Williams Lake’s Bond Lake Road Rod and Gun Club played host to around 125 archers from around the province over the weekend as the Cariboo Archers welcomed the 2011 B.C. Outdoor 3D Provincial Archery Championships for the second straight year.
The event featured four rounds of shooting totalling 80 shots over the two-day event, which began Saturday and finished late Sunday afternoon.
Archers competed in categories from peewee (nine years and under) to master’s 60 plus on two courses. Both courses featured 20 unique foam animal targets, requiring archers to tackle and gauge various ranges and unmarked distances at every turn.
Each target is marked with a 10x, a 10-, an eight- and a five-point circle as competitors tally up their scores throughout the day.
For the Cariboo Archers, the provincials were quite successful with several local archers managing some top finishes.
In the Cub Compound (10- to 12-year-old) class, Taylor Pigeon shot to a second-place finish. Meanwhile, in the Peewee (nine and under) class, Blake Pigeon took second.
In the Ladies Recurve Unaided class Sharon Allan took second with 334 points. For the Men’s Instinctive class Dan Mobbs sniped a first-place finish with 664 points, while Fred Streleoff finished second with 628.
In the Masters Compound class Williams Lake’s Al Campsall won first place, posting a score of 776. Campsall was also selected to the B.C. Team who will travel to Regina, Sask. this August for the 2011 Canadian Archery Championships.
“The nationals are open to any competitor who is a member of the Federation of Canadian Archers,” Campsall said. “However, the selection to the B.C. Team is done using a handicapping system developed utilizing scores from the top three finishers in each category for the last five years. This way, archers can relatively fairly be compared across categories.”
The 125 archers who attended this year’s provincials in Williams Lake ranked higher than last year’s attendance, said Cariboo Archers secretary Sarah Jackman.
“We had about a 25 per cent increase over last year so it was a nice bump,” she said.
Shooters attended from as far north as Fort St. John, and also from Vancouver Island and the Kootenays, along with archers from 100 Mile House, Quesnel and Prince George.
Jackman said provincials went extremely smoothly, noting the Williams Lake Lion’s Club, who cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday, were a huge hit among archers.
“Between the good turnout and the great weather we had this weekend it exceeded expectations,” she said. “We’ve had comments from people around the province saying how great the course is.
“We have a great group of people who helped set this event up, who all did an amazing job.”