Toxophily in Lancaster

Except for the charge that it is childish, nothing so angers archers as the charge that their sport is effete, and the newspapers' habit of using almost no archery pictures except those of pretty girls. Actually, archery is among the most strenuous of pastimes. At the National Archery Association's 57th annual target meeting in Lancaster, Pa. last week, major object of attention was not pretty Jean A. Tenney of Clear Spring, Md., who won the women's championship on the meet's third day, but the 106-man shooting line for the 1937 men's championship. In this grueling three-day event, each contestant fired 468 arrows at distances from 40 to 100 yards (two York and two American rounds). Each shot was the equivalent of lifting 44 to 52 Ib.--average "weight" or pull of a longbow--holding it at arm's length for 15 or 20 sec. Fatigue and nervousness often cause '"archer's freeze" which paralyzes the bowman's arm, prevents him from lifting it to the point of aim. Immunity to "archer's freeze" is a major requisite for winning the U. S. championship which is thus almost as much a test of pure physical endurance as of marksmanship.

Winner of the 1936 title, Oilman Keasey of Corvallis, Ore., was not on the shooting line last week, but a majority of the other ablest U. S. archers had answered the Lancaster Archery Club's blanket invitation which started: "Come bend a bow with us at Lancaster this summer," ended with two lines from Kipling's Philadelphia (Rewards and Fairies)

The things that truly last when men and times have passed

They are all in Pennsylvania this morning.

Favorite for the title was a onetime Michigan lifeguard, Russell Hoogerhyde, 31, who, after winning in 1930, 1931, 1932 and 1934, retired to build up a profitable Chicago business in what true toxophilites call their "tackle." Hoogerhyde's proficiency with a bow & arrow really started in 1929 when he decided his form was bad. He shot 1,000 arrows a day for six months while slowly changing his arrow "anchor" grip from just behind his ear to under his jaw. Last week Hoogerhyde's rivals on the firing line were archers like Dr. Robert P. Elmer, the Wayne, Pa., physician who won the national title eight times, wrote the Encyclopaedia Britannica's article on archery and insisted on entertaining his rivals last week with bagpipe music every noon and evening; Captain Cassius Hayward Styles of Berkeley, Calif., onetime aviator who, after being shot down four times in the World War and ordered to live in the mountains to regain his health, took to bow & arrow hunting, now earns his living by making tackle; and Ed Miller, husky Buffalo, N. Y. Customs Officer, whose quiver was made from a moose's foot. Any one of these or most of the other amateur or professional toxophilites in the running for last week's championship could have given any aboriginal American archer a handicap and beaten him. Indian procedure in bow & arrow hunting was to stalk a quarry until practically on top of it instead of depending on long distance marksmanship. When each of the 106 ablest bowmen in the U. S. had shot his 468 arrows, Russ Hoogerhyde was champion again, 2,865 to 2,599 for Ed Pikula of Cleveland.-

Archery as a U. S. sport was started after the Civil War by Will and Maurice Thompson, two brothers whose record with firearms was so alarming that they were legally deprived of them. After a sojourn in the Georgia backwoods, where they gained their sustenance by bow & arrow, the Thompsons took separate paths. Maurice went to Indiana, wrote books on archery. Will went to Seattle, wrote The High Tide at Gettysburg, became attorney for James J. Hill. In 1878, reunited, they formed the National Archery Association. A minor sport for 45 years, archery began to boom suddenly in 1926, slumped in Depression, is now again expanding. This year the N. A. A. has more than 50 member clubs. Experts estimate that there are 300,000 archers in the U. S. C. Dr. William Orrin Robinson, Department of Agriculture chemist who discovered selenium in western wheat in 1930, shot four nines in the 180-yd. "clout shoot" --firing into the air at a wide target flat on the ground.

-Scoring: arrows in the gold bulls-eye count 9, red ring 7, blue ring 5, black ring 3, white ring i.

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