Archery Games & Challenges

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Requirements

Age 7+
Players 8-12
Time 3-5 min rounds
Location Small clear area Large clear area Forest
Energy Low (sitting, standing) Medium (walking, stalking) High (running) Extreme (sprinting)
Materials Bands
Lead by Pathfinder Whiskers Cloak
Guides 1

Story

What is the essence of this game?

Action Call

Compelling questions / challenges to get kids excited to play.

Game

Safety

Scout playing area for hazards: tripping objects, stinging insects, trash, and much more.

Mission

Non-shooting drills

Back muscle drill

Have people pair up. Practice letting the stronger muscles in your back do most of the work as you draw the bow as opposed to your arm muscles. Have a person push your elbow forward while you try to resist to experience this.

Non-shooting games

Stretch band golf

Equipment needed
1. Each person needs a stretch band or long rubber band. To make a stretch band:
2. From a large roll of red resistance tubing, cut a piece that is 40-42 inches in length.
3. Bring the ends together, parallel to each other.
4. Tie an overhand knot approximately 1-2 inches from the ends while holding the ends together.
5. Each team/group needs a tennis ball.
Instructions
1. Divide your total group of archers into groups of 3 to 4 people. Give each group a tennis ball, and have groups move apart from the other groups.
2. One person in each group should throw the tennis ball about 30-60 feet away.
3. Using good archery form, each person in the group should shoot their stretch band towards the tennis ball. Everyone should remember where their band landed so they can find it later.
4. Once everyone in the group has shot, archers walk to where their stretch band landed and pick it up. From that location, each person shoots at the tennis ball again, starting with the person who is furthest away. If an archer who is closer to the tennis ball is obstructing the shot of an archer who is further away, the closer archer should stand aside, well out of the shot line, until the further archer has shot.
5. Repeat this process until everyone has hit the tennis ball with their stretch band.
6. Like golf, archers should keep track of the number of shots it took them to hit the tennis ball.
7. Once everyone has hit the tennis ball, that round is over. A new round begins when the tennis ball is thrown in a different direction.
Notes
1. This game is great field archery practice if you have hills and trees to shoot around.
2. Archers should always ensure no one is in front of them when shooting and that the stretch band is always pointed in safe directions.

Anchor

This activity is designed to help campers get comfortable with proper archery form, plus consistent with their anchoring and follow-through.

Equipment needed:
1. Giant rubber bands: 12-, 14-, and 17-inch rubber bands.
2. Anchor targets: four pedestals. At the top of each pedestal is a piece of plywood, cut into a particular shape, painted a particular color.
3. Shapes: circle, square, triangle, diamond
4. Colors: red, yellow, green, blue
5. Never use real bows (risk of dry firing) or arrows during this activity!
The storyline is: we need to train to be able to aim our bows quickly, accurately, no matter what.
Prep: show everyone what “anchor” position looks like:
1. Bow arm straight out, arm pointed at target.
2. Arrow hand fingers shaped like a hook, gripping the rubber band with index, middle, and ring fingers; tip of middle finger at corner of mouth; elbow straight back from hand/mouth.
Game: When you say, “go for a walk,” everyone just walks around aimlessly. A few seconds later, call “[Object], anchor!” (for instance, “Blue, anchor!”) As fast as they can, everyone should get into “anchor” position, aiming at the designated object, and freeze. Stay frozen until you say “Release,” at which point they should release. Then they should stay frozen until you say “go for a walk” again.
To make it more interesting, add additional commands. Call out an action or position, then specify a target, then call “anchor!” Emphasize that no one should move until you’ve given the complete series of commands and called “anchor!” Ideas:
1. For actions:
  1. Twirl around two (or three, or four) times
  2. Do a somersault
  3. Do three push ups
  4. Do five jumping jacks
  5. Give three people a high five
  6. Close your eyes (just use your memory of where the target is)
2. For positions:
  1. Hold the bow with your OFF hand
  2. Sit cross-legged on the ground
  3. Stand on one leg
  4. Kneel on your right (or left) knee, with the other foot on the ground
  5. Kneel on both knees
  6. Lay completely on your side
  7. Freeze your feet (you have to stop walking and can’t move your feet at all)
To make it more interesting: do everything as above, but make it an elimination game like Captain’s Coming. After you give your series of commands and say “Anchor!” start counting down: “3, 2, 1, freeze!” When you say Freeze, everyone has to freeze wherever they are. If they aren’t at full draw, aimed at the correct target, they’re out. Then say nonsense words: “write!” “swim!”. No one should do anything until you say the correct word: “release!” Then they should stay frozen until you say “go for a walk.” If anyone moves, they’re out.
To make it more interesting: add easily identified “target” objects into the area? Stuffed animals scattered on the ground? Small pedestals with brightly-painted tops? Small pedestals with wood, painted cut-outs of vicious monsters? Dragons, robots, dinosaurs?
Other options: after everyone has aimed, pick up the target and walk around with it so the campers have to move to keep their bow trained on the target. This gets harder when their feet are frozen to the ground! Or have your assistant instructors hide in the woods, with masks on, and jump out screaming. The campers have to immediately react.
These could be two decks of cards: one deck of cards for actions, one deck for targets. Facilitator draws one, two, or three action cards, then a target card, then yells “anchor!”

