Beginners Series: Part 1 – Rounds

Most of the articles on this site focus on the intricate details of archery data, rules and scoring, but by popular demand, this short series will focus on some of the basics, for archers who are new to the sport.

First up is rounds. A round is just a shorthand way of describing what we’re shooting. For example, imagine how complex it would be if a tournament organiser said –

In this tournament men will shoot 36 arrows at 90m on a 122cm 10-zone face, followed by 36 arrows at 70m on a 122cm 10-zone face, followed by 36 arrows at 50m on an 80cm 10-zone face, followed by 36 arrows at 30m on an 80cm 10-zone face, and women will shoot 36 arrows at 70m on a 122cm 10-zone face, followed by 36 arrows at 60m on a 122cm 10-zone face, followed by 36 arrows at 50m on an 80cm 10-zone face, followed by 36 arrows at 30m on an 80cm 10-zone face.

That’s clearly not an efficient way to describe the format of the event, so instead we use the shorthand of a round, and say

Men and Women will shoot the WA 1440 round.

A round is really just a well-defined code name for a certain combination of a number of arrows shot at a particular set of distances on specific target faces.

In the UK, there are two major types of round.

• Traditional “imperial” rounds that only really exist in the UK, and are shot at distances measured in yards and use a full size (122cm) 5-zone scoring (see below).
• “Metric” rounds, where the round distances use metres and the target faces use 10-zone scoring.

Round Tables

Each of the rounds recognised in the UK is shown in the tables below. These tables list how many dozen arrows are shot at each distance.

Indoor Rounds

Distance	18m	20yd			25yd	25m	30m	Full face	Multi-spot face
Face size (cm)	40cm	40cm	16in	60cm	60cm		80cm
Bray I		2.5						✓	✓
Bray II					2.5			✓	✓
Portsmouth				5				✓	✓
Worcester			5					✓	✓
Stafford							6	✓
Vegas	5								✓
Vegas 300		2.5						✓	✓
WA 18m	5							✓	✓
WA 25m						5		✓	✓
WA Combined	5					5		✓	✓

Round Families

In the round tables, you’ll notice that the the rounds are grouped together into families, where each member of the family has the same general structure but differs in the distances being shot.

If we look at the Imperial York/Hereford family we see 6 rounds, all identical in structure (6 dozen at the longest distance, 4 dozen at the middle distance, and 2 at the shortest distance), but at a range of different distances. This means that there are rounds in the same family that suit archers of different ages and abilities, so that when tournaments or events are run, the whole family of rounds can be offered, and the all the rounds will start, finish and change distances at the same time.

The same is true of the 1440 family of rounds, where all rounds have 3 dozen arrows at the two longer distances on 122cm faces, followed by 3 dozen at each of two shorter distances, on an 80cm face.

Round Aliases

As can be seen in the tables above, some rounds have multiple names. For example, the Hereford and Bristol 1 rounds are identical. These aliases occur due to the overlap between different historical naming conventions for men’s rounds, women’s rounds and junior rounds. These aliases are explained in more detail in here.

Round Names

People often ask where the round names come from. In the case of the Imperial rounds, they are all named after the towns where those rounds were first shot. Here are a few links to articles and books talking about those inaugural shoots. If you have any more links, drop them in the chat below and I’ll add them here.

• First official use of York round by GNAS in 1844
• First Hereford round in 1894

Which round should I shoot?

One of the topics that often comes up is the question of which round a particular person should shoot. It is often assumed that this is specifically stated in the Rules of Shooting, but there are actually no rules which specifically dictate this. We often talk about “age appropriate rounds”, but again, this is not actually defined anywhere in the rules of shooting. However, whilst there are no explicit rules, there some implicit rules and traditions that nudge archers towards certain rounds.

• National records are only eligible to be claimed on certain rounds, governed by gender and age. Many regions, counties and clubs follow the same eligibility requirements, so people tend to shoot the round that would be eligible for a record. This is really what people mean when they talk about “age-appropriate rounds”.
• The top levels of the classification system are only available when shooting certain rounds and distances.
• Some awards (Rose awards, English Crosses, Scottish Thistles for example) are only available when shooting these rounds.

So, whilst any round can be shot be any category of archer – any age, gender or bowstyle, many competitions use those “age appropriate” rounds to define what round different categories of archer should shoot.

World Archery is much more prescriptive about rounds that should be shot in WRS and international competitions. The only WA rounds defined for target archery are the so called “1440 rounds”, which consist of 3 dozen at each of 4 distances, and the “720 rounds” which involve shooting 6 dozen arrows at a single fixed distance. In international competitions, these are the rounds that will be used, and are often used to rank competitors before head-to head knock-out stages.

	Men	Women
Recurve
50+	1440 (70m), WA 60m	1440 (60m), WA 60m
Senior (21-49)	1440 (90m), WA 70m	1440 (70m), WA 70m
U21	1440 (90m), WA 70m	1440 (70m), WA 70m
U18	1440 (70m), WA 60m	1440 (60m), WA 60m
Compound
All ages	WA 50m (80cm face)
Barebow
All ages	WA 50m (122cm face)

In Summary

In summary, a round is just a shorthand code that describes the exact format of an archery event, so that the we can ensure consistency and comparability of scores. There are a lot of different rounds, and most people don’t remember the details of all of them, but tables like the ones shown above make easy to look them up. These same format of tables are used in the official Classification tables too, so it’s a good idea to print the classification table for your category and leave a copy in your kit bag.