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Field Archery is so named because it is the style of archery used for thousands of years by our ancestors, when efficient use of the bow spelled the difference between life and death, both in hunt and warfare.

After the invention of gunpowder, archery, in civilized lands, was pretty well forgotten, only to be revived in England in the middle of the 19th Century in an entirely different and rather artificial form, advises John L. Yount, secretary of the National Field Archery Association. Where the bow originally had belonged to the rough and ready peasants, it now was used in a gentlemanly target archery contest by the aristocracy.

This game of target archery continued to be the only archery game until about 1935, when a small group in Redlands, Calif., started experimenting with games that called for the kind of shooting that the peasants had done in the old days when the chips were down and good shooting meant survival. That is, shooting without sight or point of aim at targets which have been placed at various distances in natural surroundings.

Even though the first field courses were crude affairs, it didn't take long to find that here was a game that would popularize the bow with a whole new section of the American public. It was a carefree game that required a great deal of skill, but it was a game, and not a contest. The targets were small and hard to hit, so a miss was no disgrace. Everybody missed, and a hit was a thrill! Furthermore, when you had learned to shoot a fair score on a course you could go hunting and expect to get your share of the game.

In 1939 the popularity of this new sport led to the formation of a National Association. The first president was A.J. Michelson of Flint, Mich. The first annual Field Archery championship was held at Allegan, Mich., in 1946.

The organization has grown from a half dozen clubs scattered through three or four states to one of over 800 clubs and 10,000 members, representing every state of the union and 17 foreign countries.