Nhlism

Vegas Shoot 2025

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I attended my 3rd indoor archery competition in Vegas. In this post I want to describe the entire process of competition, scoring and how prizes are done.

The Vegas Shoot takes place over 3 days. During each day, you shoot 10 rounds of 3 arrows each, meaning 30 arrows a day, 90 arrows in total. The distance is 20 yards which is around 18 meters. You have a 2 minute time limit for each round. There are also two practice rounds here you can shoot unlimited arrows with the same time limit.

After all archers shoot, they walk to the bale together and score it. There is a tablet and a paper clip board for two archers, and one archer calls out the score. In case of disagreements or ambiguity we can call on a judge to make a call.

Targets

Each bale has 4 targets (2 top, 2 bottom), they are usually picked first-come-first-serve by the archers. After 5 rounds, the top and bottom targets get swapped. There are two equivalent target faces on a 40x40 cm paper. Juniors get to shoot a bigger, 60x60 target at the same distance.

single_spot The single target has X, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. X also has value 10, but is counted separately as tie breakers.

3_spot The three spot target has.. 3 spots with X, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. You need to hit each of them (if you put 2 arrows in 1 spot, it counts as a miss.). It is usually better when you are very consistent to avoid destroying your arrows. I am however not there yet and chose 1 spot.

Competition format

There are multiple archery styles (olympic recurve, barebow, compound) and two categories, championship and flights.

Championship

Everyone is put in a single group and just shoots thrice and gets a final ranking. Top 8 get money, rest gets nothing.

Flights

For flights, it’s a bit more strategic. You get assigned to a 4 man group for the first 2 days. Afterwards, everyone is ranked by the 2 day total and put in groups of 32 people, flights. On the third day, you compete for ranking within the flight. The best 8 in a flight win money (with #1 in flight 1 winning $2000). This makes it more fair as you can win money in any skill range as long as you win in your assigned group.

There is also a “strategy” called sandbagging to shoot worse during the first 2 days before dominating on the last one, but it never makes financial and personal sense.

Walkthrough

I want to describe my moment to moment thoughts in 2 minute segments. Since there are just 10 rounds of 2 minutes each (well, 4 minutes since we need to shoot top and bottom target), there are very little decisions you can take but people do constant adjustments on the fly to stay. I wonder if we can see any trends within the scoring patterns or if it's just random noise.

Day 1

I shot late afternoon which is usually good because I am warmed up. I start on bottom target which means I shoot first. My training average is 257 and my personal best is 264. This roughly means most of my shots are in yellow and red. I think of it as: Usually, 7 out of 10 rounds end up with a 26 and 3 remaining rounds end with 25 with some variance.

Round 1

X 9 9, 28 total Starting off strong, I have some buffer to reach my target of 270/300 for vegas. I only did 264 during training but last year I had a 15 point increase over my training average and I was hoping to replicate this miracle.

Round 2

10 7 6, 23 total Well this humbled me immediately. I knew I would not reach my target right at this point. I usually avoid the blue (6) during training which was concerning. I could tell I shot too fast and did not use the 2 minutes well

Round 3

9 9 8, 26 total This is my training average so I was feeling pretty confident and the arrows were all aligned together so my shot process was consistent enough

Round 4

9 8 6, 24 total Two blues in a day is really bad. I noticed entire group is slowly moving up over time. I can either adjust my sight up now or hope I revert to my practice rounds where were perfectly in the middle. Is it a form issue that is consistent, or will it go away next round? I chose to not change anything.

Round 5

8, 8, 8, 24 total This round was really spread out but centered around the right height, so I think I made the right call not to touch my sight. The I was annoyed at the archer next to me who bumped into my stabilizer with his side rods. I reset my stance and shot again but still did not feel in the zone

Round 6

X 8 8, 26 total I usually get nervous when we change top to bottom target because you need to do adjustments. Even though it is the exact same distance, the alignment shifts ever so slightly. Since there is no practice round when you switch, you just gotta pray you are consistent enough so the difference is minor. It worked out pretty fine to me.

Round 7

10, 9, 9, 28 total This was close to perfect and I really wanted to maintain this until the end.

Round 8

X 9 7, 26 total Round 8 is actually when I started feeling fatigue. I know my last arrows tend to drop down because my front arm lowers after the shot. I try to shoot the first two arrows within the first minute, and then wait 30 seconds before shooting the last one.

Round 9

X 9 8, 27 total A slight improvement but same pattern. I am unlikely to push trough this

Round 10

9 7 6, 22 total My worst shot yet and third blue. I am a bit bitter (the blues hurt more than the total score), but I got 253 in total so basically my training average over past month and I can't complain at all. I can tell I am tired

Day 2

In short, I shot at or above my average for every single round except the 5th one, where the arrow slipped from my arrow rest and I completely missed. I keep thinking if it was avoidable or not, because I noticed it drop just when I released it. Maybe I could have let down and try again? Maybe not. I definitely agonized over it all day. 43E24A0C-97A9-4024-B481-C9E31158B433

I ended with 255/300. Actually better than last day even with a completely missed arrow! This was my hail mary attempt to get 270 but even if that missed arrow hit bullseye I would be 5 points short

Day 3

On my last day, I got assigned a flight 8. I was at the bottom of the flight (32th out of 32) so it was unlikely I would propel myself to top 8 to win any money. If I shot any worse I would be top of flight 9 with a much higher chance of money. My eventual goal is to be in flight 3-4 before quitting vegas forever.

My final shoot was a mixture of disappointments (2 sixes!) but also pretty crazy shots like the triple 10 and X 10 9. I hit 261, again beating my previous days but not sufficient enough to get a new keychain. Last year, my personal best was 263 and the other two were 240. This year I was more consistent but also more strict on myself.