Individual shooting drills and challenges

Eyes-closed shooting

Shooting with eyes closed takes all the focus off of AIM and allows the archer to focus entirely on FORM.
To do eyes-closed shooting:
1. Have each archer stand 3 yards from a target.
2. Have everyone nock and draw their bow at the same time and aim at the center of their target.
3. Ask everyone to freeze, then close their eyes.
4. Ask everyone to focus on a specific aspect of their form, such as: the position of their bow arm, how their bow hand is holding the grip, the feel of their anchor point; the position of their arrow arm elbow, the feeling of the muscles in their back, the position of their head, their release and follow-through.
5. Count down “3, 2, 1” and say “shoot.” Everyone should shoot.

Split a wand

Lean a piece of split bamboo against a blank target face. Archers should try to split the wand, in other words, drive their arrow through the piece of bamboo. It doesn’t matter where on the wand they hit - their vertical aim is irrelevant. This exercise trains them to just focus on their left/right shooting.

Shoot a “388”

The term “388” refers to “3 arrows shot into an 8-inch wide circle from a distance of 8 yards away.”
Shooting a 388 requires CONSISTENCY. Shooting a single arrow into a small target could be mostly luck. But shooting three arrows into a relatively small target demonstrates that the archer has a level of correct, repeatable shooting form.

Shooting games

Game format: one-versus-one or team-versus-team

Most shooting games can be done either with one person competing against another person, or one team competing against another team.
In either case, most games will require that you place two ground quivers centered in front of the targets about four feet away from each other. Place a shooting line rope on the ground even with the quivers. You may have to place more than three arrows in each quiver to help the game proceed efficiently.
For one versus one, each archer simply stands next to a ground quiver as normal and shoots when appropriate (either on command or alternating, depending on the game).
For team versus team, divide the whole group of archers into two equal teams (consider having everyone “pair and split,” meaning everyone finds a partner of approximately equal skill, then they each go to different teams). Each archer should have a bow that fits them. Teams should wait behind the waiting line. When the facilitator calls “Next!” one archer from each team should walk to a quiver, straddle the shooting line, and load an arrow onto their bow.

Rapid Fire

Set-up: move all the targets fairly close to each other (about 6 inches apart) and pin several different “letter” targets on each one. Consider moving the targets so they all face slightly inward in an arc. The shooting line should be about 7 yards from the targets.
When there are two archers at the ground quivers and they’ve loaded their bows, call out “3, 2, 1, [a specific letter on one of the targets]” As soon as they hear the letter, the archers try to hit the 8” circle of the target you named before the other archer does. If they do so, they earn a point for their team. A miss earns no points. Hitting the target second earns no points. If one archer shoots and misses, the other archer can take their time shooting, because there’s no time pressure.
Once a point has been earned or both archers have shot, call “next!” The archers who just shot should go to the back of their respective lines, and new archers should go to the quivers.
If you’re playing one-versus-one, you don’t have to call “next”; you can just repeat the countdown and letter-calling.
You can either play to a specified number of points (first team to get five points wins) or play for a specified time (8 minutes and whoever has the most points wins).
Variation: rather than only allowing one shot per archer per letter called, you can allow them unlimited shots. First to hit the target gets the point.

Tic-Tac-Toe

Set-up: you need an archery tic-tac-toe board; essentially, a 3-foot by 3-foot piece of cardboard divided by 4 thick black lines into 9 one-foot by one-foot squares. To identify the squares quickly from a distance, it’s helpful to write a letter in each square (from A to I). Attach this archery tic-tac-toe board to a target using four target pins. The distance from the shooting line to the target should be commensurate with the archer’s skill.
Archers alternate shooting at the tic-tac-toe board. The objective is to get three squares in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally).
When an archer lands an arrow within a square, they/their team owns that square.
If your arrow touches a line, it doesn’t count for anything, so avoid lines.
If someone shoots into a claimed square, it has no effect. The square still belongs to the team who first put an arrow into it.
Team members cycle through, alternating shots with the other team, until one team wins or there is a draw.

