One Director's Explanation For TSAA Field Archery

by Ron Carmichael, April 2016

There are a number of organizations that hold "Field Archery" as a disciplen and event.  USA Archery has field archery, and as the state-level group that supports USA Archery's mission the Texas State Archery Association holds routine "FITA Field Archery" events.

FITA is the past name of "World Archery", and it has been retained to provide a unique differential name for this flavor of field archery.

Essentially, it is a tournament of 12 different targets, and shot four times to make a tournament. The TSAA prefers to set up 24 different targets in a course, and the archers shoot 24 on day one, and 24 on day two

At national championships, there were will be a course where the targets are set with distances that are NOT MARKED.  The TSAA shoots all MARKED DISTANCES, in meters from the target center.  There is a matrix that shows the distances that each archer will shoot from. The variables are archer age and bow type. Conversely, TSAA Field archery does NOT use gender to set different distances.

TSAA has a history of providing a great number of archers able to compete seriously at the national championships, which also serves to select the TEAM USA members for the world championship.  Much time in the past, the USAA did not fund the team in any appreciable way - this is changing.  First, USAA provided some uniforms, because World Archery requires certain team attire uniformity. Now, even the travel expenses and registration fees (substantial) are funded.

Field archers must stand behind the appropriate color peg in the ground marking the distance, which is different from targt archery, where the archer must straddle the shooting line. The archer can move up to 1 meter to the side or away, if necessary to gain safe footing, but never in front of the peg.

From the 2016 tournament I set up and ran, these were the instructions:

Shooting positions use usually marked with colored spray dots on the ground. There will be a SPIKE (1 foot nail) with the colored distance plates attached. The plates will be FACE-DOWN. So you walk up to your color (Red, Blue, Yellow, or White), and GUESS at what distance you are. THEN, take a peek at the underside of the plate to see the actual distance and set it back face-down, and set your sight accordingly! Please leave the plates face-down for the next archer!
For the marked distances:

  • Adults/Masters/Junior distances are from 10-60 meters. (RED pins)
  • Barebow Senior/Junior and Cadet distances are from 5-50 meters. (BLUE pins)
  • Cadet Barebow and Cub distances are from 5-40 meters.  (YELLOW pins)
  • Cub barebow and Bowman distances are from 5-30 meters (WHITE pins)
  • Yeoman: Any comfortable distance at or inside WHITE bowman pins.

Archers are grouped into foursomes, and they travel in a designated direction, say from Target 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, or 13 to 14 to 15, etc. in order to be safe. As the tournament director, I spend many days using all I know about the sport to lay a course out on the terrain that insures arrows are never shot towards other archers that might be on another part of the course. Walking the course out of order will definitely put archers at risk.

Each archer will shoot 3 arrows per bale to score on a paper face that has values from 0(miss) to 6(tiny x-ring).  Depending on the size of the face and the distance involved, there will be from 1 to 12 target faces on the bale.  Generally, archers are a letter, A, B, C, D, and they must shoot in a particular order and at particular faces.  They are not "timed" like target archery is, but play must be suitably continuous.  It is important that archers carry extra arrows, as it is not uncommon to MISS the target, and either hit a rock, or have the arrow disappear into the undergrowth.

A few thoughts about the layout:

  • I try very hard to make the course FUN, by making it tricky, different, un-level, and integrated with the flora.
  • Archer stands in shade, and the target bale will be in bright sun, or vice-versa.
  • The archer will be at a different altitude than the bale.
  • The space between the target bale and the peg to shoot from will have confusing elements, like trees that lean off-angle, and corridors of trees that impinge on the security of the archer about the arrow flight path.
  • The hillsides are used off'angle. 
  • Simple, level, shots are actually frowned upong: a few are tolerated, but the entire concept of World Archery Field Archery is to create non-boring archery challenges. 

There are explanations on the TSAA Website to explain the official "order of shooting" for the targets, and it displays all the different sizes of faces, and how they appear on the target bale.

There is also a splendid informational document which helps archers to decipher the optical illusions inherent in the sport.