As with most people who shoot 3D archery, I got into it to better myself in high-pressure hunting situations when a good shot is crucial to a clean, quick kill. I was spraying arrows through the woods, and my mental approach was severely lacking every time I drew my bow on an animal. I had no goals of becoming a competitive archer or traveling around the country to attend 3D shoots.
Instead, I wanted to go to the local clubs within an hour of my house and shoot as many lifelike targets as I could find. When I began shooting, 3D targets were just beginning to make their way into the arena. Before that time, I shot at 2D foam blocks with animals painted on them.
After going to many local shoots, I began to realize I was pretty good at the game and took an interest and seeing how I stacked up against other shooters in the region. That's when I packed my bags and headed to the First Leg of the Northeast Triple Crown in Merrimack, N.H., at the Anheuser Busch Plant.
Pulling into the parking lot, I couldn't fathom what I saw: there were vehicles parked from one end of the lot to the other, and there were vendors all over. In every direction, there were archers, spectators, volunteers, and security personnel. It was overwhelming.
At the time, I had a moveable sight on my bow, so I was put in one of three adult release classes that were available at the time: MBO. The other two adult classes for both men and women were MBR and Pro, so you had to sign up in a class that allowed you to shoot a moveable sight or one that called for fixed pins, unless you were shooting as a professional.
When the results were mailed out after the tournament, I saw that there were approximately 1,200 male shooters who attended, and all but a few of them were in MBO or MBR... and everyone there was shooting unknown yardage, as 3D archery was built upon having to judge yardage to the targets. Nobody complained that they didn't have time to do it, and nobody started whining because they didn't want to be in one of the two amateur classes that were available. There were no participation trophies given out, and at the end of the day, there were only three winners: one in MBO, one in MBR, and one in PMR. All but three of the 1,200 people went home as losers. Instead of starting a petition and approaching manufacturers, many of those people went home to hone their yardage-judging craft. I was one of those people. I knew the only way to compete was to be able to judge yardage. While I probably didn't need to shoot lights-out, I would be able to compete if I practiced judging yardage and made it a routine. My shooting was already above average, but my yardage estimations were not up to par. Keep in mind that there were no electronic range finders available at this time, and 3D targets were so new that nobody really owned any. The only place people saw a bunch of them was at a tournament.
I made a goal of improving myself over the course of the next year so I could go back to that shoot and finish near the top. I measured distances at home and taped them off. Then I learned how many paces it took me to get to 20, 30, 40, and 50 yards, as all adult classes had a maximum yardage of 50 yards, as the max yardage had recently been shortened from 60 yards.
It took minimal time to get accurate at judging yardage. It was easy to make use of my time while shooting my bow to kill two birds with one stone: I pictured targets at each distance from 20 to 50 yards and quickly got a feel for depth perception in judging yardage. Before beginning 3D archery a year or two earlier, I had no idea how to do it. So there's a huge fallacy in people saying it takes too much time to learn how to judge yardage accurately enough to play the unknown game with the professionals who do it throughout the summer.
Within a year, I went from the bottom of the pack to a podium finish in the Northeast Triple Crown, and I stood on the steps next to future pro Roger Thibault, a legendary archer from Maine. From there, I would make my way to national ASA, IBO and NFAA events. I played each organization's game as it was designed to be played. Although I came from an IBO region, I did not recruit people at ASA shoots to change their scoring system to center 11s rather than lower 12s. I didn't request that they put 14s in play in regular scoring instead of only in shoot-down scoring to allow me to catch up when I fell behind. Instead, I played the games the way they were designed to be played. I didn't go to the NFAA marked 3D nationals and request that we make it unmarked because I spent time judging yardage and didn't want to compete against people who only shot their bows and didn't judge. Instead, I worked at perfecting the craft of each organization's game so I could compete at the highest level my skills would allow. I would go on to achieve podium finishes in the ASA, IBO and NFAA at the national level, and I put the work in to be competitive in the game that I chose to play when shooting the different organizations' events.
