Introducing My 3 Year Old Daughter to Archery

Over the past couple of months my daughter and I have been spending time together at Hamburg Game Association. It all started on a whim when I wanted to shoot a 15 Target 3D Archery Course on a Thursday Night. My wife was in school and I didn’t have a babysitter. So, I did the only thing I could, I brought her along with me.

I didn’t know what to expect during that first outing. Would my daughter get bored and want to leave? Would she get loud and distract other shooters? As it turns out, she loved walking through the woods and helping me hunt for foam animals. In fact, it was all she talked about for days.

Since that very first outing together, we’ve been back to the club as often as possible. In between visits, I’ve been searching long and hard for a way for her to get her own bow and shoot with me. Finding a bow for a three year old girl is a lot harder than it seems.

After hours of searching, all I could come up with were ‘My First Bow Sets’ designed for children five and older. I even went as far as tracking down my cousins old little pink compound bow. Unfortunately, the draw weight was both too long and too heavy. I was about to give up and just order a traditional youth bow for her, knowing that I would have to do most of the work, when I turned to the Archery Talk Forums.

I got some great suggestions for bows that might work for her but one man went above and beyond. I was contacted by a guy that I had never spoken to and he offered to send me his daughters little traditional bow. As it turns out, his daughters were all older and he had no use for it. Not only did he send me the bow, in which he turned down my offers to pay for – shipping included, he sent along four arrows.

While the bow was in transit, I headed over to Amazon to order a set of Finger Savers and a Youth Quiver. Everything arrived at about the same time and my daughter was ecstatic. We spent a little time going over safety (most notably that she wasn’t to use the bow without me with her and that the dog wasn’t a moving target) then we shot a few arrows.

My daughter is very independent and wanted to do it herself but she struggled a bit. She couldn’t quite get the hang of drawing the bow back without the arrow popping off the shelf. Even so, she had a huge smile on her face the entire time we were flinging arrows into the grass.

It wasn’t easy, but we are finally setup to shoot together. The hard part now is finding an active club to continue our hobby. I’ve got a couple of clubs in mind but, to be honest, I really wish Hamburg would continue to shoot during the Fall and Winter.