Personal Narrative Essay: The Bowfishing Tournament

The summer of 2017 is the best summer that I have ever had. Since the last two summers were not the greatest, due to the events that happened, this summer was easy to enjoy. Over summer, I spent most of my time in a boat, either fishing or bowfishing. The sport of bowfishing is shooting trash fish, nasty, slimy carp and alligator gar, with a bow. The arrow of the bow is attached to a string that can be reeled back into a spool. After some practice, my friends and I decided to enter a bowfishing tournament in July. The bowfishing tournament is an annual event, held on the Kaskaskia River, in an effort to eradicate the invasive species that are ruining the river’s environment. Although this was our first time competing in the tournament, the awesome new experience was overall a fun time. Building up to the tournament, the process of putting together a team was stressful and annoying. Drake Reibling and I considered entering the tournament and had to decide who should be on our team. Since most of our friends bowfished, finding people was not the hard part. The difficulty in the setting up a team was confirming that everyone was able to compete on the day of the tournament. After finding our two

Before signing in, we were explained the rules, the team with the most weight from ten fish win the tournament. While signing in, we had options to enter in side competitions of the tournament, smallest fish, biggest fish and numbers. To help explain, smallest fish is the team who shoots the smallest fish during the tournament, biggest fish is the team who shoot the biggest fish during the tournament and numbers is the team who shoot the most fish during the tournament. After a brief discussion, my team decided to enter in the smallest fish pot, thinking shooting a small fish would be easier than shooting a big fish. Later, we realized that we made a big