You take the new archers straight to one of the toughest field courses out here? 
-Experienced field archer from SuSC Müllenborn 

At 30 minutes from Belgium, in Vulkaneifel in Germany, lies the beautiful field archery course of the club SuSC Müllenborn eV. The course contains over 24 targets which are usually divided between World Archery target faces and IFAA target faces. When you arrive at the field, you first take your first climb to the practice field. Here you can shoot all the distances you need, from 10 meters up until 70 meters. Once you move onto the course, there are some really challenging targets, but nothing too crazy when you want to practice those shots!

Each year groups of enthusiastic field archers travel to Müllenborn for training. This year Inside Out Archery Media followed a group of archers and their trainer(s) who are mainly from around Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Usually when the group goes to this area in Vulkaneifel, at the end of April, it rains quite often and moving through the forest is a real challenge. However, in the last weekend of April we managed to get 3 days of sun! On Friday it was still a bit cloudy, after all the rain on Thursday, and there was a fairly cold wind. But on Saturday the sun really started to shine and by Sunday we were shooting without thermal shirts!

Unlike last few years, the group was bigger this year. Along with a handful of archers who already know what field archery is like, a group of fairly new archers came along to see this beautiful side of the sport. One of the archers only started half a year ago with archery, and was already intrigued by the fields! They all loved what field archery has to offer!

What’s so special at Müllenborn?

The first thing you will notice when you go to Vulkaneifel is the vast amount of nature. When you drive through the area, you will see plants all around you. The field course at Müllenborn is no exception. However, it is not what makes the course so amazing. The course is set out on the side of a hill. Because of this, there are many targets where you can practice shooting upwards or downwards. Obviously, there are still quite some targets that don’t have a (big) height difference with the shooting peg, but the shoot angle is the main reason archers will train at this course.

Live streaming

This weekend I had the opportunity to try out some new things. Obviously I brought the photo camera, but this time I also took a GoPro camera with me. My goal this weekend was to do some live streaming of the training. With the GoPro strapped to my chest I went along with the archers. Via my phone I connected the GoPro to stream over 5G. The result: two days of at least 1.5 hours streaming with very good quality! The first day alone there were over 50 people who checked out the stream, which blew my mind! I never thought so many people were interested in field archery. All that I have to keep in mind is that there needs to be a proper internet connection on my phone 🙂