LionOfNarnia
New Arrival
Site Name: Sport Blowpipe International
Site URL: http://blowpipe.freeforums.org/index.php
Description: See below!
Your Name on the Board: Same as here - LionOfNarnia
Since age & an increasing waistline forced my retirement from team sports after a long & successful career, last year I resurrected an old love, blowpiping.
"An hour to learn, a lifetime to master"
It's simple, it's cheap, it's inclusive, it's environment-friendly and above all else, it's great fun ;D
(Especially the way WE* do it 😉)
UNFORTUNATELY in some parts of the so-called civilised world, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, UK & parts of the USA (Ca & Ma), for reasons that no-one can make sense of, the ancient & noble art of blowing stuff through a tube has been made illegal. 🙁
So many of you can't try it out for yourselves without breaking the law, and a pretty serious law too.
Which is a damned shame because in the rest of the world it's an Internationally recognised sport which, led by the Japanese, is working toward Olympic status.
Here in Holland, it's called a "Blaaspijp"; In Germany "Blasrohr"; in France "Sarbacane"; in Japan "Fukiyado" (seriously!) and the Yanks, predictably, prefer the term "blowgun". 😉
There are reckoned to be upwards of 20,000 active target shooters in Japan, where it is considered to be almost a martial art, having evolved from the 'Ninja Assassin' tradition. The Japanese were the first to codify a set of rules for target blowpipe competitions and these are still the basis from which the various National Associations evolve systems more suited to their own cultural traditions.
In the 1950s' & 60s' in the USA, a company called 'Jivaro' (named after an Amazonian tribe, I believe) started running adverts in survivalist-type magazines for small-calibre, super-cheap blowpipe sets for the hunting of birds & rodents. It was even claimed that a 35 lb Ant-Eater could be felled! Thousands were sold and the pipe became part of the new 'frontier spirit' amongst the 'outdoor set'.
Due to the demands of the huntsmen for more robust, more powerful 'pipes, since the 1980s' a wide range of lengths, calibres & types has become commercially available at a reasonable price. This has been of great benefit to the target fraternity too, as a good pipe is a good pipe, for any purpose!
Over the last couple of decades an increasing gap has developed between the hunters & the targetmen (although there is still some degree of overlap) and with the growth of the Internet, the sport has become much more organised.
A year ago, I was oblivious to all this.
As both a 'first payday treat' & as 'retail therapy' following the end of a relationship, I'd bought a short (36") .40 cal pipe for about €15 from the same shop near the Dam Square where I'd bought one 7 years earlier. Little more than a toy really, not much better than a 'Jivaro', but quite useable in a small living-room.
During a 'Friday Night Gathering' at my place, it might even have been my birthday bash, I suggested we had a quick competition, just for the 'eck of it.
I think about 4 or 5 of us took part that night, it's a bit hazy, we were well beered-up before we started and by the end hardly anyone could hit a (hand-drawn!) target at 15 feet.
Nevertheless, a good time was had by all and we agreed to hold another competition in a fortnights' time.
So yeah, since then we've got together and 'blown the tube' every 2nd Friday except New Years Eve. From such humble beginnings we've come a long way in a short time.
By the 3rd or 4th shoot, we moved outdoors onto the terrace & started shooting at longer range. Soon after that I bought a much bigger pipe, a 48" long .625 calibre 'Professional' model which we all found a vast improvement over the .40 in every way.
We were making our own rules up as we went along at this stage! - but at least we'd found and downloaded a 'proper' target.
By the end of summer we were starting to call ourselves a club, the Zaanse BlowPipe Club (ZBPC) & 3 other members had bought their own pipes. We were shooting at 12.5 or 15 meters (depending on whether there were 'rookies' present), 10 darts per round, 5 rounds per match and turnout averaged around 10 people, shooters & 'observers'.
The onset of winter not only saw us move to a 9 M range in the dowstairs living room but also our emergence onto the international stage. We started looking at what the rest of the world was doing, tried it out, then mostly did what felt right for us anyway. For example, IFA (Japanese/International) rules specifies no smoking or alcohol during matches, we decided "No way, this is Holland" so we have upset the establishment by promoting what they describe as a 'bowling alley' mentality to the sport. We don't care, we're having FUN!
The last few months has also seen several of us begin to compete in International "Living Room Matches". This is an idea being developed by our German friends to enable people who are geographically seperated to compete against each other in real-time via a browser-based interface. It's a lot more 'intense' tha club night matches, but I've found that this makes for better scoring.
We're now looking forward to our 2nd outdoor season, although I have quite a bit of work to do to return the range to shootable condition after the ravages of winter. Hopefully by the end of next Month conditions will allow late-evening shooting again.
The link in my sig goes to the new forum dedicated to the Global BlowPipe fraternity. All competition announcements & results can be found there, as well as loadz of information for rookies & masters alike, to help people get more out of this marvelous sport.