All Clear

Materials/equipment needed
1. Six foam disks for each target, in three pairs of disks measuring 10”, 8”, and 6” in diameter.
2. You can make discs from old sleeping pads, cut with scissors into circles.
Set-up
1. Choose two targets to be the focus of the game. On each target, pin three disks, one of each size.
2. Put a one ground quiver in front of each target at a reasonable distance and place three arrows in each ground quiver.
Game play
1. The game operates in three-arrow rounds. After three arrows have been shot, they are retrieved, disks are moved, and another round is played until one person/team wins.
2. Archers shoot at the target in front of them, trying to hit the foam discs.
3. At the end of each round, each disk that was hit gets moved to the competitor’s target. Discs must be pinned to targets such that no part of the disc protrudes past the edge of the target.
4. In order to count as a hit, the arrow has to be completely encircled by disk foam. Arrows that touch the side of the disk without completely piercing it don’t count.
5. If an archer hits a disk more than once in a round, the two arrows cancel each other out and the disk is NOT moved at the end of the round.
6. Archers continue shooting rounds of arrows until one archer clears his or her half of the target of disks. The archer with no remaining disks is the winner!

Archery Battleship

Materials/equipment needed
1. 2 “Archery Battleship Grid” pieces of cardboard
2. 2 “Archery Battleship Placement and Scoring” sheets
3. 2 clipboards (for the Archery Battleship Placement and Scoring sheets)
4. 2 pens (so each team can place their battleships, then mark hits and misses)
Set-up
1. Give each team of archers a pen and clipboard with an Archery Battleship Placement and Scoring sheet on it.
2. Each team of archers must place their three ships somewhere on their grid (don’t let your opponent see where!)
Game play
1. Each round involves one archer from each team shooting three arrows at their own target. Archers can alternate shots at their target to keep things orderly.
2. After each shot is fired, the opposing team notes what square the arrow landed in and announces “hit” or “miss” based on which squares their ships secretly occupy.
3. Each team should mark their Archery Battleship Placement and Scoring sheet as hits and misses are announced so they know what squares to shoot at next: “X” for hits and “O” for misses.
4. Optional extra challenge: the archer must call out the square they are aiming for before shooting; if they don’t hit their intended mark, the shot doesn’t count.
5. When an archer “sinks” a ship by putting an arrow in the final square the ship occupies, the opposing team must declare which of their ships has been sunk so the opposing team knows how many spaces it occupied.
6. The first team to sink all of the opposing team’s ships wins!

Making shooting more challenging

At any time, as a game is in progress, you can make the game more interesting or challenging by introducing extra requirements to the shooting. For instance, as two people are playing Tic-Tac-Toe, you could tell them that they are only allowed to shoot from a specific stance, or after completing a certain action.
Stance examples:
1. Kneel on your right (or left) knee, with the other foot on the ground
2. Stand on one leg
3. Kneel on both knees
4. Stand with your toes facing directly away from the target (you have to twist your upper body around towards the target to make the shot. Beware of archers beginning to draw their bows before they’re fully turned)
5. Sit cross-legged on the ground
6. Lay completely on your side
7. Shoot with your head turned away from the target (archers can draw and aim first, for safety reasons, then turn their heads before releasing)
Action examples:
1. Twirl around two (or three, or four) times
2. Do a somersault
3. Do three push ups
4. Do five jumping jacks
5. Give three people a high five

Misc games/ideas

Make a pizza! This game requires the use of a standard 5-color target face. Archers work in teams to get all of the ingredients. White is flour, blue is water, add them together you get dough. Black turns the oven on. Red is sauce and yellow is the cheese.
Spinning target. Target is a two-sided disk or square, painted a different color on each side, hanging from a string. Wind it up, let it start spinning. Archers are supposed to hit ONLY the designated side in a specified amount of time.
Target on a swinging pendulum.
Run and shoot. Both shooters start at a point far away from the shooting line. At “go,” both run to the range, pick up a bow, nock an arrow, and try to shoot as many arrows as they can into a specified target before a set amount of time expires (30 seconds?) To make it more interesting: set the targets at different distances from the shooting line. The close targets have hangers that are worth low points. The far targets are worth more. Try to get the highest score.
Exploding CDs. Stick old CDs to your targets and lay a tarp down underneath them (to make clean-up easier).
Each team must stand in a specified area and attempt to hit all five targets.
Two targets hang from a rope suspended from two pulleys. Each team tries to fill their target so full of arrows that it raises the other target up until it touches the pulley.

Forest archery

Seven stones

Everyone puts seven pebbles in his or her pocket. The group moves through the woods, and everyone takes a turn identifying a target, specifying a) an area that lets you drop a stone, b) an area that doesn’t make you drop or pick up a stone, and c) an area that makes you pick up a stone. Everyone takes the shots, drops or picks up stones as need be, and the group keeps moving. The goal is to get rid of all your stones.

Modify

Variations of the game.

User

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