legends · 4 min read ·
Range Log
A range safety officer finds arrows arriving in the gold from behind the butts, where no archer can stand.
**Wrenbury Bowmen — Range Log (Range Safety Officer: P. Alsop)**
*Record the date, archers present, distances, any incidents. Targets are 122 cm faces, shot at 30 m, 50 m, and 70 m.*
· · ·
**4 Oct · Saturday · 10:00–13:00.** Archers present: 9. Distances: 30, 50, 70 m. Weather fine. No incidents. Four targets re-faced.
**11 Oct · Saturday · 10:00–13:00.** Archers present: 11. Distances: 30, 50 m. Overcast. No incidents.
**12 Oct · Sunday · 08:00.** Range opened for maintenance. Found one arrow in target 3 at 50 m. A red-fletched arrow, wooden shaft, in the gold. Nobody had been shooting. The range had been locked since Saturday 13:00.
· · ·
**Scoring sheet (target 3, 12 Oct, RSO)**
- **Arrow · Position · Score**
- 1 · Gold, centre · 10
*Note: arrow type is not in the club's stock. Fletching is of goose feather, hand-tied. Nock is horn.*
· · ·
**19 Oct · Sunday · 08:00.** Opened range. Found four arrows in target 3, grouped in the gold, within 3 cm of each other. All red-fletched, all of the same pattern. The target is set 50 m from the shooting line. The arrows were not shot from the shooting line. Their angle in the face points back towards the target butts. They were shot from behind.
I checked behind the butts. The ground is a bank, a drainage ditch, and a hedge. There is nowhere an archer could stand. There is a patch of flattened grass, as if someone had knelt, at about the 15 m mark from the target, on the wrong side.
· · ·
**Scoring sheet (target 3, 26 Oct, RSO)**
- **Arrow · Position · Score**
- 1–6 · Gold, within a 4 cm group · 10 each
*Six arrows, found at dawn. All shot from the butts side. The group is tighter than any member of the club has achieved. The arrows are placed too well to be accidental. A group like this can only be made by an archer who is not under any pressure, shooting from a place where the target cannot return the fire.*
· · ·
**Safety officer's notes (P. Alsop, 26 Oct)**
I put a camera on the range. It runs on motion. At 04:40 this morning it recorded the target, in the half-light, with the mist lying on the grass. Nothing moved. Six frames. Then a seventh frame. An arrow, stationary, in the gold.
Between the sixth and the seventh frame, three seconds. No archer, no bow, no sound. The arrow has simply been there from the seventh frame on.
I replayed it twenty times. Between the sixth and the seventh there is a darkening of the left edge of the frame, as if a shape had passed in front of the lens. A shape taller than a man. And behind it, the arrow in the target, perfectly vertical, quivering.
· · ·
**Range log (continued)**
**2 Nov · Sunday · 08:00.** Opened range. Thirty-seven arrows in target 3. All in the gold. All red-fletched. They have formed a perfect spiral, from the centre outwards, one arrow per ring. Beneath the target, on the grass, I found the first bow. It is a longbow, yew, perhaps four hundred years old, strung with hemp. It was lying on the ground at the foot of the butts as if someone had put it down gently.
The string was warm.
· · ·
**Range log (continued)**
**9 Nov · Sunday · 08:00.** Range closed. The club committee has voted to discontinue shooting at target 3. A line of tape has been put across the 50 m mark.
I took the camera down. On the footage from the last night there are a hundred and eleven frames of an empty range, and then a hundred and twelfth. In the hundred and twelfth the target is at the edge of the frame, and in front of it, close to the camera, stands a man. He is tall and thin and wears a long coat. He is looking straight into the lens. He is holding a bow in his left hand.
He has drawn the string. The arrow is on it. It is pointing at me.
· · ·
**Scoring sheet (target 3, 16 Nov, RSO)**
- **Arrow · Position · Score**
- 1 · Gold, centre · 10
*One arrow, standing in the gold at dawn, exactly where the first one stood in October. It is red-fletched. On the shaft, in a small neat hand, someone has written my name. Under it, a score.*
*10.*