This is part of our 100 Things in 2015 challenge. Here’s the full list.

The kids participate in Trackers Earth, which among other awesome things, teaches archery lessons. We thought it was high time we shot some things as a family.

Trackers has some excellent instructors, so we all got a quick lesson on how to hold the bow, the parts of an arrow, and so on. Before 5 minutes were up, we were firing downrange.

The range had an elaborate set of targets, including a swinging bag, and we shared it with a bunch of others, most of whom were more experienced archers than us. We stuck to our little four targets, and hit them about half of the time.

It didn’t take long for all of us to show improvement. I don’t think any one of us had shot more than 20 arrows in our lifetimes, so there really was no way to get worse.

This was a lot of fun, and you can’t beat the price – $30 for the whole family, for a lesson and open range time afterwards, bows and arrows included. Trackers also teaches blacksmithing (which was happening just on the other side of the wooden partition), wilderness survival, and many other things, and we can’t say enough good things about them. Highly recommended.