PHILADELPHIA - A cobra reared up silently in the woods west of Quakertown, Pa., its hood flared in anger as three longtime buddies approached to about 25 yards. None had ever encountered the venomous black snake in the wild. Locating its vital organs was guesswork. "That's the fun part," said Frank Pietruch, 52.

Matt Richard, at 27 the youngest in the trio, drew his bow back first and aimed for the cobra's middle. Thwack!

"That snake's done," Richard said, a guess that proved true a few minutes later when the men walked up to collect their arrows. Barely visible on the foam target was a series of uneven circles. The smallest, numbered 10 and 12, indicated fatal shots. Richard had landed a 12 - through the heart.

On this clear, crisp Sunday morning two weeks ago, 54 people turned out for the Cloverleaf Archery Club's 3-D course. Mostly nonmembers, they paid $8 apiece for a round of 30 targets - life-size boar, ram, wolf, javelina, turkey, baboon, coyote, and a half-dozen deer hiding among rocks and branches or slinking out from behind trees.

Many sportsmen's clubs put up 3-D courses for bows, as do the half-dozen or so all-archery clubs around the region. Cloverleaf is unusual in running its twice-monthly 3-D shoots year-round. The club also organizes winter leagues on its 16-lane indoor range and lights the far-more-realistic 3-D targets one night a week in summer.

Most of its 155 members hunt (although not on the club's 28 acres). Proficiency with bow and arrow requires constant practice, and bow hunters must be keenly aware of their limitations. The 3-D targets are moved from month to month, placed at various angles and distances as a teaching tool.

By the time hunting season opens in the fall, club president Paul Romanic said, "when you see a deer at 30 yards, and you know you're not proficient at 30 yards, you know 'That deer is not for me.'"

Deer are the most requested 3-D targets, said Romanic, who places them on the course. He likes to break up the monotony with a measure of fun, "so when guys see a cobra out there, they get a chuckle."

Jon Zugaro joined 14 months ago. He likes the archery-only feel of the place.

"There are guys here who will stop whatever they're doing to help you," said Zugaro, 36.

After using a gadget-laden compound bow for 12 years, the tile-and-marble worker from Warrington wants a bigger challenge. He began experimenting with a far more challenging traditional recurve bow in January.

When Gerry Sorvino, who is experienced with a traditional bow, showed up at the 3-D event for his first outing since a shoulder injury in September, they went around the course together.

Sorvino, 49, has moved a lot for his sales job. He arrived in Perkasie 10 months ago and looked up archery ranges in the phone book, as he always does.

Even after hunting with traditional bows on and off for 30 years, he has a limit - the distance from which he is confident of accurately making a fatal shot to the heart, liver or lungs - of just 15 yards.

"That's the reason you hunt with a bow," he said. "To get close." With the 3-D targets at this event set at nearly twice that distance, for more easily held compound bows, both men considered themselves lucky if they made a shot.

Sorvino drew back his handsome Turk-style recurve, hand-made of bamboo, maple, bocate, cocobolo and fiberglass. His arrow flew by a boar, but Zugaro's hit between the shoulders, a fatal shot. Both "killed" a deer; both hit a coyote in the leg.

"It's very frustrating," Zugaro said, heading toward a tree stand. "But the only way to get good is to practice."

No one on the course would disagree with his mundane reason for completing a round. Yet most would also embrace Sorvino's alternative explanation.

"This is like going to play golf on a Sunday," he said. "Get your buddies and go golf."