How Far Can I Actually Shoot an Arrow? My First Flight Competition 🏹
Most of my archery involves trying to hit something. Usually a target face, preferably the gold and, on a really good day, somewhere near the middle of it.
This weekend was slightly different because there wasn't a target at all. Instead, the aim was simply to shoot an arrow as far as I possibly could.
My Dad and I went to our first ever flight competition, organised by Cheshire Archery Association at Cheshire Polo Club. It was also the first flight competition Cheshire had run, so although there were some very experienced flight archers there, quite a few of us were discovering something new.
We were incredibly lucky with the weather. It was a lovely sunny day and, perhaps more importantly when you're deliberately firing arrows hundreds of yards across a field, it wasn't particularly windy.
And the field was enormous.
It needed to be.
So what actually is flight archery?
Flight archery has a very simple objective: shoot an arrow as far as you can.
There are no target faces and no golds to aim at. Instead, you shoot into a huge open range and your score is the distance travelled by your furthest arrow.
Simple idea. As I was about to discover, there's quite a lot more to it than that.
There were all sorts of bows at the competition, including target recurves like mine, longbows, American flatbows, compounds and specialist flight bows. Some people shot different bows during the day and others experimented with different limb poundages.
The equipment ranged from things I recognised immediately to bows and arrows that looked very different from anything I'd normally see on a target shooting line.
I had brought Goldie. Obviously.
Goldie gets her chance to fly
Goldie is my 23" Kinetic Novana riser. Yes, I've named my riser. My little white 21" SF Axiom+ is called Baby White.
I thought this might just be something I did until I started chatting with some of the people at the competition and discovered that quite a few of them had named their risers as well.
So that's settled. Goldie isn't weird. She's just part of the team. 😂
I'd actually tried a different setup the night before. We had some short 30lb carbon limbs that I could try with Goldie and thought the extra power might be useful for flight.
There was just one problem: they were too much for me to shoot comfortably.
Rather than struggling with heavier limbs just because they might theoretically send an arrow further, we went back to the medium limbs I was comfortable shooting. When my bow was measured at my actual draw length at the competition, I was pulling just 19.5lb.
That turned out to be more than enough to have some fun.
Why am I aiming at the sky?
The actual shooting felt very strange at first. In target archery I'm normally looking at something I want to hit. This time Dad and I were helping each other judge an angle of roughly 45 degrees.
That meant pointing Goldie towards a rather large area of empty sky, trying to make a good shot and trusting that somewhere a very long way away my arrow would eventually come back down.
There was another difference at the shooting line too. In normal target archery I stand with one foot either side of the line. In flight, I couldn't straddle it. The closest I could get was putting my toe right up to the line.
Apparently, that is quite literally toeing the line. Dad enjoyed discovering that considerably more than he should have.
We shot four ends of six arrows, with 15 minutes allowed for each end. Rather than everyone occupying the shooting line at once, you waited for a space, stepped forward, shot your six arrows and then moved away so somebody else could take your place.
Once everyone had finished shooting, we all went for a walk.
A very long walk.
Somewhere out there is my arrow...
Everyone headed across the field looking for their arrows. Once you found yours, you identified the furthest one and marked it with a little flag containing your details so that the distance could be measured. Then you collected your other arrows and eventually made the journey back to the shooting line.
Not every arrow wanted to be found.
A few were extremely good at disappearing into the grass, but one of the things I really liked was that people didn't just find their own arrows and wander away. If somebody was struggling to locate one, everyone nearby joined in and helped.
That actually summed up the atmosphere of the whole day.
I was the only junior competing and people seemed genuinely pleased to see a young archer trying flight. Lots of people came over to talk to me, ask about my bow, discuss my technique and explain different parts of flight archery. Some were particularly interested in how far I was managing to shoot with a relatively low draw weight.
After a while, I stopped feeling like the junior who had turned up and simply felt like another archer taking part.
I really liked that.
Some VERY strange arrows
One of my favourite parts of the day was looking at everybody's equipment.
Some of the specialist flight arrows were amazing. There were incredibly thin shafts and arrows with fletchings that had been cut down until there seemed to be hardly anything left.
There's a reason for all of that. Flight archers are trying to make their equipment as efficient as possible. Smaller and thinner fletchings can reduce drag, for example, although the rules about what equipment can be modified depend on the particular bow class being shot.
It made me realise that flight isn't simply about finding the heaviest bow you can pull. Bow efficiency, arrow weight, aerodynamics, technique and tuning can all affect how far an arrow travels.
That's probably why Tony Bakes has described Flight as the “Formula One of the archery world” people are constantly experimenting within the rules to get a little more distance from their equipment.
The more I looked around, the more I understood what he meant.
Flight's influence on the bows and arrows we use today
Something else I hadn't realised was how much experimentation in flight archery has influenced equipment used in other parts of the sport.
Flight archers have spent decades trying different materials and designs to make bows more efficient, strings lighter and faster, and arrows more aerodynamic. Developments in materials and bow and arrow design have then benefited target archery as well.
Carbon arrows are a brilliant example.
Most competitive archers today wouldn't think there was anything particularly unusual about seeing carbon in an arrow. World Archery credits American flight archer Rulon “Ike” Hancock with making and using the first carbon arrows specifically for flight archery.
That made the Formula One comparison make much more sense to me. A Formula One car doesn't look much like the car we drive to archery competitions, but ideas developed while trying to make racing cars perform better can eventually influence ordinary cars.
