Knowing he was one shot away from perfection, Spencer Schouwenburg was shaking as he drew his bow string back and tried to line up the pin of his sight.
Eighteen metres away, the previous two arrows he shot were stuck in the target dead-centre in the smallest ring of gold. He let go of his string and the arrow followed the same path and stuck right where he wanted it to go.
He had his perfect round, the elusive 300 score the 17-year-old Schouwenburg has been chasing ever since he first stepped onto the archery range in competition. His perfect ending locked up the cadet compound category at the Spruce Capital 1200 indoor tournament Nov. 20 at the Silvertip Archers indoor range at the Austin Road elementary school gym.
"I was a little bit nervous on the last shot but happy after," said Schouwenburg, who nailed his first non-tournament perfect round three years ago at Silvertip fun shoot.
"It's been my goal since Day 1. The very last shot, I just didn't want to let it go. My pin for my sight was bouncing all around the target. Other than that, every other shot was completely relaxed, normal shooting. My last three shots weren't even touching the rings, they were all dead-centre."
The two-day competition, the first indoor meet of the season, consisted of two rounds of 300 each day. He opened with a 297, then hit 298 and 298 again before his 300 round.
Schouwenburg, a student in the College of New Caledonia's auto body mechanic program, has been averaging 596 out of 600 in indoor shoots and twice flirted with perfection last year, posting rounds of 299 and 298. The time he hit 299, he missed the gold 10-ring by one millimetre.
Tony Procter, another Prince George archer who competed in the 2015 Canada Winter Games, is the only other local archer to record a perfect round in the past couple years.
Schouwenburg's 18-year-old sister Mya represented B.C. in the 2015 Games as well. Schouwenburg said watching her shoot in that event has inspired him to follow suit and try to nail down a provincial team spot for the 2019 Canada Winter Games in Red Deer.
"That's what I'm aiming for," he said.
Schouwenburg won both the indoor and outdoor provincial championships in 2016, both in Maple Ridge. He won the indoor title in April with 591 points. He plans to enter the Vegas Shoot in Las Vegas, Feb. 10-12. That would be his third-straight appearance at the indoor event, which draws more than 5,000 archers each year.
"I teaches you how to deal with the pressure and have thousands of people watching you (in contrast to) just 20 people watching at one of the local tournaments," he said.
Schouwenburg showed an affinity for archery right away in his first year and didn't spend long shooting at 60-centimetre targets before his coaches at Silver Tip Archers switched him to the more difficult 40 cm targets. His scores have continued to climb every year and he now averages between 595 and 596 (out of a possible 600) in two indoor rounds.
He competes outdoors in the warmer-weather months in flat-field target events and at 3-D shoots. He sometimes hunts rabbits and grouse with his bow and says he'll likely try hunting for bear in the spring and might go on a cougar hunt in January. His outdoor activities sharpen his skills for when he goes indoors to take aim at targets.
"Outdoors, you're shooting 50 metres all the time, and then once you go back indoors you're shooting 18 metres and it makes your depth perception seem a lot shorter and you're more relaxed when you're shooting it," he said. "It's a different game outdoors."
Schouwenburg hopes to represent his home province in the outdoor national championships in Quebec next September.
His college program at CNC is intense, "a lot different from high school," said Schouwenburg, who graduated in June from Duchess Park secondary school. He says archery helps him relax and set aside the more stressful aspects of his life.
"It's like a mentality check for me - it just puts me into the right mindset because when you're shooting you're only thinking about shooting, nothing else," he said.
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