
It was springtime in Louisville, Kentucky, when the world record was broken. The setting was the 2013 NASP National Tournament, held May 9-11, 2013, and the venue was an indoor archery range that stretches an echoing 1,350 feet in length.
Thousand of targets, thousands of bows, tens of thousands of arrows, and — here’s the Guinness World Record part — a total of 9,426 archers lined up and standing feet sprawled sideways and zinging arrows down-range.
The event, billed as the largest-ever gathering of archers in one spot, was visual evidence to statistical data that shows target archery as one of the fastest-growing activities in the outdoors world, especially with youth.
An industry group, the Archery Trade Association, released the results of a new survey that reveals staggering growth. Participation in 2012 of youth and adults who shot an arrow at a target was cited at 10.4 million Americans — that’s about 4.4 percent of the entire population of the United States.
The Archery Trade Association further notes that a high percentage of target archery enthusiasts are under age 34, many of them high school students and younger. About one-third of all archers are female.

At GearJunkie this past fall we were introduced to the activity of target archery, which is not to be confused with bow hunting, via an industry connection. He arranged a meeting with a representative from Genesis Bow, a Sparta, Wis., brand and the makers of a particular youth-oriented bow that has sold by the hundreds of thousands of units over the past five years.




