This article marks my 250th contribution to Todd Graf’s “Bowhunting.com” website, which posted my first article 14 years ago after my return from the 2011 ATA Trade Show at the Indianapolis Convention Center.
Sad to say, this article is my final contribution to Bowhunting.com. That long run wouldn’t have happened without the support of Todd; Justin Zarr, general manager; and Brodie Swisher, my longtime editor.
I’m not retiring, but I’ve scaled down my work since my 65th birthday four years ago. For instance, I no longer fly to distant trade shows or wildlife conferences, which means I struggle to stay current on bowhunting news, research and equipment.
Reflecting on Past Trade Shows
Looking back, I’m proud to say I only missed one archery-industry trade show from 1991 through 2020. My lone absence was the 1999 show, when I stayed home to fight an intestinal parasite I picked up a week earlier during a late-season bowhunt in Iowa.
As you might recall, the COVID-19 epidemic struck about two months after the 2020 ATA Trade Show, and forced the ATA to cancel the 2021 show.
Little did I know in January 2020 that I was done reporting from the trade show.
In my first Bowhunting.com dispatch, which I wrote during the 2011 ATA Trade Show in Indianapolis, I wondered how archery manufacturers could keep designing faster bows; straighter, more durable arrows; and truer-flying broadheads.
I’m still wondering about all that, but the innovations continue.
The 2011 ATA Trade Show featured 513 manufacturers and other exhibitors, who combined to rent 167,650 square feet of booth space, including a then-record 55 shooting lanes.
After adding in aisle space, the show floor covered nearly 300,000 square feet. In other words, if that show floor were laid out in one giant square, each side would be 1.5 football fields long.
Just so we’re clear, that means the length of a football field, 100 yards; including both end zones, 20 yards; plus half of another field from the back of an end zone to slightly past the 50-yard line.
And if you divide that space into 513 square and rectangular booths, you’ll soon realize you’ll never see everything firsthand while walking the floor during the three-day show.
In fact, you would have to average three minutes and nine seconds in each of the 513 booths to see every exhibitor during the show’s three nine-hour days. That’s barely enough time to shake hands, let alone sign deals and place orders.
A Fluke ‘Robin Hood’
A few months later, I wrote an article to boast about shooting my first “Robin Hood” during daily backyard practice. Yep. After first picking up a bow in 1966 at age 10, and practicing regularly since 1971 at age 15, I finally drilled one arrow down the tube of another arrow already in the target’s bull’s-eye. In this case, that center-spot was on my 3-D deer target.
In other words, it took 40 years to score my first Robin Hood. And nearly 14 years later, I’m still looking for my second Robin Hood. In contrast, my daughter Leah nailed her first Robin Hood before she turned 15 in 2000. Her spliced arrows still stand by my office door, reminding me of her superior archery skills.
To be fair, though, I often try to miss arrows already in the target at 20 yards and less. Why? Because I don’t like shattering nocks, stripping vanes or feathers, and ruining arrow shafts.
I’m a cheapskate, and would rather spend time practicing than repairing or replacing arrows, nocks and fletching.
I still recall how I cringed when hearing a loud “Clank!” as my third arrow of that practice session hit the target 30 yards away. That sound wasn’t the ordinary swish and rattle of one arrow slapping and side-swiping another arrow in the target.
The impact sent debris from feathers and aluminum-wrapped carbon shaft blasting into the air. I paused, put down my bow, and walked to the target to inspect the damage.
Once there, I verified my first Robin Hood. The Easton Full Metal Jacket arrow was buried 17.5 inches down the shaft of the other arrow, leaving their fletchings 8½ inches apart.
The second arrow drove the nock from the first arrow down the shaft ahead of it. The fluorescent green nock glimmered through a crack in the swollen sidewall. I also noticed a feather missing from the first arrow. It rested four feet away, still attached to a sliver of aluminum.
Most gratifying was that my Robin Hood was lethally centered in the target’s kill zone. If it had hit farther back or in the deer target’s shoulder blade, maybe I wouldn’t have shared that detail.
Either way, I can’t brag too much about a lone Robin Hood. I know archers who’ve shot so many of them they’ve lost count or need both hands to count them.
I’m just an average archer, shooting well enough to reliably kill deer and elk, but not precise enough to split arrows except by chance.
The ‘Suicide’ Buck
Perhaps my most memorable Bowhunting.com article of 2011, however, was about a big buck leaping to its death from a highway overpass in central Wisconsin.
A man named Al Rinka was taking a lunch break with his coworkers at a highway construction site south of Marshfield on Dec. 8, 2011, when they saw a huge white-tailed buck crossing a field.
About an hour later, the same buck walked up the embankment to a bridge 1.5 miles away, and then leaped and died on a concrete slab 34 feet below. The buck apparently panicked as a car approached the overpass, and jumped over the bridge’s parapet without realizing its height from the ground.
The momentum from its leap carried the buck 30 feet from the bridge’s base, where it landed headfirst.
Rinka and his crew had poured the concrete below days before as part of the U.S. Highway 10 reconstruction, and it wasn’t yet open to traffic. A foreman called Rinka to tell him and his coworkers about the accident.
When Rinka and his crew arrived to see the dead buck, they recognized it as the one crossing the field during their lunchbreak.
“We’re big hunters, and we all hunt 15 minutes to an hour from there, but we saw nothing like that buck during gun season,” Rinka said when I called. “We were amazed to see it crossing a field in broad daylight. It was opening day of the (four-day) antlerless hunt, so maybe some hunters pushed it out.”
The buck apparently landed on its nose, because nothing else on its body appeared broken, and its antlers were intact. Rinka said an elderly woman who lives near the bridge was driving the car that spooked the buck.
She told him the buck stood in the middle of the road as she approached. It could have turned and ran down the road to safety, but instead jumped off the bridge like Billie Joe McAllister.
The woman stopped, looked over the bridge, and saw the buck writhing below in its death throes. She drove home and told her neighbor, a hunter, who notified authorities and claimed the buck.
Rinka and his friends agreed the buck was probably one of the biggest they’ll ever see. It had a 12-point rack with wide beams and thick tines, the tallest being 9 inches long, and a spread spanning 18 inches. They guessed it would score 150 to 170 inches.
Some people jokingly referred to the deer as “The Suicide Buck,” but Rinka said no one thinks the buck intended to kill itself. “It was out of its element, and probably just panicked when the car approached,” he said.
And with that, we’ll call it a wrap. I hope our paths cross again soon.