Site URL: http://blowpipe.freeforums.org/index.php
Description: See below!
Your Name on the Board: Same as here - LionOfNarnia
Since age & an increasing waistline forced my retirement from team sports after a long & successful career, last year I resurrected an old love, blowpiping.
"An hour to learn, a lifetime to master"
It's simple, it's cheap, it's inclusive, it's environment-friendly and above all else, it's great fun ;D
(Especially the way WE* do it 😉)
UNFORTUNATELY in some parts of the so-called civilised world, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, UK & parts of the USA (Ca & Ma), for reasons that no-one can make sense of, the ancient & noble art of blowing stuff through a tube has been made illegal. 🙁
So many of you can't try it out for yourselves without breaking the law, and a pretty serious law too.
Which is a damned shame because in the rest of the world it's an Internationally recognised sport which, led by the Japanese, is working toward Olympic status.
Here in Holland, it's called a "Blaaspijp"; In Germany "Blasrohr"; in France "Sarbacane"; in Japan "Fukiyado" (seriously!) and the Yanks, predictably, prefer the term "blowgun". 😉
There are reckoned to be upwards of 20,000 active target shooters in Japan, where it is considered to be almost a martial art, having evolved from the 'Ninja Assassin' tradition. The Japanese were the first to codify a set of rules for target blowpipe competitions and these are still the basis from which the various National Associations evolve systems more suited to their own cultural traditions.
In the 1950s' & 60s' in the USA, a company called 'Jivaro' (named after an Amazonian tribe, I believe) started running adverts in survivalist-type magazines for small-calibre, super-cheap blowpipe sets for the hunting of birds & rodents. It was even claimed that a 35 lb Ant-Eater could be felled! Thousands were sold and the pipe became part of the new 'frontier spirit' amongst the 'outdoor set'.
Due to the demands of the huntsmen for more robust, more powerful 'pipes, since the 1980s' a wide range of lengths, calibres & types has become commercially available at a reasonable price. This has been of great benefit to the target fraternity too, as a good pipe is a good pipe, for any purpose!
Over the last couple of decades an increasing gap has developed between the hunters & the targetmen (although there is still some degree of overlap) and with the growth of the Internet, the sport has become much more organised.
A year ago, I was oblivious to all this.
As both a 'first payday treat' & as 'retail therapy' following the end of a relationship, I'd bought a short (36") .40 cal pipe for about €15 from the same shop near the Dam Square where I'd bought one 7 years earlier. Little more than a toy really, not much better than a 'Jivaro', but quite useable in a small living-room.
During a 'Friday Night Gathering' at my place, it might even have been my birthday bash, I suggested we had a quick competition, just for the 'eck of it.
I think about 4 or 5 of us took part that night, it's a bit hazy, we were well beered-up before we started and by the end hardly anyone could hit a (hand-drawn!) target at 15 feet.
Nevertheless, a good time was had by all and we agreed to hold another competition in a fortnights' time.
So yeah, since then we've got together and 'blown the tube' every 2nd Friday except New Years Eve. From such humble beginnings we've come a long way in a short time.
By the 3rd or 4th shoot, we moved outdoors onto the terrace & started shooting at longer range. Soon after that I bought a much bigger pipe, a 48" long .625 calibre 'Professional' model which we all found a vast improvement over the .40 in every way.
We were making our own rules up as we went along at this stage! - but at least we'd found and downloaded a 'proper' target.
By the end of summer we were starting to call ourselves a club, the Zaanse BlowPipe Club (ZBPC) & 3 other members had bought their own pipes. We were shooting at 12.5 or 15 meters (depending on whether there were 'rookies' present), 10 darts per round, 5 rounds per match and turnout averaged around 10 people, shooters & 'observers'.
The onset of winter not only saw us move to a 9 M range in the dowstairs living room but also our emergence onto the international stage. We started looking at what the rest of the world was doing, tried it out, then mostly did what felt right for us anyway. For example, IFA (Japanese/International) rules specifies no smoking or alcohol during matches, we decided "No way, this is Holland" so we have upset the establishment by promoting what they describe as a 'bowling alley' mentality to the sport. We don't care, we're having FUN!
The last few months has also seen several of us begin to compete in International "Living Room Matches". This is an idea being developed by our German friends to enable people who are geographically seperated to compete against each other in real-time via a browser-based interface. It's a lot more 'intense' tha club night matches, but I've found that this makes for better scoring.
We're now looking forward to our 2nd outdoor season, although I have quite a bit of work to do to return the range to shootable condition after the ravages of winter. Hopefully by the end of next Month conditions will allow late-evening shooting again.
The link in my sig goes to the new forum dedicated to the Global BlowPipe fraternity. All competition announcements & results can be found there, as well as loadz of information for rookies & masters alike, to help people get more out of this marvelous sport.
