Here's another rambling Satori story for you:
I had a buddy from the ship a while back who got into archery simply because he'd inherited his grandfather's old bow.
The man was a bit of a knucklehead but he was an outstanding marksman and practiced diligently. He didn't know the first thing about archery so he learned. Then he practiced. Being a resident of the ship he couldn't very well practice there so he used to come by my place. My room mate is a professed bowhunter (although he's only taken his bow out a few times and has never gotten a deer with it - he's lucky to get the ground with it, in fact) and has some hay bales laying around (you probably saw some of them in my beercan massacre movies if you watched them); combined with a wide back yard, this individual had a secluded archery range all his own.
I didn't pay much attention. I'm not an archer. I found it odd that in this day of compound bows with fiberoptic sights and such, this man was using his grandfather's simple longbow. No pulleys, not even a recurve...no sights...no frills at all. The relic was actually made of wood. Even I knew that no one uses wooden bows anymore. The guy was nuts. But he practiced constantly. Three times a week at first, more as his chest and back got used to the exercise. After a month, he was out there nearly every day, at all hours of the day. I was not surprised to find him there when I got home from work. Likewise, I was not surprised to find him there when I woke up in the morning.
One fateful Saturday I was puttering around and noticed my room mate and my friend out there, giving the paper plates a hard time with their bows. I went out to have a look.
"This guy's pretty good," my room mate said. "Really good."
"Going well?" I asked my friend.
"I can usually hit it," he said.
"The plate?" I asked.
"No," he said, without detectable emotion, "the bull." It was then that I'd noticed that he'd dotted the middle of the plate with a marker. We were at least thirty yards away from that bale of hay.
"Hit it, then," I said. He took up his antiquated, no-pulley-having, no-sight-having, made-of-wood contraption, drew it back, and hit the bull. He didn't seem particularly pleased by the shot. I would've been pleased to have made that shot with a pistol.
"Everyone gets lucky," I taunted. "Do it again."
This is the part that always stands out very clearly in my mind. He nocked another arrow, drew back, and loosed. We heard an odd sound upon impact - not quite metallic, but definately solid. The second arrow was parked several inches away from the first, two o'clock...still on the paper plate, but outside of the bull.
"I hate it when that happens," he said, obviously not surprised by what had happened. I didn't understand - not at the time - so I just went along with it. We approached to take a look. You may have already guessed how this turned out:
The first arrow's butt was trashed - he'd struck it with the second arrow. The noise we'd heard was the impact. It had deflected off to the 2 o'clock position.
Not only had he struck his first arrow with the second at a pretty long distance by archery standards, but it happened often enough that he recognized it for what it was and it got on his nerves. I don't know...maybe it happens all the time in archery but it impressed the heck out of me. Most pistols don't shoot that well out of a rest.
The moral of the story is that it doesn't matter how "antiquated" the tool is; if you learn how to use it properly and practice, practice, practice, you may be surprised by just what it (and you) can do.
