Is having your nails recently done a valid excuse to get out of archery?
-Anon child of Aphrodite
Hey, Aphro kid!
I’d argue that no, having your nails done is not a valid excuse, and I’ll tell you why.
Archery, particularly the target shooting we do at camp, is all about form.
We mostly teach Olympic style shooting before getting into the nitty gritty field stuff, where form mostly goes out the window.
There are several different ways to draw your bow, most of which involve how you hold the string. Here's a good diagram of a few.
The common draw techniques we teach are the Mediterranean draw, aka split fingers, or the three under draw.
If you look closely, you can see that when the techniques are executed properly, they would never even tough your nails! If you're damaging your nails while shooting, then you need to adjust your form.
Additionally, there are several tools that you can use, as well.
There are a variety of different clip releases, like these.
They're not really recommended, though, if you're in battle, because it significantly reduces your draw speed in situation where a fraction of a second can be the difference between life and death.
There's also these silicon finger tabs.
However, they're not going to do much other than preventing calluses on your fingers. They may help reduce the risk of catching a nail by placing a little more distance between your finger and the string. Ultimately, they will still pose some risk, because you'd have to take more time to accurately knock your arrow.
The only who can sometimes get out of archery when he’s not hurt is Percy Jackson. But that’s because when he tries to do archery, he’s so bad that he’s a danger to himself and everyone around without even trying. His first time trying, his arrow somehow ended up in Chiron's tail. Chiron was standing behind Percy! It's literally impossible for anyone else to be that bad.
Anyways, basically, as long as you keep your nails within a reasonable length (maybe 5-ish millimeters?) and you practice good technique, you should have no issues with damaging your nails.
I'll definitely write an actual Guide page about doing archery in the future! It's one of my favorite camp activities, so I'm totally gonna put a lot of research into it! And I'll include tips from some others, like the Apollo kids!
Sorry to disappoint you!
–Kally
