i was at the last kentucky classic trad shoot and have been going there for 5 years or so and it seems like it is getting smaller and smaller each year, still had fun shooting the 30 target course but not many venders there at all.. just wanted to know if other shoots saw a decline over the years as well..  which brings up my question is traditional hunting  and shooting dying out??  are the children of today going to keep this heritage alive??  please pass it on!!!  :confused:

I think just the opposite, more people are coming back to trad. The current economy I think has more to do with the light turnouts

I introduced a Father & Son to trad yesterday.  The dad has asked me to help him pick out a bow for each of them.  I gave him a link to Trad Gang too after we looked at it last night.  He had no idea there were so many of us.

http://tradgang.com/noncgi/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=073735

In our Archery Club , we have compound and Trad. shooters . A lot of people shooting compounds seem very interested in Trad archery . It seems to be growing not shrinking . TrapperDave has it right , people are more conservative with their money now . When the economy gets better attendance should improve. Flinthead

i hope you are right Dave..  I switched from shooting compound for 15 years to traditional about 5 years ago.. My only regret is that i never started out shooting traditional it is truley an art form..  and for me being right handed but left eye dominant it was truley amazing to see how the mind can overcome.. hand eye cordination

You should of been around in the 70's and 80's. I felt like the Maytag repairman. It is still amazing to me that it has come back like it did. Everything in cycles, it probally will become less popular.
  I can remember fly fishing and seeing nobody for weeks at a time on the trout waters to.

I 2nd Trapperdave

I also think it is really growing.  We have more bowyers than ever, and far more shoot offerings every year.  I was going through our summer planning calander last week and couldn't believe how many traditional shoots there are.  It will be a very busy summer!

I think there have gotten to be so many shoots and events that the vendors get spread pretty thin.  Attending shoots is very time consuming, not to mention the cost, so vendors tend to go to where the crowds are and are probably skipping some smaller ones they may have supported in the past.  There are only so many weekends in a year to attend these kind of things.

At the Hill Country Shootout here in Texas we had 439 rounds shot this year as compared to 244 last year when gas prices were so high.
Both years theres been kids everywhere.

Ditto to an increase!  There is an outdoor store near here with an archery department. 99% wheelie bows, a new guy in the archery dept is from Florida a Trad shooter, (shoots a Zipper) and now along with another guy (Hardcore Bear shooter & Zipper owner) have others buying Zippers and are a real presence in the Store bringing awareness and joy to Trad shooting & Hunting. I love to go and hang out there!

It would be interesting to look at data on how many custom bowyers or simply trad bow builders there were 10 or 15 years ago, and how many there are now.

Years and years ago (when trad archery was the only archery) we had the big names that cranked out lots of bows. Now it seems that we have a few of the old names and quite a few custom shops. My guess would be that overall, the simple numbers of bows purchased now versus then is higher.

I think Whip hit on a point besides the obvious of the economy.

With increased interest, has come many, many more shoots around our area. You can slice the pie only so many ways before there are only crumbs left.

Tight times, more shoots to choose from closer to home and bingo... they're not all going to keep the attendance.

There are some that have the rep and will continue to draw...but others might dwindle with the competition increasing for shooters with ever increasing shoots to choose from.

I don't think, I KNOW trad shooting is growing, but what Whip said is right on. dino

If you have been around awhile, and have been paying attention, you would know that it is growing.  ETAR seems to be overflowing each year.
And the huge number of bowyers is amazing.

I have been to the classic for the last few years, people are willing to attend, but most dont because of lack of vendors! I know the vendors that have attended have been swamped, Big JIms, Sipser River, Tradtionl Bows-Stephen Kitchens, and lone wolf last year before they retired. If the vendors will come, so will the folks. Over and over I have heard the same question from attendees, where are the vendors, though I would be able to pick up this or that. People come to associate with like minded individuals and vendors who understand their needs. Hope this post helps some for next year.

I don't know if it's growing or dying out. I mean how would one accurately know? What source of statistics are readily available to the public?

I don't see a lot of kids at our club. And sometime back a good friend & I went to a 3-D shoot; there was about 3" of beautiful fresh snow on the ground. This nine-year old boy said to us, "YOU'RE GOING OUT IN THAT SNOW????"

Kinda funny but sad.....

Dying?  GROWING.
I lost count how many people in the last month alone have inquired about getting into trad.

Its hard to explain but I think you need to step back far enough for it to be in context.

Our population is grown a lot in just thirty years. There are more people in this country than ever before, and among hunters I think trad archery is gaining more popularity. In that respect I'm sure the community is growing. But I think overall hunting, which would certainly include bowhunting (especially since it takes extra tags and sometimes courses) is losing people every year. And will probably continue as more older folks die frankly, and younger folks don't go out in their place.

I'm young and live in the south and I know very few hunters my age. I'm not saying that there aren't young hunters, especially in rural areas, but numbers are unquestionably down. And even in rural areas I'm sure you've noticed kids main sources of entertainment are manufactured and involves no work of their own. DVDs, the amount of video content on the web, video games, etc. The outdoors and making your own fun is on a serious downhill slide much less trad bowhunting IMHO. Most of your childhoods will not resemble what kids today have.

I'm guilty of it myself. I'll sit around thinking "I'm bored" and you realize the things you take for granted. A movie you might waste 2 hours watching took 8 months to film. It's hard to recreate that kind of excitement in real life even if it was just a nature documentary. You can convince someone to take a walk in nature with you, but it won't look like Discovery Channels "Planet Earth".

All that kinda stuff leaves us jaded.

[

Lets think about this. A young man with a child and a wife goes to a shoot for the week end and it cost him $20 each for him and his wife and $10 for his child. Add gas money some food and a place to sleep and you would have well over a $100 tied up. He can stay at home and shoot in his back yard, call one of the suppliers and order a few new arrows etc. and BS on the tradgang. In tough times when money is tight something has to go

My buddy is a vendor at several shoots in the north east and had to cut back last year because of $4/gal gas prices. Besides, most attendees aren't reaching for their wallets like they used to.

It forced him to get his website up and running and his **** store. He is planning on hitting the major shoots this year and dropping some of the smaller ones.

I cut way back on my shoots too. I used to go to half a dozen per year. Just can't afford it.

I think trad is growing in spite of fewer shooters at the events.