For most target shooters consistently hitting a clay target flying at near 60 mph with the foot-wide coverage of a shotgunís pattern is an accomplishment. For a Stafford County hunter that is mere childís play.
Heath Getty, St. John, is a target shooter extraordinaire. While most shoot the six-inch diameter clay disks, (pigeons) with a shotgun, or maybe a rifle for the real elite shooters, Getty is shattering the flying targets with a bow and arrow.
The representative from Hoyt, (bow manufacturer) said she had heard of a few people shooting them with somebody tossing them in the air, but she had never heard of anybody doing it from a (mechanical) thrower Getty said.
When the targets are thrown by hand they are generally tossed straight up exposing the full circumference of the target. When they are ìtossedî with an electronic thrower they fly horizontally exposing an inch high target.
Getty started out shooting stationary targets with a slingshot, progressing to an air rifle and then a .22-caliber rifle. When the stationary targets became too easy he started tossing progressively smaller items into the air. His personal best is hitting a shell casing from a .22 bullet, - a brass cylinder approximately 1 inch long by ?-inch wide. He can routinely knock a golf ball or coin out of the air with the rifle.
The Kanza Co-op employee said he prefers hunting and target shooting with his compound bow. The bow is made of lightweight materials with pulleys that propel the arrows at a greater speed than a traditional bow, and once the break-over point is achieved they are easier to hold a cocked arrow in the ready position.
Getty said he has about $1,000 in his bow and accessories. His mother, Diane, told reporters the whole family is into hunting and shooting, but her son has taken it to another level.
Heís always spent a lot of time getting good at it,î she said. ìI canít tell you how many bands I had to buy for slingshots, and how many BB guns he wore out.î
The 24-year-old archer said he has been shooting most of his life. He hopes the practice and his obvious talent for the sport will someday land him a job with one of the bow companies as an exhibition shooter. In the mean time he hopes, it might at least lead to some sponsorship for arrows, targets, and bow parts. His accuracy, while impressive, can be hard on equipment. Four times he has shot one arrow into the back of another splitting the shank. Getty calls it the Robin Hood shot.
The arrows he uses for aerial shooting are a made with larger flights, (feathers) which slows them down some in flight. His first attempt at aerial targets was shooting a plate-sized foam disc thrown in the air by hand. When that became too easy he switched to the smaller clay targets, but still did not find them much of a challenge after a few tries. The flights were too predictable, and too much of the target was exposed.
With a professional target thrower the clay pigeons travel at near 60 mph and the trajectory is susceptible to the target, wind and thrower settings. The targets are about an inch thick by four inches long when flying from the thrower.
Currently Getty leaves the thrower in stationary mode so all the targets follow a somewhat similar path. Once he has mastered that he plans to put it in the oscillating mode where the targets are pitched from different angles and different directions.
His current record is seven hits in a row. While a shotgun has hundreds of small pellets to break the target, Gettyís arrows have only a single point, and the strike has to be almost perfect to shatter the clay. ìYou can sometimes see the arrow chip the edge of the target, or just brush it and change the flight pattern, but not break it,î he said.
Sunday night he broke several targets during warm-up before shattering five in a row during his practice session, but he is looking for even tougher targets. ìI would like to be able to hit a golf ball in-flight,î he said.
With friend Tim Easley chipping plastic golf balls into the air, Getty began his new quest. By the end of Sundayís session his arrow found the small flying target.
Pratt, Kan. —
