So about a month ago, my friend Joe and I were talking about the situation of Archery Demos and what happens if you’re in a situation where you can’t actually shoot arrows at an event.

How do you handle that without having to actually cancel the demo completely?
(That’s actually what happened at an event we were at recently and it really was disappointing.)

We talked about designing an educational class around types of bows and sharing their history as part of the class versus actually “how to shoot”.

So, this week I had my first group class teaching “How to Get Started In Traditional Archery” and I can happily say it was well received!

Thanks to Mt Hood Community College and their annual “Strawberry Shortcourse Festival” I had the opportunity to try out something I’d wanted to do… Teach a class about traditional archery without the ability to actually let people shoot YET still have them love the class.

The goal was to give someone interested in archery the knowledge to feel comfortable picking out their first bow, making sure they have a bow that is right for them and not of course, not hurt themselves the first time they try to shoot it.

I brought all four of my bows and taught the class the differences between each of them. From the traditional Longbow to my Mongolian Horsebow, I explained each of them, what they were designed for and why they might want one. Advantages and disadvantages of each for different situations (now and in history).

Each student got to share their own experience and why they were interested in the class. We had everything from hunting to meditation and, of course, just for fun. Everyone had a different reason for being there but they all felt that they just didn’t know where to get started.

This class gave me the ability to help them not only get started with picking a bow but where they can go to shoot it once they get it. There’s a few of us that are even looking at getting together to shoot in the near future.

I was a little worried at first that the class would be disappointing to the students since I wasn’t in a place to safely let them shoot any of them, but they all were greatly engaged and give me some amazing feedback.

I’ll call that a success!

For my first class designed like that, I will call that a win and I look forward to doing more demo classes like that in the near future.