What got you started in archery? long read

[mcgroundstalker]

Robert... My start is very similar to yours. Being a "city boy" and raised in The Bronx it was a big deal when my father would wake my brother and myself up early on Sunday morning to "Go Huntin'" with our fiberglass bows. During the early '60s we hunted pheasants and rabbits in the brush and weeds along the shore line between the Throggs Neck and Whitestone Bridges.  Lost my father when he was 48. I was just 17.

Hunted mostly with firearms and wheelie bows then got the bug at age 40 for Trad. Ain't looked back for twelve years! I LOVE IT!. Think it reminds me of my father. Being a kid again. Getting the most from a challange and life.

Don't get me wrong... Still carry a smoke pole during that season. Just seems like something is missing. That's all.

Thanks For Asking!

... mike ...    ...

[Mo. Huntin]

I had a cheap longbow when I was a kid and could never shoot it accurately.  When I got a little older my dad got me a compound and sights and I could shoot.  Did that for 17 or so years and saw Traditional Bowhunter Magazine and loved the way the articles were written more in a story style with some instruction.  I also liked it because you could stump shoot and not loose arrows and Small game became a really fun possibility.  Traded a muzzleloader for a recurve and now I got a longbow and now shooting is fun again.  TRAD GANG has taught me to shoot and tune my bows and I really like the people here.  This is the reason I get upset when a bunch of people start bashing compound bows because if it were not for them a lot of us might not be Bow hunters today.

[Recurve50 LBS]

When I was a young lad of about 4 I remember my Dad and Uncle going deer hunting together. I was always interested in hunting but Dad started working 2 jobs and we got real heavily into fishing. Then I lost Dad when I was 28.

Soon after Dad's death I met a gal and we had a fine son together. My father in law gave me my final push into hunting. He gave me my first bow. One with training wheels but a bow non the less. I killed my first deer with that bow. I will never forget that day.

About the time of my second hunting season my wife leaves me. My father in law will not speak to me and I lost my hunting rights at the farm I hunted with him the year before.

I moved back to my home town and some old school friends got me a couple hunting spots close to home.

It was during the time I was getting divorced I met my buddy Reiner. He hunts with traditional bows while the rest of us shot wheels. We were all out shooting one day and I noticed how quiet his longbow was. I started asking him questions and the next thig he was letting me shoot his Black Widow longbow.

I was a pretty lousy shot but the seed was planted and soon grew into something that I never thought would happen. I quickly came to love just how simple traditional archery is. Simple in the way that you don't have to carry a ton of gagets into the woods with you.

Now when I want to hunt I grab my bow and Cat Quiver, burn some cork and apply to my face, put on some plaid  and head into the woods together with my son for a good time. I don't even climb trees 99% of the time.

I enjoy traditional archery hunting because it is such a challenge to get close to animals we are hunting, and most satisfying just to get close to nature's critters when they have no idea you are even there.

Traditional Archery hunting is hard that's why I love to do it. If it was meant to be easy it would be called FOOD SHOPPING.

[beaver#1]

i grew up hunting with guns. i hunt this way till i was 20 then i started hunting with traing wheels and guns.  after i got a job with the texas wildlife services hunting lost its meaning to me sense i hunt and trap for a living.  bought my first recurve bow at 24 and that seanson a had a small buck within 6 yards and a doe at 5 ft. the doe never seen me.  after that incounter i hunt only with longbows now.  the challenge the simplicity of the equipment and the fact that i am more of a reall hunter now than i ever was,  these are what keeps me around.  this will be my 3rd season and still not taken any game. oh well, maybe this will be the season

[straitera]

At 12 a gun accident on the farm took away our privileges. My aunt let me hunt with her 35# longbow. Birthdays & Christmas I asked for arrows or whittled my own & "adjusted" for lengths & weights. Heavier recurves afterwards for a few years and in my early 20's switched to compounds. Bored & switched back to longbow only 30 years ago (1979).

[wollelybugger]

I can't even remember when I started, it seems like I always was shooting. Never went for the compounds, too heavey and complicated for me. I can remember when I was the only one left shooting a recurve at the archery shoots, awful lonely back then.

