[Ansteorra-archery] Definition of Royal Huntsman

Doug Copley doug.copley at gmail.com
Wed Nov 18 05:33:12 PST 2009


One thing that might help in these discussions is a better definition of 
what is the Royal Huntsman.

I have seen several people express their opinion of what the position is 
and how they view it but it would help if there was a better description 
that was posted so that the entire Kingdom would have the same 
understanding.

In my mind, part of the problem is that we have 3 different groups that 
are or can be involved in this and all of this going back-and-forth and 
saying that it may, might, could, possibly, include certain types of 
shooting is actually bad for the tourney, the title, and the archery 
community. I think it makes us look disorganized, leaderless, and 
fragmented, all of which is bad.

The 3 groups are:
1. Target archers that ONLY do target archery. I believe that this is 
the largest group.
2. Combat archers that ONLY do combat archery. I believe that this is 
the smallest group.
3. Archers that do BOTH combat and target archery. I believe that this 
group is right in the middle as far as numbers.

If the objective is to find a combat archer to go to war with the King & 
Queen then the Tourney should be a CA Tourney. If the objective is to 
find the best TA then it should be a TA Tourney. If the objective is a 
combination then it should be a CA / TA Tourney and it should be 
announced that it will be and if only one person shows up with all of 
the gear and is able to compete in all of it they win.

If we look at the other martial skills champions they may have some 
things that vary and formats that might change slightly but they also 
have a number of things that are ALWAYS included and it is known that 
they must have certain items in order to compete. We should organize 
ourselves and do the same thing.

We should focus on skill type shooting of various distances, and specify 
what is required to compete for Royal Huntsman. Do we want to say that 
only TA or only CA is required or that both are required, what about 
shooting period and requiring that you must shoot longbow, or maybe 
longbow and crossbow and combat! (No, I am not kidding, for Chivalric 
they must fight with multiple weapons in order to compete so there is 
precedence).

If the title is for the top Kingdom archer of all forms archery and that 
they are supposed to go to war with the King & Queen and they are 
supposed to fill the Royal table with meat then we should require that 
to compete for the title you MUST compete with multiple forms of archery 
and bows. If the title is different (Huntsman = Hunter = TA ONLY) then 
we need to base the tourney on what the definition is.

My apologies for this being so long but I believe that this is important 
to the entire archery community and should be addressed. I have looked 
for a clear concise description that would settle the discussion but was 
unable to find one.

When responding, please do not use "Well normally we have included ...", 
we need to focus not on what was done in the past but what should be 
done and what we want to do in the future, where do we want this to be 
in 5 years, what do we want to be accomplished in 3 years, how can we 
make this grow?

YIS,
Vincenti da Murano



More information about the Ansteorra-archery mailing list