The Student Recreation and Wellness Center’s Adventure Center will have its first archery basics class and archery day trip this spring.

The archery clinic will be held April 9 from 8 to 10 p.m. and costs $15 for students and $20 for nonmembers. The class will go over the basics of archery, such as the parts of the bow and arrow, the nine steps of shooting, the archery range and safety.

There are four basic safety rules for archery, said Dave Herpy, outdoor adventure and camp coordinator. First, always point the arrow in a safe direction. Second, know the target and beyond. Third, do not point at anything that you do not want to kill. Fourth, only “nock” the bow — which is placing the arrow in the bow — when you are ready to shoot. Another extremely important safety rule is to never dry fire the bow.

“If there is no arrow on the string, and you let the string go, the string and the limb can actually snap in your face, and people have gotten seriously hurt and killed,” Herpy said.

The archery adventure trip is April 12 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The cost of the trip is $30 for students and $40 for any nonmembers. When a person signs up for the adventure trip, they automatically are signed up for the class, which is included in the trip cost.

Participants will travel to Berlin Lake Wildlife Area in Deerfield. The wildlife area has a public archery range with open targets at different distances and a “closed” archery range in which participants must shoot arrows through trees and bushes.

Berlin Lake Wildlife Area also has an archery field course. Participants make their way through a quarter-mile loop with nine stations of narrow shooting lanes.

“Three of the stations have a 3-foot elevated platform that you shoot from,” Herpy said. “And then the last station, station number nine, has a 20-foot platform that you shoot from.”

Archery is a “lifetime” activity, Herpy said, because people of all ages practice it.

“There is a nice facility not too far from campus, so we’ve got a nice place to go to do archery,” Herpy said. “We’ve got the equipment, so let’s do it.”

Contact Student Recreation and Wellness Center reporter Pamela Crimbchin at [email protected].