Volume 4, Issue 26 - July-September 2012 - Heraldshill!

(Lilies War Cont…)
HL William Fletcher of Carbery
This year, Lilies was very pleasant compared
to years past (note there is always some heat).
Lilies also had only one storm and it was not
nearly as bad as in years past. Before I get too
far into this I want to thank all of Heraldshill
and our adopted friends for helping us get
setup, bringing equipment to and from the
archery range, and getting ice. It was a great
help to me being able to participate in activities.
So a big THANKS to YOU!
This year our shoot was on Sunday afternoon
and it had to last from 1 PM to 4 PM.
We started out with a war point shoot. I chose
to repeat one of my old shoots for this as it tests
skill and accuracy with long and short distances.
That is why it is called advance and retreat.
The archers start at fifteen yards with six
arrows. We only keep score of the number of
arrows that hit the period target of eighteen
inches, not the score of each arrow. The archer
then can use the number of arrows that scored
in the next round, which will be shot at twentyfive
yards.
Again they shoot what they are allowed,
score the number of arrows and proceed to the
twenty yard range to shoot again. After the
twenty yard they take the number of arrows
8
they have scored to thirty-five yards, then
thirty yards, then forty-five yards and then at
forty yards. After the forty yards shoot one
archer (shooting a crossbow) still had all six
arrows counting. It was the current Fyrd
Captain Kenneth James (Cynedd of Loch
Smythe), later to become the new baby Boga
Hirth. Yea, I am no longer the sixty year old
baby. Kenneth received two of the targets
and a bottle of my wine of his choice for winning.
After that we put up the also evil balloon
shoot. This year we changed the object of the
shoot, and that was to shoot the one balloon
out of six that had powder in it. Do to some
confusion there was one balloon on each side
that had powder, but the archers were allowed
to shoot any of the six on the target T
stand. Ian James bested his brother in the
shoot off for this shoot. Then we had a water
bag shoot on the same stands. Two plastic
bags were filled with the same amount of water
in each and attached to the ends of a
string so they would hang about two feet below
the end of the cross piece on the T
stands. Each bag was attached by the corner
so the filled corner would hang the lowest.
Whoever hit the bag the lowest on that corner
would win by letting more water out, and
his bag which would then be higher than his
opponent’s bag. It was late in the day so I do
not remember who won but all had a good
time with this one as well. We finished up by
putting up several different targets, that we
had left over from Cross and Compass, for
those to shoot at if they had not already had
enough shooting.
Monday I was in charge of the same range
again until only 3 PM at which time a war
point shoot was scheduled. I did not have
too many archers as those that wanted to
shoot were at Leif’s Royal Round shoot that
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