I still do the same. I compete in the games as the games were originally set up to be played. Over time, the marked yardage pink elephant in the room has made itself known, and it has brought a lot of participation to the ASA. I commend the ASA for doing that because the ASA is a money-making business that is privately owned. It needed to make the right choices for the business to grow and make more money. If the money doesn't come in regularly and nothing is done to grow the attendance, the business runs the risk of running out of revenue. When a business can't make money, we all know what happens. So if I ran the ASA, I would've started the marked yardage classes too. Those classes are solely responsible for the current status of the ASA. However, over time, the shooters who are shooting become regulars, and creating more classes just dilutes the participation in all of the classes even more.
For the vast majority of shooters, they enjoy the marked yardage aspect of the game because they can just come shoot their bows. However, the organization was started as a 3D organization in which professional classes were designed to be shot as unmarked yardage.
In the early days, there was no problem drawing professional shooters because of the money that could be won through non-endemic sponsors. The Open Pro Shooter of the Year would walk away with more than $50,000 and that money did not come from manufacturers. Contingency checks were still cut at every tournament, but the manufacturers weren't being drained to support tournament archery like they are these days.
The prize money gave these professionals incentive to hone their yardage-judging skills while sharpening their shooting skills. The pool was deep, and the money got distributed well back into the field. The shooters were not competing for each other's entry fees and a contingency check. Although they got those things, the big prize was the check from the title sponsor.
Looking Back at the Era, the Passion and the People
I still remember Allen Connor, Shannon Caudle, Randy Ulmer, Randy Chappel, Sonny Chappel, Jeff Hopkins, Jackie Caudle, Burley Hall, Dale Keene, Pete Works, Bobby Ketcher, Johnny Heath, and a host of others who went head-to-head every weekend of the summer. These guys had found a way to accurately estimate the distance to the targets and make good enough shots to find their way to the podium. Some of these shooters were successful in other areas of archery, as Jeff Hopkins won Vegas, the granddaddy of all archery events. While some competed in target archery, others did not, but the good shooters stood above the rest at 3D because they played the game as it had been designed.
Jim Despart, one of the best target shooters of all time, competed in a few national 3D events along the way and didn't fare too well, but he never decided a marked yardage class needed to be designed so he could succeed in the game and collect contingencies. Instead, he focused on the games he excelled at and took home titles that every competitive archer dreams of winning. Although many of the 3D shooters were probably not the same caliber of shooter as him, he didn't want his own class. Instead, he realized these 3D shooters had the necessary skills to compete at the highest level in 3D and he gave kudos where kudos was deserved. It was an archery game that he didn't excel at, but he also recognized the ones who had mastered it. They had chosen their game, and he had chosen his game, and at the time, there weren't many guys out there who could do both at the highest level.
That was a different era, before many parents began thinking all kids should win an award. It was before we decided that we needed over 40 classes because more people wanted a chance to win. It was before manufacturers were forced to choose how to pay out contingency. However, now the pink elephant is standing in the living room and swinging his trunk around and smashing furniture while blowing out all the windows and ripping holes through the walls. The old days are gone forever and anything left from that era is a genuine antique, including people's attitudes concerning the work needed to perform in a game that people have felt the need to change over time.
As I was learning the ropes at national 3D events, I watched the great ones perform and gained a lot from reading 3D Times, a magazine about 3D archery. There was no internet at the time, so information was hard to come by.
I saw Jack Wallace quickly make his presence known in the ASA and IBO arena. The young kid from Ohio caught all the legends by surprise when he started winning events and putting himself in a position to podium at most events.
I saw Danny Evans compete with Ryan Rowe in the youth class, as they battled back and forth at IBO and ASA events. They were both long, lanky kids and both made good shots. If one of them didn't win, they were always close to the top step of the podium.
