How many of you know what's special about the year 2000 for the Traditional Bowhunters Of Florida? That’s right. It is our 10-year anniversary. The Traditional Bowhunters Of Florida was formed in the summer of 1990. Our First shoot was held on August 18, 1990 at Gibson's Lazy B Ranch in Reddick Florida. There were 26 shooters in attendance and the club actually lost money on that event. I wasn't around to see our humble beginnings. I attended my first TBOF shoot August 13, 1994. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to be a part of our 10 year anniversary celebration! We are going to have special 10-year TBOF shirts on sale and plan on making our 10th year lots of fun. We will start celebrating with our March 2000 shoot.

The 2000 Spring Championship shoot will be the same format as last year with a couple of small differences. You will pick up your scorecards on Saturday morning as in the past but do not turn them in at lunchtime. Your score cards must be turned in Saturday afternoon after the second round only. We will also be using a card rack rather than the score board. We will have the rack in an area where it will be easy to see the cards and scores. We will post the cards in the card rack after they have been turned in on Saturday and we have had a chance to re-group them for Sunday's competition. It is important that all cards are turned in Saturday afternoon after the second round so we can re-group all shooters. We are altering the score cards slightly to be used in the score card rack and allow for easy reading. Other than these minor changes, we will be handling this State Championship in the same professional manner you have become accustomed to. There is pre-registration paperwork in this issue of the Stickbow to allow all of you plenty of time to register for this shoot. We will also allow registration at the shoot site on Friday March 3rd if we do not already have 400 people registered. We are going to advertise this shoot so I would advise you to register as soon as possible. The shooting portion will be the same as our past Championship shoots. On Saturday, we will shoot 20 targets in the morning, break for lunch and shoot 20 targets in the afternoon. On Sunday, we will shoot a 20 target round with our competition. Two score cards; two score keepers, both Saturday and Sunday, same as before. I expect our 10th year as an organization to be a good one. We are well established, have great shoots, great members, and things just keep getting better. Plan on being a part of the TBOF for the year 2000 and all the fun years beyond.

2000 FALL RENDEZVOUS

Our Fall Rendezvous which will be held August 4th, 5th, and 6th, 2000 is going to be different than any we have held before. Unless there is a large number of members calling me to indicate they don't want to try something new, we are going to eliminate our competition on Saturday and have a weekend of fun shoots and seminars. Here's the plan. We would have an official opening ceremony at 8am on Saturday morning in front of the "Big Top". We would have a schedule of events available throughout the day (as long as we have volunteers), novelties, arrow building classes, flint knapping, bow building and whatever we have instructors for. What we need now are qualified people willing to show others the secrets of their particular trade. I need to know in advance who is willing to host a trade class and will work out an appropriate time for your event. We will publish a schedule in advance announcing the class times. That way folks attending our shoot could plan their day and make sure they had an opportunity to make the classes they were interested in. The rest of the time they could be shooting one of our three 3-D courses or having fun with the novelties, visiting friends, swimming, or checking out the latest in archery gear with one of our vendors. My thoughts on this shoot initially were to allow a more relaxing atmosphere where we could all spend time doing the things we enjoyed the most. If you want to compare your shooting with a variety of bows, you could try shooting the same course with one bow, then another. If you are a novelty junkie like me, you can shoot novelties all day long. By the way, it looks like we will have the pop up targets available at this shoot. If you haven't shot them before you are in for a treat. I could shoot pop-ups all day long. If you are interested in bow building or some other archery/hunting related craft, hopefully we will have someone willing to show others the "how to's" and you could attend one of the sessions at the pre announced time. It would also be possible for anyone interested to hold a service on Sunday for those that usually miss out on Sunday's activities because of their desire to attend Church on Sunday. How about planning a Bar B Que with some friends on Saturday? You could easily do that now, at a time that is convenient for you. We would still have the coon shoot on Friday night. Can't have a shoot without a coon shoot. We would hold the raffles on Sunday at 1pm. The fun ranges would be open until noon on Sunday. This could be lots of fun. We already have one big shoot each year to determine the State Champion for each of the various classes. We don't need to hold two. This would also give the winners of the Spring Shoot much more status in my opinion. You would be the top dogs for an entire year, no question about it. If you think this is a terrible idea let me know, be prepared to tell me why though. I think this could be a way for us to have more fun and get to know one another even better.