Springfield hosts celebration today for state’s new official sport: archery

Missouri has an official state bird — the eastern bluebird. And an official exercise — the jumping jack.

There's even an official state fossil — the crinoid; and an official state dessert — the ice cream cone, which debuted at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.

Effective today, Aug. 8, the bow and arrow take center stage in the Show Me State when archery will be celebrated as Missouri's official state sport.

The 3 p.m. signing ceremony at Bass Pro Shops Archery Hall of Fame in Springfield is open to the public.

While several other states have official sport designations, Missouri is the first in the nation to claim archery as its official state sport.

Missouri State Rep. Tim Taylor, of Cooper County, sponsored the bill. He's a lifelong bow hunter and 4-H archery instructor with University of Missouri Extension and is passionate about expanding the sport.

He'll be on hand Monday, along with Missouri Department of Conservation Director Sara Parker Pauley and Dan Forster, vice president and chief conservation officer of the Archery Trade Association, to help mark the bill's passage.

State lawmakers approved it on the last day of the legislative session and Gov. Mike Parson signed it into law on July 1.

At Monday's event, several youth archers from the rapidly growing Missouri National Archery in the Schools Program (MoNASP) will be on hand to sign a ceremonial copy of the bill.  

“When you look at archery in Missouri, bowhunting is a big business in the state,” said Aaron Jeffries, MDC's deputy director. “Over 200,000 archers participate in the fall hunt every year.”

Missouri archers typically kill nearly 60,000 deer annually. 

Compound bow, other firsts in Missouri

According to MDC, archery has deep roots in Missouri.

The first official archery deer hunt took place in 1946 in Crawford County when 88 archers participated in a three-day hunt. Of course, Native Americans were the original archers, hunting deer and other game in Missouri for centuries before settlers arrived.

A Missourian invented one of the biggest advances in bow technology — the compound bow. According to MDC, Holless Wilbur Allen Jr., who lived in Kansas City and later in Billings, figured out a way to add pulleys to a bow to give it more power and make it easier to pull back and fire an arrow. He patented his compound bow device in 1966.

One of archery's biggest businesses — Hoyt Archery Company — got its start in 1931 in St. Louis. The company's competition-grade bows have been used in several Olympic Games archery events.

Thousands of Missouri youngsters also are taking up the sport through the fast-growing MoNASP program. According to MDC, more than 71,267 youngsters from 553 Missouri schools in grades 4-12 participated in the archery program and competitions during the past school year.

Nationwide, taxes on archery equipment have increased steadily over the past decade. According to the Archery Trade Association, federal taxes paid on archery gear rose from $35.9 million in 2010 to $65.9 million in 2021.

Some of that was propelled by new interest in archery from the “Hunger Games” movie series, and a strong move to outdoors sports during the recent COVID-19 years, according to the trade association. 

Wes Johnson

Wes Johnson has been a journalist for more than 40 years and has lived in Springfield since 2004. He's an avid sailor, hiker and nature lover. Have a good outdoors story idea? Johnson can be reached at 417-631-2168 or by email at wesdjohnson66@gmail.com. More by Wes Johnson

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