I watched Eric Griggs and Dave Cousins come out of New England, following in Roger Thibault's footsteps. Eric would go on to have a good career in professional 3D shooting before becoming involved in the business side of archery, eventually opening his own company, GAS Bowstrings. Dave would go on to break records worldwide in target archery. Both of these guys stayed in their lane and both started in unmarked yardage in New England. Neither one of them wanted to change the rules and create classes for themselves along the way. If known yardage 3D had started back then, would Despart, Cousins, Etheridge, Butts, Ragsdale, Hall, and others had entirely different careers? Nobody will ever know, but I do know that none of them pushed to create a class for themselves under the stipulations that they didn't have the time to hone the craft of judging yardage to compete with the people who supposedly did. Every person has 24 hours in a given day, and how a person chooses to use that time is up to him.
I watched Josh Ferrell when he was a kid and thought he would become an unbelievable pro in all venues of archery. However, life came along and Josh wasn't able to dedicate his life to archery. At that time, I also saw a kid from North Carolina in his class. That kid was good, too. He was a winner. His name was Levi Morgan. People don't pay attention to kids, but I watched from afar because he was in Josh's class, and this Morgan kid could flat-out pound. He could destroy other youth shooters. Eventually, he would find himself in Open Pro competing against all the legends I mentioned earlier. He would spend his time learning how to improve his shooting, and he came to realize that his shooting would not get him anywhere unless he learned how to judge distance. He took on both tasks and became the best to ever play the game. Levi put the time in to excel at the game where his passion lies. Levi went to Redding to give the orange dot marked yardage stuff a try. It turned out well for him, and he never lobbied for the tournament directors to make the tournament unmarked with lower 12s. Others, like Cousins, Broadwater and Wilde, chose to concentrate their efforts in areas where their passion could lead them to their full potential.
Then, ASA introduced marked yardage and Known Pro became a force to reckon with, bringing in many top-notch target shooters from around the world. Attendance quickly increased, and stars in (marked yardage) 3D were born. They came because the manufacturers were forced into paying contingencies for three adult male professional classes. Pros will not shoot if there's minimal or no money. They need the possibility of a return on investment for them to attend. Then the cries for change began. We need a female known pro class and a senior known pro class. If manufacturer's don't offer big contingency for many target archery events, it makes no sense for many pros to attend them like they used to. Instead, it makes more sense to push for more new classes where big money from manufacturers can be paid out. Is this helping the manufacturers, or is it dividing 3D archery even more than it was a few years ago? Is it now diluting the current pool or is it truly brining in more archers... professional archers?
Anything in life comes down to the choices we make. The choices we make can change the entire path of our lives. Sometimes, a split-second choice can affect the lives of many people. In other times, one choice can end or start a life. Life is about choices. Why is our country where it is right now? Is it because so many people feel entitled? Is it because if people don't agree with us we dislike them and refuse to listen to them? Is it hypocritical if people call out all of the people who are knocking over statues and trying to erase our history, yet we have a contingent of people who want manufacturers to pay for known and unknown professional classes for seniors, males and females? Is this the same type of thing? Do people want to erase history for the benefit of themselves while forcing the establishments that make tournament archery make decisions that alienate people on both sides? I don't know what will happen or what goes through people's minds. They justify what they're doing by saying they're growing archery, but does growing archery become reliant on further separating the people already in it and forcing manufacturers to continue funding the professional shooters? If a fisherman continues fishing the same farm pond every day and keeps three bass a day, it won't take long before the pond has no fish left in it.
As I take a step back and look at the big picture, from the time I started almost 30 years ago until now, there have been peaks and valleys in archery. Archery seems to go as games go. Field archery was booming when that was one of the few games to be played. It took a while for indoor archery to catch on, but now it is responsible for the biggest tournament in the world. And 3D archery saw its peak shortly after McKenzie introduced actual 3D targets. It seems the ebbs and flows go along with the new games that are created. Sadly, marked yardage isn't a new game and neither is unmarked. So where is 3D headed? Is this the beginning of the end? Is it headed to the same participation rates that field archery has declined into? I'll shoot my bow as long as I can, and I'll continue to play the games that bring me the most enjoyment. What will you do?
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