Before I got my ProTec a couple of years ago, I was shooting an old Hoyt Superslam Legacy from around 92-93(?) and shooting it plenty good enough to win a few tournaments. The look on them Mathews shooters' faces was SO gratifying. LOL

I look at things way different than Len does. The industry was NOT stagnate through the first 3/4 of the last century. We started off with English style longbows backed with fiber or baleen. Doug Easton started making aluminum arrows in the 30's. Developements in WWII brought us fiberglass backings and made reliable recurves at a price people could afford and longbows nearly went extinct. Recurves went through a LOT of refinements and designs. Fiberglass arrows made an impact. Compounds came along and recurves darn near went extinct. And they've been upgraded every year. Multiple wheels with heavy cam hangars finally gave way to dual wheel bows with axle holes drilled through the limb tips. That was a major innovation at the time, not even 25 years ago.

But all those innovations came about while NFAA field archery was cock of the walk. We had some unmarked distance 'animal shoots' around hunting season to get the old eyeballs accustomed to judging yardage. That was it. And, frankly, I think the average shooter in those days was at least twice as good as the average shooter today. Most guys I've shot with lately, I doubt they could finish half a field archery round. And hardly any of them know how to stack pins for a shot at 70 or 80 yards. Poor little maroons... [&o]

Then along comes IBO and 3D in the mid-80's. The arms race began right then. The guys that couldn't judge yardage decided a faster arrow would help them beat out the guys that could. Beman introduced pultruded carbon arrows. All of a sudden, speed became more important than accuracy, consistency, quietness or shooting comfort, and it just got worse every year since.

Speed put money into the industry, for sure, but it flat ruined field archery. Suddenly, the byword was "I don't like shooting at spots". Bull! What the heck is that 12-ring? A SPOT, dipwad! Truth of the matter was they couldn't match the scores they shot with their old bows, the draw cycles were so horrid they were getting worn out after about 40 arrows, and they knew there were another 72 arrows to shoot, so they quit shooting field archery. 3D shooters are Wusses!

Now, finally, manufacturers are starting to bring those old time shooting qualities back into their bows while maintaining most of their speed gains. I hope they continue in that direction. We've got plenty of speed already. And, about 15 years ago, traditional archery was reborn with a whole variety of recurves and longbows. Then folks began rediscovering primitive archery, whittling bows out of trees, making arrows out of rivercane, knapping flint heads...

No. Archery has definitely NOT been stagnate, especially since the end of WWII.

Now the manufacturers have worked themselves into a corner. They HAVE to come up with some new wrinkle every year or folks feel betrayed and jump ship to another brandname that does have a new wrinkle. The archery industry is the perfect epitomy of the free market economy at work. Ain't nothing wrong with archery. It's the American way. LOL