As we previously commented on our webpage, www.dirttoysmag.com, it doesn't take much (if anything, really) to get us excited about off-roading. So when we're offered the added fun of shooting bows and arrows and riding, well, we were all over it.
We were invited in mid-April to ride Kawasaki's Teryx4 along a portion of the excellent Hatfield-McCoy Trail system in West Virginia (see our feature on this riding area elsewhere in this issue) and then try our hand at shooting bows and arrows later in the afternoon.
It was kind of like our own personal biathlon, except with bows and arrows and side-by-sides. It was a lot of fun. The weather was perfect, the Kawi vehicles performed flawlessly and we managed to hit a few bull's eyes.
We rode the RockHouse trail for a little more than half of the day before meeting up with Jeremy Eldredge and Kevin Wilkey from Hoyt Archery (http://www.hoyt.com/) for a brief introduction to their lineup of equipment and then taking aim at several different targets. It was obvious from the display of equipment that Hoyt provided for our afternoon of shooting that bows have come a long way from our days of making a bow out of a willow branch and putting a piece of string on it. Archery is definitely high tech nowadays. And incredibly fun.
Even the targets are high tech. Gabriel Perkins from Delta McKenzie Targets (http://dmtargets.com/) explained about the targets we were aiming at that day, which included traditional bull's eye targets to your basic deer target to a wild boar to our personal favorite, the Undead Fred Zombie Target. Even the folks (Kyle Pelletier and Kristy Barnes) from Realtree (you know, the camo guys) (http://www.realtree.com/) were there showing off their new pattern.
The day ended all too soon. However, we look forward to being able to ride and shoot again soon.
