My local archery shop has a signed copy of Glenn’s book that has been sitting on the shelf for 2 years at $34 and I’m ITCHING to buy it. You’ve now influenced me to do so. 😀

donthomas wrote: There are a lot of bowhunters in America now, but for most of them bowhunting as it is now known didn’t begin until the invention of the compound. Glenn St. Who? We at the magazine are aware of the problem, and that’s why we run a “Traditional Archives” column in every issue. The subject matter varies widely, but every column tries to cover something from the “old days”, whether that was 50 years ago or 5,000. We hope you all are reading it. Don

I love that column! It’s kind of like sitting down with your Grandfather over a pot of coffee.

Smithhammer wrote: What concerns me far more is the lack of younger people at all in our sport.

I was always of the opinion that young compound hunters didn’t care about their traditional archery roots and only looked ahead. I’m a social media fanatic and through Twitter and my blog I’ve met hundreds of modern bowhunters who’ve shown me otherwise. Many of them are indeed interested in our history and have contemplated trying traditional but felt overwhelmed and simply didn’t have enough support. I consider myself fortunate to have started at 27 and jumped right into traditional bowhunting 3 year ago. I approached everything as a student and accepted my new community with open arms. Compound guys already have a community and an effective way to do things. Starting over can be scary, especially when the move may not be well received by their current community. I lost several friends to compounds and I’ll admit being apprehensive to their departure at first.

I’ve made it my mission to find these people and foster this interest because the majority of them ARE younger (20-35) and have young children. If you want to recruit young people, you have to be where they are and there aren’t a whole lot of traditional folks on Social Media platforms consistently interacting. I think I’ve found 15-20 traditional bowhunters on Twitter and I’ve got over 500 modern bowhunting followers.

Its hard to convince people to make the investment in trad gear when they already spend so much money on the latest and greatest, but you’ve got to take it one step at a time. This includes putting the information out there, making it easy to understand, and acting as an ambassador for those who know little about our world. Mingling and making friends is key. You can’t just push your ideals on someone.

I’m helping a bowyer out with his business on the marketing side and recommended he tap Facebook and Twitter to build awareness. He began posting photos of a bow he is working on for me and the modern bowhunting community ate them up. The majority of these folks were videographers or bloggers. He recognized this and covered their costs as promos. In two months time he’s sent or has been commissioned to build bows for 8 different people who’ve never shot a traditional bow. That’s eight new traditional shooters with young families and successful bowhunting blogs who will be joining the traditional archery conversation and documenting their experiences.

The opportunities are there, we simply need to recognize them. I apologize for the long post!