NEW: Shoot Into The New Year - December 30 2023, Blessington, Co. Wicklow.

With archery we seek to foster the skills developed for entertainment, hunting, and combat as practiced across the medieval period. Archery equipment and techniques varied widely across the area from western Europe, through the middle east to China and Japan, providing a great deal of options for interested archers to explore and reseach.

In the SCA, archery is practiced using a bare bow, lacking the targeting, fine tuning, and balancing equipment used in modern day archery. Arrows are made of wood, with feather fletchings, steel points, and various forms of nock. While archers are encouraged to shoot using equipment close to the forms used in the medieval period, modern recurve bows are allowed, provided the bow is bare. Compound bows, plastic fletchings, and arrow shafts made from aluminium or carbon fibre are not currently allowed in practice or in competition.

Many of our weekend events include archery competitions. These primarily consist of scoring on targets at set distances. We also conduct shoots with different target types, shooting rules, obstacles, and varying distances.

Weekly practice venue sought

We’re currently looking for a venue for our weekly archery practice. If you know of a hall (or a suitable outdoor field with lighting), let us know. We need about 24m long, and at least 5m wide. We have nets and other protection for walls!

What to bring: Just yourself. Wear a top with sleeves that are not baggy, as this may impede the bow string. We provide bows, arrows and other necessary equipment.

Weekly practice starts with equipment inspection followed by practice shoots and will normally feature a scoring round. Scores from this round will be submitted to the kingdom archery database for ranking and periodic competition purposes.

Contact: Mícheál of Dun in Mara at archery@duninmara.org