Club May Be Going All-Traditional

[Arthur P]

I'd like some unbiased input from outside our club about this idea.

Background: Almost all of our active members are traditional shooters. Only one compound shooter has served on the Executive Board in the past 12 years (2, if you count an occasional compounder like me). Our traditional tournaments get good attendance but, over the past 10 years, our mixed shoots have had very poor attendance. For the past 5 years, we've actually lost money on all our mixed shoots. Last mixed shoot we put on, we had a total of 8 shooters and only one of them was a visitor and shooting a compound. The rest were the guys who were there to work.

About the only time you see many compounds at our range any more, it's the guys who are sighting in for bow season. We've got two seniors who are regulars and shoot wheelbows, but they're only interested in spot shoots. (Since one of them is a long time member of the club, in fact he's a charter member, I'd like to let them hang around.)

So, for all practical purposes, we're an all-traditional club anyway. One idea that is floating around is to allow compound shooters to join the club as associate members, so they can still use the range to do their pre-season tuning and sighting in, but they would be non-voting/non-participating memberships. In other words, nothing would actually change except our club charter and the fact we wouldn't feel obligated to schedule any mixed shoots during the tournament season.

There might be an opportunity for the club to really grow, since there is no full time, full feature all traditional club anywhere around us. In fact, I don't know of any all-traditional local club anywhere in Texas. I'm not sure the Texas State Longbow Assn in Fort Worth really counts as a full feature local club. Currently, we're competing with six other mixed clubs in the area for members and shooters. An all-traditional club could be our niche in the overal scheme of things.

It seems like a no-brainer, but there is the concern that quite a few of our current crop of traditional shooters are guys who converted from the compound after being introduced to traditional equipment when they joined the club. They are concerned that others wouldn't be introduced to traditional as they were and we'd lose potential new traditional shooters and members.

Any thoughts?

[mysticguido]

Thats a hard one to answer, But it sounds like you have the right answer

One idea that is floating around is to allow compound shooters to join the club as associate members, so they can still use the range to do their pre-season tuning and sighting in, but they would be non-voting/non-participating memberships.

[zak123]

I have two archery shops near me while I am on vacation. By going to these two archery shops, I learned that traditional guys like to shoot with traditional guys, and compound guys like to shoot with compound guys. I went to one of the shops and there were several traditional shooters and one compound shooter. I went to the other shop and all that was there was traditional shooters. I think it has to do with bow talk.Everyone likes to talk about their bow.You can't bring a compound in a traditional shop, like the one I went to, and have a chat with thetraditional guy, and expect him to follow along and vice versa. Mabey this has something to do with the lack of compound shooters in your area. What ever youdo, Iwish you the best of luck.

[recurver67]

I would say non-votingnon- participating members for what it's worth. Good luck

[LBR]

Tough call to make. We tried that with a local club a few years ago, but instead of making it exclusive we used the same club and had a separate weekend for an all traditional shoot. It lasted a year--just not enough participation. I'm not sure what the problem is here--we only have one local club left, and it is just barely hanging on. Lots of bowhunters in the area, but I'm afraid the biggest part of them only shoot their bows a week or two before season opens.

Chad