Matt Fout
- Jun 30, 2018
- 3 min read

June 2018

To the Good People of OSTA,

We held our annual June shoot at Apache Bowhunters this year. A little change in the schedule from the past few years. Typically, during the fun shoot at Apache, we would see an average of around 80-85 shooters. Over the weekend we had 128 shooters with a nice turnout of youth and kids. Apache done a great job hosting with a great dinner Saturday and everything was ready to go for us. The river bottom area still doesn’t offer much shade but is growing up well and was very reminiscent of hunting in the thick brush of Canada and other thick areas of North America. I enjoyed it personally, even though it was pouring by the buckets. Loosing an arrow and watching it disappear instantly in a mist coming off the string and limbs was a pleasure to me. Hearing a foam hit was icing on the cake. (in some cases)

We held our business meeting Saturday. Thanks to everyone who donated items to be shipped to the troops. I know they’ll enjoy it. At the time of this writing we have 5 bows and several dozen arrows to ship as well as some armguards and other accessories. I’d like to keep this going as a joint effort between OSTA and vendors if possible. HOORAY! We had a nomination for secretary. Laura Smith accepted her nomination. Thanks Laura. Nominations are still open for the position of Secretary and President. The position of president will be open as I will be pursuing other things and cannot devote the time needed. We spoke of change and obviously a change is needed to grow OSTA. Some things have been set in place for change and more will come most likely but we need to grow with our sport to some extent while still maintaining our roots. The idea of going to different or clubs we went to in the past came up again. I have no problem with this and likely this will happen to some extent this next year. We can’t keep going to clubs that draw 25-50 shooters and expect to grow. Its time to move on, move past differences, move past things that happened decades ago with people who are no longer there and get on board with doing what we should be doing today. That is, promoting traditional archery, in our way, with our rules and try to appeal to todays crowd to keep OSTA alive. This will be discussed more at Ruchcreek.

Thanks to Paul and Chris for spearheading the construction of new kids arrows. I know there were several involved, and thank you all. This is the future. I know we loaned out several bows and arrows over the weekend which was a great thing. We had a good time fletching up arrows Saturday evening. As part of new business I asked the group if they thought it would be alright with them if I added in the new shoot contracts that at least one officer or executive committee/or equal group member with keys to all facilities be present during our shoot times. This has been a bit of an issue at some places and this should easily fix that. Members agreed.

There will be some detours for the State Shoot. Staddens Bridge road will be closed. Updated maps will be posted and signs put out accordingly. With the state shoot in mind, we will be looking for donations from vendors and folks for the raffle and the “Scott Gensert Memorial Kids Fund”. We barely met our goal for the kids fund last year so let’s not cut it so close this year, do it for the kids.