How did you get started in Traditional Archery?

[Brazos]

In the early 80’s my Dad and friends at work got into bow hunting as Texas had a month long bow deer season in October ahead of rifle season.  I was a little kid but my my Dad got me a Martin Wildcat compound kit bow and we built it and I shot everyday.  We all shot “Traditional compound” as in no sights, split figure with a glove.  So that got me started in archery.  What sparked the fire for traditional was Howard Hill.  One night my Dad, a neighbor kid (also shot bows), and I were watching a movie on one of the major networks (NBC, CBS, or ABC.  We had antenna TV and that’s all we had) and the movie ended about 10-15 minutes short.  The network put on one of the old black & white HH short films of HH doing all his trick shots and I was amazed.  I could never get that out of my mind.  I continued to shoot compounds until the early 2000’s.  Then one day I sold the compound stuff and bought a Howard Hill Wesley Special.  Had it not been for that HH short film I probably would have never given traditional a thought.  Thanks Howard!

[Kirkll]

I grew up in the 60’s in a town called Sherwood in Oregon. The high school athletic teams were called even called the “Bowmen” …. Every year at the Robin Hood festival we had field archery competitions  with archery coming from England to compete….. but… I never had much interest in a bow in those early years for some reason.

My Dad was a rifle hunter, and went deer hunting every fall. But that was pretty much it. I did get hunter’s safety drilled into me at a very young age, and learned how to handle fire arms quite young. He bought my first rifle for me at age 12 and I harvested a deer the first time out. But we had spent many, many hours on the range as he taught me how to shoot accurately. My Dad was one of those gifted marksman that consistently made those unbelievable shots you hear of. He taught me well, and I too became very proficient.

I got married way too young, got all wrapped up in learning the carpentry trade, and followed in suit just hunting deer with a rifle once a year, but did quite a bit of bird hunting with a shot gun too when time allowed…

In 1989 I was coming home from work and passed a little archery shop that caught my eye, and I pulled in on just a whim. Just a wild hair thing really. Most of the bows in the shop were compound bows, but… they still looked like bows in those days, but they Just had wheels on the limb tips. So I shot a few arrows and was fascinated with these contraptions. they really zipped an arrow down range and we’re fairly accurate.
The next day I talked to a buddy of mine and asked what he thought of going archery hunting this next year ? He was up for an adventure so we ended up  going back to shoot some more, both ended up buying one….

We had a blast learning how to shoot with these things, and recruited a couple more friends to the adventure. We were obsessed instantly. We shot every 3D shoot that was within 100 miles of us all through the summer, then bought elk and deer tags that fall….my first season I got two deer, but no elk. But kept shooting indoors all winter at target and hunters leagues….. the next 10 years was a blurr of hunting and shooting competitions and I got burn out on it. I slowed down the 3D competition, and just concentrated on hunting mostly for a few years. We did very well hunting and I became very proficient at calling elk.

It was early spring in about 2005  or 2006 I went to a local 3D shoot solo just to go shoot some arrows and blow off some steam. Having burnt myself out with all the competition years previously, I just wasn’t having a lot of fun with these young guys with IBO champ aspirations and taking forever on each shot…. Been there , done that….. Then I hear this hooting and hollering behind us, and these guys were just belly laughing. A couple old boys came up the trail to us packing home made long bows a quivers full of arrows. They asked if they could play through, and of course we said sure…. I watched these guys both shoot two arrows apiece at 50 yards and both fell short of their marks. But… they just laughed and said they needed to do some stalking to get closer to this critter. They shot again at 30 yards and again at 15 - 20 yards, and we’re having a ball doing it…..  these guys I’m shooting with are complaining instead of appreciating the fun these guys were having, so I hollered down to em while they were pulling arrows and asked if I could come shoot with them? They said sure! Come on down!

Well that ripped it right then and there. The first target we hiked to the guy hands me his long bow. Says try this one out…. Wow! This is kinda fun I’m thinking. No sights, no release, just grip it and rip it!  I had a blast…. Never shot my own bow the rest of the day… then I came back on Sunday and they brought and extra bow for me to shoot…. 

I can honestly say, I never went back to the compound bow again. Two weeks after that 3D shoot I was ordering materials for the first bow I planned on building. I mean…. How hard can it be?

You should have seen the looks on my hunting buddies faces when I came into elk camp that fall with a  long bow…Ha! It was priceless….

Kirk

[mgf]

My story isn't so interesting as some of the others. It's a long story though because I'm old. My father started me small game hunting and fishing but he never bow hunted or deer hunted. As a kid I did a little shooting with bows belonging to friends but that's as far as it went. We had fields and ponds right across the street from the house I grew up in and I packed a slingshot while roaming those fields.

This was the suburbs west of Chicago and we didn't have any deer. Very rarely we'd see a deer on some of the places we rabbit hunted and the rare sighting was a real treat. I spent most of my childhood stomping every inch of the fields and swamp/ponds where we lived and I never even saw any sign of deer. Until...

1985, I know the year because my son was an infant. I started seeing quit a few deer on the one place I had to hunt. The Illinois gun tag was only good for a single county and there was no guaranty you'd draw the county you requested. I needed a tag for one specific county or nothing. The archery tag was good statewide so I started thinking about a bow.

An uncle and cousin were the only people I knew who shot bows but they didn't bow hunt. They talked me into a compound. I never liked it and wanted a real bow almost from the beginning. The more I got into archery the more I disliked the compound. I pulled the sights off of it and shot it that way for a while before moving to single string bows for good. 

My move to "traditional" equipment had NOTHING to do with hunting being too easy. Killing deer was tough! I shot one deer with a compound (x-bows weren't legal) on that single farm that I hunted and that was a happy accident. The only cover was corn when it was standing. I was sitting where I could watch a lone apple tree on an otherwise treeless fence line between two standing corn fields. A doe who knew I was there came out of the corn to scold me instead of running away and I shot her. In those days I remember counting the deer I would have killed "if I had a gun" LOL. I did have some pretty amazing "close encounters" and that kept me interested. It's just that trying to draw the bow would usually send them into the next county.

I'm still at it.

[Brazos]

I will add something to this post.  When I switched from a compound to a longbow I did it thinking things would just be simpler.  A long piece of wood, a string, and arrow.  It turned out not as simple as that but I learned a whole lot that transfers to compounds I would have never learned otherwise.  Truth is you can go to a bow shop and walk out will a bow, arrow, sights, etc and can be shooting great in no time.  With a longbow I learned about brace height and what it means.  I learned about arrow spine and how it works.  I learned about bow length, release, fletching, strings, and all sorts of crap I would have never thought about if I went to an archery shop today and said “set me up”.  Quite frankly if I decided to go buy a compound today I would be very much educated by taking all the fundamentals I learned from a longbow and using that knowledge to pick a compound bow.

[kat]

I was working with a friend on here 'RonW'. At the time, I was shooting a compound bow, but had never tried a trad bow. Ron convinced me to try it; and set me up with a bow, arrows, stringer, tab, the works.
I wound up buying that bow from him for $35. and never looked back. That was many, many bows ago; but the best part is that my grandson now shoots that same bow today.