EGERTEC TARGETS

All those arrows have to go somewhere

In July 2019, Bow went down to Egertec Targets in a rural part of Hampshire, not far from Portsmouth, where the genial Hugh Skilling runs Egertec Targets, the last straw target manufacturer in the UK, and one of just two in Europe. If you've shot a straw target in the UK, the chances are it was almost certainly made in this room, attached to a farm building not far from Waterlooville. Originally part of the Quicks archery retailing family, the business was sold off a few years ago and ever since, Hugh has been churning out thousands of targets a year on an extraordinary hand-built machine that dates back to the 1950s. Over the last 70 years, this machine may have produced 300,000 targets.

Egertec also make stacked foam targets and now produce a variety of novelty and themed faces for clubs and tournaments too, but the straw targets are now rarer: there are now just a tiny handful of people making them around the world, and Hugh has shipped targets as far away as Hong Kong. For several years, targets produced on this machine were used at the Olympics, these days Egertec provides targets for art exhibitions, Strictly Come Dancing, and Game of Thrones as well as hundreds of clubs. Bow was lucky enough to be invited into this world to see just what happens.

1The process starts with oat straw. Tons of it. This is the last of Hugh's batch for this year, next week is harvest time and he is expecting an entire barn-filling load of local Hampshire straw.

2The compacted bales of dry straw are shaken up into large piles. Currently, five large fields of local straw are dedicated specifically to Egertec each year, and they get through 100 tons a year.

3A tricky part of the process is consistently feeding the maw of the machine so that it consistently builds the coil of compacted straw. The operator arranges the straw so that the bulk of it faces in the same direction.

4The machine, fed straw and string, cleverly stitches together a long rope of compacted straw which stretches across the room. A full size target consists of 140 feet of this rope.

5Before entering the form, the coil of straw gets a coating of latex glue on just a single side. (This differs from some straw target manufacturers who mix the glue in with the straw, which creates a harder, stickier target.)

6The end of the snake of rope gets attached onto the centre of the form with a pair of steel pins. An arrangement of weights on both the top and bottom forces the coil into shape.

7As the machine winds the long snake of straw on at a few feet a minute, Hugh checks everything is coming together nicely.

8After the full 140 feet of rope is wound on and forced together, a full size target boss emerges from the clamping process.

10The target bosses end up with a 'hole' in the middle. Straw is twisted into a plug that fills this hole and is stitched in. Egertec go through 3000 spools of string a year.

11The last layer gets stitched tight to the previous one so that it doesn't unravel during the tapering process.

12Using a knife, the rope end is opened up, chopped down and thinned out.

13The idea is to get a tidy taper of straw that can then be hand-stitched into place to create a perfectly round target.

14The bosses get a 'haircut' with a rotary trimmer to remove excess straw, and the all-important sticker is applied.

9This one still needs to go through the finishing process, all of which is completed by hand. Egertec can produce between 15 and 20 large targets a day, depending on how many staff are involved.

15Last stage – a plastic band is applied and hand tightened into place. The boss stays tight without it, but it makes certain and gives a professional appearance.

16Finally, the targets are stacked on pallets, ready to be shipped to dealers all over the world.