After a long cold winter for much of the country, lots of archers will be eager to get outside as the weather breaks. While target archers are likely already getting prepped for outdoor target and field competitions, there are always bowhunters looking to up their game and send more arrows down range in the off season, and 3D archery is the perfect solution. These men, women and kids may not have interest in buying a new bow to shoot foam animals in the spring and summer months, but with a little bit of guidance and some time on the course, they’ll begin to look for small tweaks that will make their shooting more enjoyable and pick up a few extra 10-rings. This is a great opportunity as an archery pro shop to build a relationship with a customer while opening up the door for service and accessory sales in a time of year that often sees low sales numbers.
Here are a few ways to help get your bowhunting customers shooting more this off-season by hitting the 3D course with their hunting rig.
Taking 5-10 pounds of draw weight off should be achievable by most archers without the need for different modules or limbs and will make longer sessions much more enjoyable. If anyone is nervous about making a change to their hunting weight, offer to take a precise draw weight and shoot the bow through a chronograph with their hunting arrows prior to making any draw weight reduction. You can then record this information and can get the customer right back to where they started when hunting season gets closer. Along with the drop in draw weight, the bow setup might warrant a slightly weaker spined arrow shaft. This is a great opportunity to present options that are also lighter in weight to keep up the bow’s speed at lower draw weights. Keeping the speed similar should help the archer maintain a consistent feel and transition from one setup to another more easily.
I’ve helped a bunch of bowhunters select accessories for a new bow purchase, and many of them base their peep sight selection more on color than whether it helps them see the target and aim. 3D archery is a great way to prepare for hunting because of the varying light conditions and target colors an archer encounters. That also means it will be a great test for anyone’s peep and sight combination. Make sure to talk to archers about peep options, especially those that allow for different apertures, verifiers and clarifiers. Getting a new peep sight might just get them thinking about a new bow sight as well. Movable sights with 1-pin or 3-pin housings provide a cleaner sight picture for most archers, which usually equates to better shooting. Just make sure the archer knows about equipment restrictions in Bowhunter classes if they are participating in more competitive tournaments.
Bow setups that belong to diehard bowhunters often have two “less than ideal” accessories: a tiny little stabilizer and strings that are far beyond their useful life. Both of these result in reduced stability for the archer. Have some hunter class stabilizer setups, especially options that offer a side bar or ability to offset weight to the back and side of the bow, out of the package for customers to demo. These setups provide great benefits for 3D archers and hunters alike, but they can be pricey so it’s a tougher sell unless the archer has felt the difference. Another way to help keep things steady is getting a good set of string and cables on the bow so that the draw length, draw weight and cam timing stay right where you put them. Not only will this change help the customer shoot better throughout the summer months, but it will also prevent them from being caught up in the pre-hunting season backlog that happens every year when everyone decides they need new strings in July or August.
Getting customers shooting more in the spring and summer is always a good thing for archery pro shops. Bowhunters can experience great benefits from maintaining solid form exercising those archery muscles, but they also might start to notice areas in which their equipment could use some tuning or upgrading. Encouraging these archers to get out and hit the woods for some 3D archery is one of the best ways to keep fun while also closely mimicking the conditions they encounter in the hunting seasons. Recommending some new accessories that provide big improvements makes the customer happy and positions your shop as the go-to source, not just for gear but for help.
Looking for more ideas on how your archery pro shop can become the center of a thriving archery community? Check out the ATA Learning Center where you can get access to industry specific content on business operations, marketing and utilizing partnerships to grow your business.
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