Bob Soutar Trophy

The Bob Soutar trophy is awarded each year to the archer that has shown the greated improvement in their archery over the year. We do this by looking at the improvement in your handicap over the year, so you need to shoot some rounds and send your scores to the records officer if you want to be in with a chance of winning.

We are not going to count 252 awards towards your scores as we can’t calculate a handicap from those, but there are all sorts of official AGB rounds you can shoot. If you shoot an AGB-recognised round, it means you also have the chance to claim a recognized classification – complete with badge! Handicaps are calculated to give you a standard indication of progress regardless of the round you shoot.

For those of you just starting out, perhaps the easiest way to get your first classification score (and hence your handicap) is to shoot one of the Metric 122 rounds. These rounds of six-dozen arrows (so 12 ends of six arrows) are shot at a normal 122cm target at either 30, 40 or 50 metres (not yards). This is like shooting two 252s back-to-back.

If you shoot two of these rounds and get a high enough score both times, you will be able to claim yourself a 3rd class, 2nd Class or even 1st Class Archer classification and associated badge. The score you need for a classification depends on your age, gender and bow type. For Recurve, Barebow and Longbow, classifications are actually easier than a 252 – especially as we use metric scoring (all the numbers) rather than imperial scoring (9,7,5,3,1 only).

Enter your details here and we will show you what you need to score to get your classification when shooting these particular rounds:

Archer classifications scores for Metric 122-30, 40 & 50 rounds



You can either fill in a score sheet, get it witnessed and send a photo of it to the records officer (records@devizes-bowmen.co.uk) or you can use a scoring app and mail the score from the app to the records officer, CC’ing your witness.

You can of course shoot other types of rounds and claim your classifications. If you acheive a 1st Class Archer classification, you can start working on your ‘Bowmen’ classification. To do this though, you need to shoot more total arrows (18 dozen rather than 12) and while you can get a Bowmen classification at the club, it needs to be shot under controlled competion conditions, with at least four of you shooting with a range captain monitoring. All the details on classifications and how they work can be found here and the scores for all the different rounds and bow types can be found here

good luck!