If you managed to find a local archery club to take archery lessons or use as a public archery range, you should follow certain archery range etiquette and guidelines that will help you to enjoy your hobby or profession while allowing others to have a good experience too.
Table of Contents
1) Limit the Number of Arrows You Shoot
One of the most important guidelines is to shoot no more than 6 arrows at the same time.
It’s usually a good rule of thumb to shoot just 3 arrows since that’s the number of arrows you would shoot at a tournament. Besides, if you’re always shooting 6 arrows or more at once and if you’re a beginner, there’s a big possibility that people are going to be annoyed with you since they would need to wait a lot of time for their turn. You sure don’t want that to happen!
You would think seasoned archers would follow this basic archery range etiquette, but sadly there’s always one at every archery club!
Speaking of which, we’ve heard many stories like the following that happened at a local archery range where someone failed to follow this rule. Apparently this “wannabe” archer was more an expert at “pissing people off” than they were at actual archery, which makes it even worse! They would basically have their blinder on, shooting away, and being inconsiderate by not seeing that there were a bunch of people waiting behind for their turn.
The “wannabe” archer could’ve at least reduced their firing salvo to 6 arrows instead of 10 freaking arrows! Please don’t be that guy or gal. But be smart: go shopping and make sure you’re stocked up on arrows!
2) Keep a Safe Distance from the Firing Line
The other thing you need to take into account when attending public archery ranges is to keep a safe and certain distance between you and the archer who’s shooting at the time.
Usually you need to position yourself about 3 metres (or 10 feet) behind the firing line. This is where the waiting line starts: unless you’re coaching the person, and if that’s the case, you want to be closer to them.
3) Take a Course to Learn the Basics of Archery Range Etiquette
If you haven’t gone through an archery course before or not done any classes at all either, that’s going to be your best bet as a beginner to learn some archery range etiquette.
Most archery clubs offer courses and classes, so be sure to have a look through the clubs listed on our site and find one nearest to you.
At the end of the day, you’ll be doing yourself a favour – you don’t want to be that guy shooting too many arrows or doing something silly that makes you look dumb!
Bonus: Be Kind
Regardless of whether you’re a beginner or pro, if you see a fellow archer looking around for an arrow they may have lost, a nice thing to do is simply to just go and offer to help them!
Depending on the arrows, they’re not always that cheap, so if you miss the target, you’d like to hope that someone would offer to help you too. As they say, “give and you shall receive”. If you help a person out, somebody at some point will help you out when you need it – that’s just good archery range etiquette!
And lastly…
These are the main archery range etiquette tips to keep in mind, but we still recommend you do some archery lessons or a course of some sort to learn more. But if you follow these guidelines, you’re on your way on becoming the archery saint of your local range!
P.S. No more than 6 arrows at a time, okay? 🙂