This article marks a milestone: an entire year of articles from THLord Deryk Archer on archery targets. Thanks for helping make archery more fun, Deryk!

This month we’ll make a Castle Invader. For those of you who missed it, I had one at Their Majesties’ castle for the Archery Muster on April 10th, and we had a wonderful time with it.

Basically, you build a body out of pool noodles. This makes the body very arrow-friendly.

Cover the body with any old clothes you have just lying around. I used long johns and an old beat-up pair of sweat pants. The hands are gloves stuffed with cotton to fill out the fingers, again making the target very arrow-friendly.

Go back to my very first article and use the instructions to duct tape the styrofoam head, then attach it to the body with more duct tape.

The feet came from the dollar store at Halloween.

I got very lucky with the ladder: I found wood-grain colored duct tape and used it to cover pool noodles taped together to form a ladder. I cut a piece of heavy cardboard into a shield, which was attached to his left arm.

Next, hang the whole thing from a very heavy cardboard tube. We tied a heavy-duty rope the top to the castle roof, slid the cardboard tube onto the rope at the bottom, and then spiked that end of the rope to the ground. We ran a second, lighter rope next to the first rope from the castle parapet down to the ground and attached it to the cardboard tube. Then we slowly pulled the target up using the rope attached to the cardboard tube while archers shot at it. The effect was very realistic.

For scoring, hitting the shield or the ladder does not count. Since the whole target is very arrow friendly, blow-throughs also do not count; your arrow must stick in the man.

This month’s safety tip: summer is coming, so when you’re out there shooting, stay hydrated.

In service,

THLord Deryk Archer

All photos by THLord Deryk.