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Target archery

Target archery is the core discipline of the sport, shot at a coloured ten-ring face over set distances on a flat range.

The face and the scoring

Target archery is shot at the familiar five-colour face: gold, red, blue, black and white rings, scored from ten in the centre out to one on the outer white. The innermost ring can be split into an X or inner ten for tie-breaks.

The standard outdoor face is 122 centimetres for the longer distances and 80 centimetres for the shorter ones, with compound shooting a reduced face. Indoors the face is 40 centimetres at 18 metres.

Distances and rounds

Outdoor target archery is shot at distances from 90 metres down to 30, with the modern ranking round being 72 arrows at 70 metres for recurve and 50 metres for compound. National bodies also run imperial rounds measured in yards, such as the York, Hereford and Portsmouth.

Every distance needs its own sight mark, so a target archer keeps a sight tape or a marked block that records where the sight sits for each range. Building and trusting that set of marks is a season's work.

How it connects to the setup

Target scores are unforgiving, so the bow has to be set up precisely: the sight square and repeatable, the rest giving clean clearance, the centre shot tuned. None of that is possible if the sight or rest does not mount correctly to the riser in the first place.

That is the starting point this site addresses: before an archer can chase sight marks and tune a bow, the accessories have to fit the bow they own.

Fit a sight to your target bow

Open the SightRestFit fit checkerMount fit by bow modelFind target archery sight on eBayaffiliate

Related

Olympic recurveTarget's headline bowField archeryThe woodland versionSight marksA mark per distance

Sources: World Archery: disciplines · Wikipedia: Target_archery · Archery GB