Bigfoot Open Archery event will determine the Top Gun
Black Knight Bowbenders
hosting event in Jackson
By tim morris
Staff Writer

VERONICA YANKOWSKI Bernie Schlesinger takes aim with his recurve bow while practicing for this weekend’s Bigfoot Open Archery Festival in Jackson.

Perrineville Road, Jackson, is a long way from Sherwood Forest. But for this weekend at least, when the Black Knight Bowbenders host the ninth annual Bigfoot Open Archery Festival, it will resemble Robin Hood’s fictional forest.

More than 300 of the best archers, some from as far away as Maine, are expected to compete in Jackson this Saturday and Sunday.

The biggest prize this weekend is that of Top Gun. That honor will go to the top three archers, male and female, who have the highest combined scores for 28 National Field Archery Association and 30 NJAA 3-D targets.

The Top Gun competition is a unique format that combines the skills of hunting and target shooting with 3-D target shooting and field archery.

VERONICA YANKOWSKI Kathleen Popola is another archer who will be competing at this weekend’s Bigfoot Archery Festival in Jackson.

Field archery is much like the sport of golf. Archers have 28 different targets to shoot at ranging from 20 to 80 yards. The shooter knows the distance and just steps up, lines up the target with his or her scope, and releases the arrow.

Of the 28 targets, 14 have all the circles of the target visible while the other 14 have only a white dot.

There is a totally different feel to 3-D target shooting, where the archer is shooting at animal targets (deer, bear, elk, caribou) at a variety of angles from unnamed distances.

"It simulates hunting situations where you’re walking through the woods and you see the target and you don’t know the distance," said Gene Grodzki of the Black Knight Bowbenders. "In archery, knowing the distance is critical. In 3-D shooting, the archers don’t know how far away they are from the target.

"You have to be able to judge distance to be successful," he added. "The target can be anywhere from 20 to 50 yards away."

The Black Knight Bowbenders have 56 different 3-D targets but will use only 30 for the weekend competition, and NFAA rules will be applied.

Archers can compete both days in both field and 3-D, and take their highest scores from either day for their combined score. To keep the scoring fair, the 3-D targets will be changed on Sunday.

Shooters will be competing in three styles of archery: scope and release, pins and release, and fingers. There will be Top Gun champions for the top scorers in all three disciplines.

The open shoot will start at 10 a.m. on Saturday, and archers must turn in their score card by 6 p.m. On Sunday, the hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Registration will take place between 7-10 a.m. both days.

There will be a Bigfoot Skins Game on Sunday at 2 p.m. The top eight scorers overall, regardless of discipline, will take part in the exhibition event. The prize starts at $200 per target with all eight archers competing. Archers will shoot three arrows per target at nine targets. The highest scorer for each target will win $200. If there is a tie, the $200 will carry over to the next target until there is a winner.

There will also be a Last Man Standing exhibition for traditional archers (finger shooting recurve and longbow) at noon Sunday. In this event, there will be 24 shooters at the start who will shoot two ar­rows at five targets with the lowest 12 scorers eliminated. The archers will then proceed to the next five targets where the field is lowered by half again. They con­tinue only one archer remains in the com­petition.

According to Grodzki, who has been an active archer most of his life, archery is very popular in Central Jersey.

"It is a hot pocket here," he said. "This event is to show that archery is alive and well."

Archery has come a long way since the day of Robin Hood. Archers now have the advantage of modern technology, scopes, stabilizers, mechanical releases, etc. But one thing has remained the same, the per­sonal satisfaction of hitting the bull’s eye.

Grodzki compared the thrill of archery to that of golf. It can be just as addictive, he said. Archers look for the same elusive feeling that golfers get when they make the perfect swing on a shot.

"An archer gets the same electric feel­ing in the split second a perfect arrow leaves his bow," he said.

Bernie Schlesinger, who has been shooting for 17 years and is also a member of the Black Knight Bowbenders, agreed that archery is gaining in popularity.

"It’s growing every year," he said.

The reason is because it is a sport for anyone, regardless of age, size and weight, he said.

"You have people between the ages of 6 to 90 shooting," Schlesinger said. "You can be of any physical size."

For more information on this weekend’s Bigfoot Open or the Black Knight Bowbenders, call Grodzki at (732) 462-2278, or visit the club’s Web site at black­knightbowbenders.com.