A Message from Past President, Arthur Pettijohn

DCA was formed in 1984 (Something George Orwell didn't foresee for that year :-) ) as an NFAA affiliate club.  In those days, field archery was king and we just did 'animal shoots' for fun and to get tuned up to go hunting.  But, times change and so did archery.

After McKenzie brought out 3D targets and IBO formed up, our fun 'animal shoots' quickly gained preeminence in competitive archery, effectively killing off field archery. Our last field archery tournament was in 1994, when our invitational tournament drew a grand total of 5 participants. In the 80's, there were never fewer than 100 competitors at an invitational. That's how much of an impact 3D had on NFAA style field archery.

We couldn't justify the repairs and replacement of field archery target butts for such little participation, so DCA's members voted to switch our affiliation from NFAA to IBO and become an all-3D club.  It was a painful decision, especially to those few of us that really loved field archery, but there was no realistic alternative.

**Just a side note, my personal opinion: An unfortunate side effect of field archery's decline appears to have contributed to a serious reduction in the number of women involved in archery and, perhaps as a consequence, fewer children as well.  We would love to see more ladies and kids participating!**  OK, I will quietly step off my soapbox and resume discussion of our history.....

As the years passed, we noticed that  3D had gotten so absurdly competitive that many bowhunters who used to enjoy shooting 3D tournaments dropped out.  DCA did our best to keep our shoots geared toward regular bowhunters who wanted to shoot and practice with their regular hunting bows and had no particular desire for competition.

To be free to do what we thought was right for people in our area, we dropped our affiliation with IBO and went independent.  We designed our range rules to cater specifically to bowhunters and were very effective at keeping the so-called pro's away.   Still, by Y2K,  we had not achieved the level of participation we had hoped for.

At the same time, traditional shooters, who had been a rather strong segment of the club to begin with, began increasing in number AND participation.  By 2001, traditional shooters made up 50% of the membership and nearly 100% of the participation.  DCA had actually become a traditional club by default.

We spent a great deal of time and resources trying to remain a mixed club and draw compound shooting members back and get them involved again, to no avail.  Finally, in November, 2005, DCA officially voted itself an all-traditional archery club.  With 90% of the entire club membership responding to the e-mail vote, including non-traditional shooters, the vote was unanimous.

DCA is formally an all-traditional archery club now; however, we acknowledge that we have a solemn duty to promote and defend bowhunting, so those who hunt with compounds, or even want nothing more than a place to shoot safely, are allowed to join the club as associate, non-voting members.

DCA strives to educate all bowhunters, regardless of equipment choice, and to help them be proficient.  Anything done to potentially decrease bowhunters' wound/loss ratio is a good thing.

And besides, having compound shooters around gives us a constant pool of potential traditional archery converts! ;-)

So, please join us all you gentlemen AND lady traditional bowhunters/compound shooters and be sure to bring your kids!  We'll be thrilled to have you.