Shooter - Email me if you would like info on starting Leagues or Tourny shoots in your area.
Sean - I have been organizing blowgun tournaments off and on in the Evansville area for the past few years. These are indoor tournaments using electronic dart boards. I have compiled a complete set of tournament rules. When I get them typed into the computer again I will email the rules upon request. The interest in tournaments varies from year to year. Tournaments are held during the winter months when the regular dart tournaments are held. Most big money tournaments have been discontinued but pickup tourneys have been known to pop up from time to time. There is usually a small entrance fee used towards cash prizes for the top 3 shooters. If you are interested in a tourney please let me know. If you have a few friends that would like to shoot we can accommodate them as well. I will no longer make the phone calls to get enough shooters together for a tourney. Tourneys don't usually work well unless there are at least a dozen shooters. If you are just interested in shooting against someone please let me know. I am almost always up for a game and will gladly handicap you if necessary.
Jack - The following is opinion only for years of experience: by Jack Lemley, July 20, 1998. This might help some people out there that are having a problem with their blowguns for sighting or aiming their blowgun.
Length and caliber depend on your lung capacity. The longer the blowgun the farther and more accurate the dart will fall. However, the longer the blowgun the more air is needed to propel it through the blowgun. It seems that the best length and caliber for beginners over 12 is a one-piece 4-foot .40 caliber. This will give you good accuracy and you should be able to hit your target regularly starting at 20 to 30 feet away. Over time increase your distance away from your target.
Under 12 years of age seems to do better with a 3-foot .40 caliber with a STEALTH handle starting about 15-feet away. The larger caliber blowguns will do more damage to your target but take much more air to propel the heavier dart accurately.
For myself using the following 4-foot blowguns from 50-feet away:
Aiming your blowgun:
When I teach others to shoot, I instruct
them in the following manner. Hold a pencil about a foot in
front of your face. Keep both eyes open. Focus on the wall
across the room. You should now see two pencils. When you sight the blowgun
you should see two pieces of pipe. Now pick up the blowgun with a dart
properly chambered. Keep both eyes open and put the blowgun to your
mouth. Look past the end of the blowgun. Focus on the target.
You should see two blowguns. Place the target in the middle of the
two blowguns. If one of the blowguns seems higher than the other,
tip your head so they are perfectly horizontal. Now, produce a big blast
of air. To get a large blast, practice spitting without actually spitting
anything but air. See where the dart landed, how far below the target did
it go?
Now make up for the drop of the dart. Use the same amount of air and try again. Most people are hitting within 4-inches of the center of the target from 20 feet after the third dart. When you get outdoors you have to not only make up for elevation, but wind also. Quite often you have to blow a dart just to check conditions.
The other day I was trying to stop a cat from getting into a barn. I blew a plastic stun dart from 150-feet away, there was a 20-25 mph side wind. I watched where the dart landed, made up for the conditions, waited for the 40-mph gust to stop and shot again hitting the walking cat on the rump. The cat didn't howl, just ran (real fast) away.
For my height and lung capacity I prefer a 2 - 4 foot .50 caliber blowgun with 7-inch dart. The .50 caliber dart seems to have a good weight to it. The extra weight will make the dart drop more over distance, but the impact is greater than the .40 caliber.
When you shoot a sling shot, bow and arrow, cross bow, rifle, or pistol, one places the weapon in front of one eye, lines up the sights, and fires. With a blowgun you are placing it under your nose between your eyes. This is why you should keep both eyes open. If you shoot with one eye only the blowgun will not be pointed at the target. The tip may look like it is, but the gun is not straight and the dart will go to one side of the target. You can make up for this by aiming not for the target but aim some number of inches to the right or left of the target to make up for the angle. If you do shoot with one eye, you will have to make corrections for distance, and elevation instead of just elevation. I suppose if you tipped your head sideways enough to put your mouth directly under one eye you can shoot one-eyed, very uncomfortable!
If you have an astigmatism with your eyes (I wear glasses), this will greatly affect your aim. You have two choices. If your darts are always grouped in one spot, not in the center of your target, don't aim for the target. Aim so the darts will hit your target. A friend of mine was having difficulty qualifying on the gun range. All of his rounds were high and left. I told him to start aiming low and left, instead of at the center of the target. At the next meet he qualified. Then he got glasses and had to learn how to shoot again. He had 20/30 vision and a very bad astigmatism.
My 8-year old daughter shoots a 3-foot .40 caliber blowgun with a STEALTH handle. She can shoot a 4-foot even a 5-foot blowgun. With the 3-foot she can handle loading (by the muzzle), and more accurate aiming by herself. She doesn't tire as much and can go out and shoot a hundred or so darts and not be too tired or winded. From 25-feet she can stay within a 4-inch circle. She only shoots about once a month in the summer and once a week in the winter. The other day she was so proud of herself. She put a pop can on the hill beside the house, walked back 25-feet or so and after the third dart, hit it right in the middle. She loads the blowgun by placing the mouthpiece on the ground, placing a dart (cone first) into the muzzle, pushes the dart down past the end, and then blowing lightly (sometimes) to have the dart slide down to the mouthpiece, picks up the gun hand over hand, keeping the tip straight up, then bring the mouthpiece to her mouth keeping the tip pointed straight at the target. Aim and blow.
WARNING, WARNING, WARNING: Blowguns are not toys! They can do major damage to human body parts. Blow a dart at a tree. Go get some pliers to pull it out. Yes, even target darts will stick into cinder blocks. Blowguns, like hand guns, will damage anything you shoot them at. DO NOT point a blowgun at anything you don't want damaged. Always presume it is loaded, never look through it from the wrong end. One guy I knew couldn't remember if he loaded his blowgun. He looked down it from the muzzle end and the dart slid down and stuck into his new plastic glasses. Boy, wasn't he surprised and lucky he didn't loose an eye!
If anyone has any questions or wants to write to me, please feel free to e-mail me at your convenience. I enjoy the sport and like communicating with people.