Objective
A fun group activity which helps to build concentration and performance under pressure. The highest scoring archers wins, often without shooting the highest scoring arrows.
Preparation
- A group of up to six archers, each with a complete bow setup, ready to shoot.
- A 122cm target, or similar, placed at an arbitrary distance, like 30m. Keep the skill of the archers in mind.
- Divide the target into sections from the centre out to the lowest scoring ring. These lines will resemble a cake being sliced. You can use a marker, or span string lines across the face, but make sure that the middle is on the centre spot of the target.
- Do not put any pins in the shooting area!
- Each participating archer “owns” one slice of the cake, and all arrows inside it will score for them.
Technique
- Archers takes turns to safely shoot, aiming at only their slice of the cake.
- Scoring rules:
- An arrow inside the archer’s slice score for that archer, regardless of who’s arrow it is. That means that if archer A scores a 10 inside archer B’s slice, archer B gets the score.
- If it touches a line, it belongs to nobody.
- It’s acceptable for an archer to score as many arrows as lands in their slice, thus the score per end can exceed 60 (if you’re shooting 6 arrow ends on a standard 122cm or 80cm face).
- Shoot as many ends as you which to complete a friendly competition.
- Highest score wins.
Notes
- The idea is to shoot the highest score possible, but tactics and accuracy matters.
- A larger group of archers may choose to shoot fewer arrows each, but each archer should always shoot the same number of arrows.
- You can mix bow types and genders.
Step it up
- To adjust the handicap for an archer, you can adapt the size of the slice. This means you can have a highly capable archer with a tiny slice competing against a relative novice with a larger slice.
- Rather than adding the arrows in the incorrect segment to the score or the archer who owns the segment, distract it from the score of the archer who shot it.