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Memories from my past

By Ed de Mateo

I was looking through some old pictures and I thought it would be neat to share them, and a little history with you.  When I started archery the old 4 and 6 wheel bows with limb-tip brackets were still common.  I remember my old six wheel Bear Polar Ltd, which had enough shock to rattle your teeth.  I also had a 35# wood recurve that I started shooting indoor leagues with.  This was back in the mid to late 1970s.  High performance two wheel bows started to become common, and sometime around 1980 I bought a Bear (I don't remember the model).  I shot Freestyle Unlimited for about 1 1/2 years.  These are pictures of me about a quarter century ago at the old club on 8th street, now long gone.

I decided that I really didn't care for shooting a release so I switched to Freestyle Limited.  I bought a pair of Hoyt Pro Medalist bows in 1983 and shot them until the late 1980s.  Back then we didn't have 3-D, and traditional archery had all but died.  However, regional shoots were as large as State shoots are now.  These are pictures from the 1984 Regional Target, I believe in Palm Beach County.

State tournaments had quite a large turnout.  The following pictures were taken in 1985.  The first two are from the Indoor Championship in Clearwater, Florida.  Notice the use of hay bales for the target butts, and also the length of the compound bows.  I remember that a door by the target butts was left open and the wind was blowing in, throwing the arrows off about the last 3 yards of flight!  Bows were slower back then and if you didn't catch on to the breeze coming in your scores were affected.  The media covered this one, and yes, that's me on TV.  Talk about feeling pressure and frayed nerves the next day!

The State Field has always been the big FAA event.  I have fond memories of tournaments in the old range in Gainesville.  Fred Bear used to go to the tournaments and talk to the crowd about his exploits, and then would mingle with us, autographing bows, etc.  He was really passionate about archery, and was a very interesting person.  Something unique happened one year.  While we were shooting in one of the ranges, law enforcement was practicing in their range next to where we were.  We heard their cars accelerate, screech to a halt, and then you would hear machinegun fire.  We weren't in any danger, but it did get our attention, to put it mildly.  The next morning the Chief of Police addressed the archers and apologized for the scheduling error.

I also remember the State Target Tournament of 1985 in Tampa, Florida.  Look at the picture of the shooting line and you will notice how long it was, and we were shooting full A and B lines.  Look carefully at the far end of the shooting line, this is where the big building stands today (seen in the last photo).

Around the end of the 1980s I gradually stopped shooting archery.  Not that I don't like shooting, it's just that it happens when you buy a house, get married and have children.  You don't even notice it.  One evening in late 2002 a good friend called me.  He said he was going to see an old friend of ours at the archery club and asked if I wanted to go.  My older daughter Rachel wanted to see the archery range so I brought her with me.  She showed a strong interest, and before I realized it I was back into the sport.  I don't shoot freestyle anymore because my eyes aren't as sharp as they used to be, and it's a pain having to constantly use glasses to adjust the sights, etc.  Also, technology has changed and I don't care to shoot the new equipment with fingers.  Eventually I found my way into the ranks of Traditional archery.  It's funny that the last FAA tournament I shot in the late 1980s was the Sunshine Games, and the first FAA tournament since getting back into archery in 2003 was also the Sunshine Games.