Flight seems to have done something similar for archery. At the extreme end of the sport, people keep asking: How can we make this bow and arrow just a little more efficient?
Sometimes the answers eventually become normal equipment for the rest of us.
I hadn't expected to learn quite so much from a competition where the basic instruction was essentially “shoot that way as far as you can.”
Meeting “Mr Flight”
I also got to meet Tony Bakes, who is known as “Mr Flight”.
I didn't realise quite how much Tony had contributed to flight archery until I learned more about him afterwards. He took over organising the Northern Counties and National Flight competitions in 1998 and, in the same year, was asked by World Archery to help write the World Flight Rules alongside fellow British archer Barry Groves and American flight archer Ike Hancock. Tony has also held world flight records in several bow classes. In 2026 he was invited to compete in international flight championships in Hungary, where he shot five individual classes, won all five and received a Hall of Fame medal. Wow!
Even more relevant to what happened later in my day, Tony developed the Raptor Award Scheme, which gives archers different distance levels to work towards in flight.
So meeting “Mr Flight” at my very first flight competition was pretty special.
The nicest thing, though, was that Tony was just as friendly and welcoming as everybody else. He came over to talk to me and took an interest in what I was doing.
I think that's something I'll remember from my first flight competition just as much as the distances.
So... how far did I actually shoot?
This was the question I'd wanted answered all day.
Across the four ends, my best arrow travelled:
217 yards, 1 foot and 1 inch.
I couldn't believe it.
Looking back towards the shooting line from my marker. Suddenly 217 yards felt like quite a long way! Remember, Goldie had been measured at only 19.5lb at my draw length. I'd just sent an arrow more than two football pitches across a field using my normal target recurve setup!
Dad was shooting too. Unfortunately. His bow measured 26lb at his draw length, his best arrow travelled 253 yards, 2 feet and 3 inches.
So yes, Dad beat me. He's taking it remarkably well. I'm sure he'll hardly mention it again. 😂
However, since coming home we've carried out some extremely important and definitely scientifically meaningful calculations.
My distance works out at roughly 11.1 yards for every pound of draw weight. Dad managed approximately 9.7 yards per pound.
Therefore, Dad shot further, but apparently I'm more efficient.
I am completely happy with this new and unquestionably important measure of archery performance.
My first Staffordshire flight record
There was another surprise when the records were being checked.
There wasn't an existing Staffordshire county flight record for my category.
So technically I didn't break a county record because there wasn't one to break.
My 217 yards, 1 foot and 1 inch therefore establishes the first Staffordshire county distance for the category and gives me — or somebody else — a benchmark to beat in the future once everything is formally recorded.
Dad discovered there wasn't an existing Staffordshire record for his category either, so somehow we both came away from our first ever flight competition establishing new county records.
Because this was also Cheshire Archery Association's first flight competition, lots of people were finding themselves in a similar position. There were plenty of first places and new county records being established, and everybody seemed genuinely delighted for each other during the presentations.
It added to the feeling that we'd all been part of something a little bit special.
Gold... with a slight technicality
I also came away with first place and a gold medal.
There is one tiny detail I should probably mention. I was the only junior.
So my route to first place mostly involved successfully turning up and completing the competition. 😂
I'm still keeping the medal.
The distance itself, though, gave me something else that I'm really pleased about.
One step towards my Merlin
Flight archery has something called the Raptor Award Scheme, which Tony Bakes developed to provide distance awards across World Archery-recognised bow types.
There are four levels: Merlin, Kestrel, Osprey and Eagle.
For a junior shooting Target Recurve, the first level is Merlin at 170 yards. To achieve the award, I need two qualifying distances using the same bow type.
My 217-yard shot means I've now achieved my first qualifying distance towards my Merlin award. One down, one to go.
The next level, Kestrel, is 260 yards, followed by Osprey at 350 and Eagle at a slightly ridiculous-sounding 440 yards.
I think we'll concentrate on Merlin first!
There's also something quite nice about meeting the person who actually developed the Raptor scheme on the same day I achieved my first qualifying distance towards one of its awards.
Different, slightly strange and brilliant fun
After two ends we stopped for lunch before heading back out for the final two. By then I think I was beginning to understand flight a little better.
It isn't simply target archery without a target. It has its own techniques, equipment, tactics, history and community.
I loved seeing people experimenting with bows and arrows. I loved trying to work out the best shooting angle. I even quite enjoyed the enormous walks across the field to discover where my arrows had landed.
Most of all, I loved how welcoming everybody was.
Being the only junior at an event full of experienced adult archers could have been intimidating, but it wasn't. People talked to me about my technique, were interested in the distance I was achieving, showed me equipment, shared advice and made me feel completely welcome.
I went there wondering how far I could shoot an arrow.
I came home with a gold medal, a new Staffordshire County record waiting to be formally recorded, my first qualifying distance towards a Merlin award, slightly tired legs and feet from walking backwards and forwards across an enormous polo field, and another completely different part of archery that I definitely want to try again.
Unfortunately, there aren't any more flight competitions for us this year, but we'll be looking out for them next year and hopefully the National Flight Championships too.
For now, my first flight distance to beat is 217 yards, 1 foot and 1 inch. Dad's is 253 yards, 2 feet and 3 inches, which means he's currently the McCormack family distance champion. I'm going to let him enjoy that. For now.
Next weekend I'm trying field archery in a forest.
Apparently, this time there are targets. I just have to find them, with trees in the way. 😂
Hope 🏹
