Outdoor media and movies like The Hunger Games have planted a seed of archery excitement in today’s youth, and it’s sprouting across the nation. Daisey, for example, now makes a bow and a crossbow so that a child can have as much fun with soft-tipped arrows as with a BB gun. Middle and high schools offer competitive teams in numerous states, and this exciting growth has not gone unnoticed by one of hunting’s leading companies. Jace Bauserman lays out the details in this Archery Business post.
Let me forewarn you, ScentBlocker’s conference room is a mighty difficult place to have a meeting. Why? Because the entire room is lined with a number of large whitetail buck mounts, including a few gross Booners, all shot by company CEO/President Scott Shultz. Throughout the meeting, the thousands of inches of antlers looming above me kept pulling my eyes skyward time and time again. Scott must have noticed my jaw drop a few times during our conversation and took the time to tell me all about a few particular bucks. He was so passionate with his storytelling, so accurate with his details. He was full of joy, and it was obvious the memories of each hunt were locked in his memory vault.
That same joy, that same passion, that same heart for all things outdoors came up during another point in the conversation. “The youth are such a growing segment in our industry,” said Scott. “When you have 16-year-old girls renting out archery pro shop shooting lanes to have a birthday party, that’s powerful. I really believe when a young man or woman holds a bow in their hand and fires an arrow downrange for the first time, they feel a major sense of accomplishment. And as these young men and woman progress in the sport, as they shoot more and see their accuracy increase, they become even more involved. We need to take note of this, because several surveys indicate that many of these recreational shooting youth will one day become bowhunters. How wonderful is that? If even a percentage of these youth — and there are a bunch of them — start bowhunting, our hunter numbers are going to skyrocket.
