interest, the Girl still goes from time to time but has little real interest, and my Bride has lost any real impetus to get out of bed early on a Saturday.

So Saturdays it's just me and Subutai. That's "Subutai" I'm firing at left. It's a Samick SKB, a modern Korean version of the northeast Asian horsebow. Very light and small but an easy draw and fires a very flat arrow. I can shoot all day without tiring, and when my eye is in and my form good I can put a dozen arrows inside a dinner plate at 15 yards.

Plus it's fun for trick shooting. This was after a series of "Parthian shots", starting with my back to the target, turning, drawing, and releasing, as a horse archer would who had drawn his enemy after him by feigning flight.

What's odd about this is the number of people I run into on the bow range who don't consider this practicing with a deadly weapon. They wouldn't touch a firearm and consider the gun-nuttery of the ammosexuals down at Tri-County distasteful, or at least faintly louche. Any yet this was the original weapon of mass destruction. While God may have made Man, and Sam Colt may have made them equal, the bow was the first tool that made men able to kill other men without all that chancy risk beating them down with a rock or stick.

It's just been so long since we commonly killed people with bows that we forget that.

People are funny that way.

Let the gray goose fly!

We have an outfit here in Portland called Trackers, and one thing we love about them is that they have an indoor archery range. Here's Artemis and Diana putting clothyard shafts in French men-at-arms (or the hanging cardboard box, close enough).

The fun part of last Saturday was the range safety officer (that's her on the left in the shot above) added a plastic Gatorade bottle to the box. It made a ridiculously satisfying "WHOCK!" when you hit it. Mind you, if you hit it at just the wrong angle it split your arrow:

Little Miss is quite the sniper (or whatever you call someone who is a dead shot with a bow. Robin Hood?) and regularly outshoots her mom.

I am all over the place. Last Saturday my eye was in and I was knocking the hell out of the targets. But as often as not my shot group looks like one of the Merry Men has been a little too merry. I just don't shoot enough to get the mechanics down solid, so whenever I'm not physically tops my aim suffers.

No real point other than a fun thing to do in Portland, and my Bride as Amazon.