Why can't we have nice things too? - Northern NY Archery (2024)

So, we shot the July 4th event at the Norfolk Rod and Gun Club and had a great time. It was another fun event and now we have attended 2 shoots there. We had hoped on July12th to go to the event at the Racquette Valley Fish and Game Club so we could experience another shoot at a different club, but we decided to go out of town to the Binghamton area.

As I knew there were a bunch of clubs down there (and our favorite indoor 3D place has unfortunately closed), I wanted to see what might be in the area. In doing so I discovered the Penn-York 3D archery page. Wow, they have their act together. A single set of rules for 6 clubs that host rotating shoots with a single schedule listing all of the shoots. Driving directions to each club. When you shoot, you are shooting on behalf of your club if you have an affiliation. They keep all stats and details on the site.

This is what I want to have up here… I know that up in the North County we are a bit behind in some of these things, especially for something that stereotypically doesn’t have the most connected user base (hunters and archers in general).

So, as we were down in the area, I wanted to see where the shoot was, which was in Pine City which is over near Elmira. We were staying about and hour from the shoot, so it was worth exploring. I emailed the group using the Contact Us form on the website to make sure the shoots were open to the public, as it was the only detail I could not find on the site. I had a reply within 12 hours from one of their representatives, stating that they were open to the public and to just leave the club spot empty when we signed in.

Unfortunately, we were not able to make the shoot. The idea of taking 6-7 hours out of the day to drive there, shoot, and then return, was a little more than I was willing to do while we were down visiting with family.

But, the concept of a bunch of clubs hosting events almost every weekend (hosting an event once every 6 weeks), with a different class to fit every shooter (hunter, open, rangefinder, senior, master, youth…) looks so absolutely awesome. We have multiple clubs within 45 minutes of each other (Massena, Norfolk, Malone, Racquette Valley, Black Lake, St. Lawrence Valley), this would be very feasible to do up here. While I am not aware of Massena actively hosting 3D shoots recently even before COVID, at least the other ones have posts on their Facebook pages about hosting at some point in the past. In addition, Massena holds a youth winter league that has pretty good participation numbers and they have cut paths for targets already in place. Malone is just restarting their archery program

So, why can’t we make this happen up here? Well, for starters, when I built this page out, I believed that we could do something, to at least have one place for all of the details. So, I built this site and did as much digging as possible on Facebook and looking for actual club pages. I emailed all of the people/clubs that were actively or semi-actively posting about the different shoots. I introduced myself and explained what I was doing trying to get all of the info in one place, as I didn’t know this world existed anywhere, let alone in my backyard. I received exactly one reply, from the Malone group. They stated that they were just re-starting and that they would contact me with details as soon as they worked some out.

Then… COVID-19 started shutting everything down. It does not appear that many of the clubs are actively doing the 3D stuff anymore and were posting even less about things in general. Luckily, I was able to catch that Norfolk Archers were starting to hold their 3D shoots again. And I saw that Racquette Valley was hosting theirs, so we would have went if we were around.

What would it take to do this? I am willing to post/host all of the details, maps, stats, etc… on this site. I would maintain and keep things up to date. I guess the question I post to everyone out there (from the North County) is what do I have to do to get the clubs on board with this. Even if it is not set up like the Penn-York 3D thing, it would be beneficial to have one place to keep all of the events and details on the shoots listed. Unfortunately, it just seems as if it is impossible to get a response at times…

So, ideas? Let me know…