Nodaho archers make their point
Tom “Big Bird” Ciak, owner of Big Bird’s Bait & Bows in Maryville, sits at a table full of archery gear to be given away as drawing prizes at this this year’s Appreciation Shoot hosted by the Nodaho Bow Hunters club.
The twang of bow strings and the soft zip-thud of arrows knifing through a light drizzle at hundreds of feet per second, then striking a foam target 30 or 40 yards away, filled the air Sunday during the annual Nodaho Bow Hunters club annual Appreciation Shoot.
Held each August, the late-summer gathering of archery enthusiasts is organized by the club as a thank-you to the scores of shooters from across northwest Missouri who patronize the organization’s ranges throughout the year.
“It’s our way of giving back to the people who come to shoot,” said Jenell Ciak, who with her husband, Tom “Big Bird” Ciak, operates Big Bird’s Bait & Bows on Main Street in Maryville.
The club itself has about 75 members, but use of its ranges — an outdoor field layout just north of Graham and an indoor shooting facility in Maitland — is open to the public on a fee-per-shooter basis. About 150 archers from as far away as Kansas City participated in Sunday’s shoot at the outdoor facility.
During a typical shoot, participants turn in their scorecards at the end of the day, and the top shooters go home with trophies. But on Sunday, completed scorecards were placed in a box and drawn at random with the winners receiving prizes donated by area merchants.
With burgers on the grill and nothing on the line except personal satisfaction, the event is essentially a bow-and-arrow party to celebrate the end of the summer range season and the approach of a new hunting season in the fall.
Archery, of course, is one of mankind’s oldest pursuits and may have developed in Europe as long as 12,000 years ago during the late stone age. However, the hunter-gatherers in what is now Germany and Denmark —where the earliest indications of archery have been found — would be amazed at the gear used by their modern-day counterparts.
Wooden bows strung with animal sinew and arrows with feather fletchings and flint points have long since given way to sleek “compound” machines rigged with pulleys and precision sights. The arrows fired from these lethal-looking contraptions consist of carbon fiber shafts that can cost nearly $100 each.
Rick Horn, Maryville, has been an archer for 50 of his 60 years. His Mathews MR7 bow retails for around $1,000 and is considered close to state-of-the-art.
On Sunday he was shooting with a single-pin target sight that can be “dialed in” in one-yard increments up to 60 yards or so. Shooting at a 30-yard target, he was able to group three arrows tightly into a bull’s eye only a little larger than a silver dollar.
“Every course is a challenge,” Horn said. “I don’t do it to try and beat people, I just try to improve myself. It’s a great family sport.”
Much like golf, Horn said that archery — both for hunters and range shooters — is a sport driven by technology. Back in the late 1960s when compound bows were first developed, draw weights — the amount of force needed to pull back the bow — had to be upwards of 80 pounds to propel an arrow at 250 feet per second.
Better engineering and the advent of space age materials like carbon fiber mean that today’s bows can have a draw weight of only 50 pounds and still propel at arrow at well over 300 feet per second.
Arrow speed is important, especially at longer distances, since the faster the shaft flies the less arc is required before it teaches the target. Less arc translates to greater accuracy.
As Horn pointed out, archery is a sport that tends to run in families, and Sunday’s crowd included several husband-wife pairs and a fair number of bow-toting children.
Due to the wide skill and age variances of the shooters, Nodaho’s field range is set up — again like a golf course — with different firing stands for each of 40 animal-shaped targets placed along a pair of meandering, wooded trails.
Male shooters using compound bows might stand as many as 50 years from the target, while women in the same equipment class shoot at 40 yards and children at 30. There are also firing lines set up for old-school archers who prefer classic recurve bows, and even medieval-style longbows with wooden arrows and feathered shafts.
One foursome at Sunday’s Appreciation Shoot consisted of Amy and John Wilson, a young couple from Maryville, along with another local archer, Frank Montemurra, and their friend Steve Masoner from Edgerton, a small town between St. Joseph and Kansas City.
Amy Wilson said she got into the sport about two years ago because of her husband, who has been shooting since he was a teenager.
“I just love the challenge of it, the experience of it,” said Amy, who is capable of shooting in the mid 350s on the Nodaho field course’s 480-point range. “I wouldn’t ever have picked up a bow if it hadn’t have been for (John), but now I’ll never put it down. Whenever John and I have the free time, we’re shooting.”
The Nodaho Bow Hunters field range is open every second Sunday during the spring and early fall. Cost per shooting session is $10 for adults and $5 for children. The next event is scheduled Sept. 14, when the club will raffle off a Ruger Mark III .22-caliber target pistol. For more information, go to www.nodahobowhunters.com.
Rick Horn takes a bead on a target set up on the practice range of the Nodaho Bow Hunters outdoor facility north of Graham. The club attracts between 150 and 200 people to its monthly shoots held during the spring, summer and early fall. Shooting continues year-round at the organization’s indoor range in Maitland.
John Wilson applies shaft oil to one of his carbon fiber arrows, each of which costs upwards of $100. The oil is formulated not to affect the arrow’s weight or flight but makes it easier to withdraw the shafts from a foam target.
Amy Wilson and Steve Masoner use range-finding binoculars to judge the distance to an archery target Sunday during the Nodaho Bow Hunters’ Appreciation Shoot. About 150 archers from across northwest Missouri participated in the event.
John Wilson, Maryville, right, fills out his scorecard after firing at a foam hyena Sunday on the Nodaho Bow Hunters field range near Graham. Also pictured are John’s wife, Amy; Frank Montemurra (foreground); and Steve Masoner. Wilson scored a bull’s eye on the target, nicking the silver-dollar-sized circle from a distance of about 25 yards.
Amy Wilson prepares to loose an arrow from her Mathews Jewel compound bow while aiming at a foam target shaped like a hyena. On a field range set up with a maximum point total of 480, Wilson consistently achieves scores in the mid-300s. The range has 40 animal-shaped targets set out at various distances along a wooden trail with each bull’s eye worth 12 points.
Brian Davis of St. Joseph displays his longbow together with a set of wood-shafted arrows Sunday during the Nodaho Bow Hunters annual Appreciation Shoot. Used in Europe as early as the Bronze Age, the longbow packed enough punch to pierce metal armor worn by medieval knights. Davis’ bow is rated for 60 pounds of pull at a draw length of 28 inches, and he uses it for both target competition and hunting.