[BobW]

Shot wheels for 15 years, and was the first archer in my immediate family.  One evening my "cousin" (fellow TG'er BBassi) who had gone (maybe "back") to Trad a few years earlier was over helping with some home construction.  That evening when we were shooting after working, I was just "hooked" by the quiet THUMP of a longbow he had brought along...... It just stirred my blood in some magical way.  He let me borrow a bow that I blew up (sorry bud), and then ordered a ChekMate from our own - Chad Weaver.  I have since tried recurves, but something just keeps me back at the longbow.  As Chad says, - LONG BOWS RULE!!!!  There is 3 years of dust on my compound case in the closet......

[trad_bowhunter1965]

I always wanted to shoot a bow but the two people that got me in to shooting was Bonnie Sayer and her son Rick that was 35 years ago I have shot a bow ever since then.They took me camping and we shot carp, What a blast I remember it like was yesterday so thank you Bonnie and Rick. Blake

[dragon rider]

Graybeard.  He and I were talking about it for a while.  I said it sounded like fun the way he described it.  One morning he showed up with a 38# recurve, an arm guard, a quiver, a glove and a dozen or so arrows, said "these are yours; now let's go shooting."  We went off to a local archery club and from there to his place in the woods for my first stump shooting.  As a result, in five years I've gone from "what's a recurve" to mentally stump shooting everything I see when I'm out walking the dogs, spending hours on TradGang and loving every minute of it.  Thanks, Jed.

[BRITTMAN]

My Dad had hunted with a bow ever since I can remember so I picked it up from him but did not have any confidence in hunting with one even though Dad had taking alot of game with a bow through the years . Then one day back in the early 90s a buddy came by the house with a Dan fitzgerald video and it changed the way I thought about hunting with a bow . From then on my passion for archery has kept building and going totaly traditonal has been the most rewarding hunting experiance of all .

Mike

[bawana bowman]

My parents went to Arizona in 1960, My Dad was interviewing for a Police chief position some where near Phoenix. When they returned to Pittsburgh they brought me a 15# Hickory bow with 12 little wood arrows.
I was 5 at the time, shot this bow every day even in winter. I remember stalking all the neighbors Halloween pumpkins, and shooting snowmen.
At the age of 6 I graduated to hunting in the woods and took my first rabbit. This was a shock to my father, but he was so happy for me that he bought me a 45# Bear Kodiak for my 7th birthday! ( try making that jump in draw weight at that age!)I believe it is a 1955 Kodiak. Took my first buck with this bow at age 11, 2 years after moving to Florida.
I shot that bow until I was 14 and then went to a 55# Bear Kodiak.
Can't even count how many bows I've owned since then, or how many deer I've taken. I do know I've taken  over 300 deer in the last 42 years since taking that first buck, and I couldn't begin to count the hogs, small game and turkey.
I still have that 45# Kodiak, and I can honestly say I have never owned a compound. I did shoot one once when they first came out. Shot one arrow, handed the bow back to the dealer, and said  "That just don't feel right!" and haven't touched one since.
My father never was a bowhunter, always used shotgun or rifle. I did however get to bowhunt with him once. He went with me to our family farm in Tyler county West Virginia in 1981. I was going to bowhunt, he went along for company. When I went to buy my license He told the clerk to give him one too. ( He hadn't even shot a bow in probably 35 years, but he knew I had brought along two back-ups.) I let him use my 50# Bearcat t/d since it was the lightest draw I had with me.
On the third day of our week long hunt I shot an antlered doe. The next morning I was hunting a  ridge top behind the barn, from about halfway up the mountain I heard a shot. About an hour later I find myself helping him drag out the buck he shot! ( with his .38 colt detective special! his off duty weapon!).
That was our first and only hunt together, and one I'll always remember.
   

[NorthernCaliforniaHunter]

My buddy BTH. Thanks Toby. Oh, and just a few months ago.

[McGeeM]

My best friend growing up got me into archery. When I would go to his house his dad had mounts all over and bows and arrows laying every where. We would shoot some of the bows and hunt for chimpmunks.

Looking at all the photos of where his dad had hunted really lit the fire. I still love looking at those photos when I visit with his mom