3D Ranges

If you did archery at a camp, it probably looked a little something like this:

You stand at the line. You shoot at a target. When everyone is done, you walk up to the target to retrieve your arrows. You walk back to the line.

Repeat.

And there’s nothing wrong with that - we love archery in all forms!

It’s just that our particular style of archery is a little bit different.

In 3D archery, we shoot what we call ranges. A range is a collection of 3D targets, and rather than being all together, they’re spread out across a hiking trail. You go out with a small group of other archers (minimum 3, maximum 5).

Instead of shooting a bunch of arrows at the same line each time, each member of the group will shoot one arrow at a target. After all archers have shot, you then score it, then walk along a marked trail to the next target, and repeat the process. The ranges are walked multiple times before the shoot to ensure that they’re safe. And most of the time, you won’t be walking through a cleared field - you’ll be going through terrain more like this:

Despite how it might look, you don’t need to be super fit - you’ll spend more time standing and shooting than you will walking. You’ll still want to wear decent shoes. And you can casually tell people that you totally spent the weekend hiking.

Bonus: instead of a view like this from the shooting line:

This is what you might see tucked between some trees (to quote Play School: there’s a bear in there):

Targets are also set out at different distances - so one might be only a short distance, then the next might be really long! The distances aren’t marked, so it’s up to you to judge the shot. There are 5 coloured pegs set out at each target - which one you shoot from depends on your age, sex and gear. Each peg has a maximum distance they can be, so don’t worry - you won’t have to shoot a recurve at a target 40 metres away.

At 3DAAA tournaments, you have 5 ranges made up of 10 targets each. You shoot 3 ranges on Saturday and 2 ranges on Sunday - that’s 50 targets over a weekend.

At club events, we set a single range of 15 targets, which you can shoot twice. Our ground at Port Stephens is pretty gentle, so you don’t need to fear a fall - but our range setters can still set a challenging course!