The Blacktail Coach Podcast
We're here to share tips, strategies, and stories of hunting the Pacific Northwest.
Whether you're a seasoned hunter or just getting started, we'll help you turn preparation into achievement and passion into results.
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
Form Follows Function: Lessons From Mr. Roosevelt, Smokey Crews
Meet Smokey Crews, a living legend in the bowhunting world whose journey from self-taught hunter to record book champion offers profound lessons for archers of all skill levels. Known as "Mr. Roosevelt" for his exceptional success with trophy elk, Smokey's story begins with a seven-year-old boy hunting squirrels alone with a .22 rifle, never having a mentor to guide him.
Smokey takes us back to the early 1960s, when he hunted the boundaries of Olympic National Park with his first bow – a $23 Ben Pearson recurve. His vivid descriptions of elk herds that modern hunters can only dream about transport listeners to a different era of American hunting. "If I had a chance to hunt elk then like I do now, I would hold world records," he reflects, sharing encounters with bulls that would have broken world records at the time.
What truly sets Smokey apart isn't just his impressive collection of record book animals, but his philosophy on archery excellence. Throughout the conversation, he emphasizes that good form and proper follow-through matter more than where the arrow lands. "The sign of a good shot is shooting with good form, regardless of where the arrow hits," he explains, a principle that has influenced countless archers, including podcast host Dave. This wisdom – focusing on process rather than outcome – offers a powerful framework for improvement that transcends archery.
Now 83, with neuropathy in his feet and two artificial hips, Smokey continues to pursue his twin passions of archery and fly fishing with remarkable dedication. His humility, combined with his encyclopedic knowledge of archery's evolution from traditional to modern techniques, makes this conversation an essential listen for anyone serious about improving their skills. Whether you're a seasoned bowhunter or just beginning your archery journey, Smokey's experiences provide both practical insights and inspirational fuel for your own pursuit of excellence.
Subscribe now to hear the remaining episodes with Smokey Crews and learn more from one of bowhunting's most accomplished practitioners.
Thanks for joining us for the Blacktail Coach Podcast. This is part one of three with Smokey Cruz. See you next week. Welcome back to the Black Tale Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron and I'm Dave. So today, as we've mentioned before, we have Smokey Cruise on, and there's going to be a lot of good stories and a lot of great advice. And we're really looking forward to this. I know a lot of the listeners, just from the comments you've left on the podcast, a lot of guys are really looking forward to this. So thank you for coming, talking with us.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely, Smoke. Thank you. No problem. I want to, I know I speak for myself and my family, a lot of people that you've taught throughout the years. You've not only been a mentor hunting, but I know for my family, we consider you an a net family, and we love you guys, and I'm so happy that we're able to do this interview. This is truly a blessing for me.
SPEAKER_00:Well, anything I can do to help you, just let me know.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so let's get things kicked off here. How did you get started in hunting?
SPEAKER_00:Is this like a family, like you learn from your dad or my dad worked all week long in the woods in a camp and he'd come home on weekends. Uh-huh. Never had time to take me hunting. I had an older brother, four years older than mine, and he'd hunt ducks or something once in a while, but he wasn't really into hunting. And I started thinking at squirrels and stuff when I was seven years old with a 22.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Over the year, I never had anybody to take me. And then I went into service and I come home a few years later, and first thing I had a friend that wanted to take me out elk hunting, and I shot a fork and horned bull the first day, and I didn't even know what end of the arrow I was shooting at him. And that would get anybody going. That guy I was hunting with, and him and I would hunt every weekend and elk season, and everything came along that was close at home. Mostly we lived in Central and we'd drive a hundred miles to go hunt elk because there was no elk where I was. Oh. And in the Centralia area, there was no elk at that time? No. Oh, really? Well, they might have been down toward PL or something. Uh-huh. And there was no elk there. I think they seen three or four elk that had come from way over on a far side, the north side of the Capitol Forest. Some farmer lived in a vicinity I did seen three bulls in his yard one spring, and that's the only time they ever seen elk there. Really? So I never really had access to elk or anything. And never had my dad was gone all the time, and he wanted to be at home and doing chores around the house and with mom, and I had three brothers, so there was all kinds of strings pulling on him. I just hunted by myself. I went everywhere I could by myself. I'd go up in the woods, spend three or four or five hours walking up in the hills and come home. And the next day I might go get a shotgun to go with ducks on a river a couple hundred yards from where we lived. Well, I never really had anybody teach me anything about hunting. Believe it or not, I had an old double-barrel Damascus twisted 12-gauge shotgun that was made in the 1910 or 12 or something like that. That's what I hunted with, and I couldn't use high-powered shotgun shells because we didn't know if the shotgun would hold together. And it had the great big huge hammers on. You had to pull both hands on it, just about to pull them back. And sometimes I had to pull the right, shoot the right barrel first because I shot the left barrel, but both of them would go off at the same time. So I just I just went my neighbors didn't care if I hunted around or behind their houses and any yard, fields behind their places or up on a hill. Or I never caused them no problem. I never went in their yard or shot up anything. And so mom and dad just let me run. I mean, I was six, seven years old when I got 22 to go hunting squirrels and or whatever I ran into, a grouse or a or a skunk or anything in the woods. I was and I'd get home when I got home. Mom, and it was the same with fishing. There was a river just a couple hundred yards from the house, and I'd go down there fishing. I'd dig worms in a field my uncle owned and fish all day, and mom wouldn't worry about it. She knew I was going to come home wet to the bone and uh half the time barefooted, but sometimes I'd have a little trout and sometimes I wouldn't, but they never worried about me where I went or what I did. And I just kind of grew up that hunting was all right and that I wanted to hunt as much as I could. And I hunted during rifle season for deer. I remember one time I took a bow out and hunted it. My brother had bought to use, and I snuck it out of the house, went hunting deer with a couple times, got myself beat up for it. For some reason, my brother thought I ought to ask. Yeah. And then I went in the military and I come home and went with that friend of mine from he was from Shahalas, and I was from Rochester, it's about 15 miles out of Centre area. We just started hunting up there together, and it was a bow and arrow season that we hunted. It was called the late archery season in December. And we hunted on the edges of the Olympic National Forest Park. And there were signs all over the trees saying park boundary, park boundary. So we just walked that park boundary, and there were just loads of oh, I mean, you couldn't go up there without running into elk sometime or another during the day if you walked along that boundary, or even if you strayed from it, went out into area you were supposed to be, you'd run into elk. We're talking 1962, okay, 1963 and four. It's a couple years ago.
SPEAKER_04:Two or three.
SPEAKER_00:I remember when I bought a Ben Pearson bow, recurved bow. The curve was on the end of the limb, about three inches long. Otherwise, it was a straight limb bow, except for that little curl on each end. It was a 50-pound, cost me 23 bucks. Fiberglass arrows had come in out about that time, and I I went in a Yardbird's there in Centre between the two cities, Centrea and Chehalas, twin cities, and I bought a dozen fiberglass arrows. And that was about the same time they were coming out and getting popular, so I bought fiberglass. It had high precision three-bladed broadheads on the arrows already glued up and everything. And I had to walk about a half a mile across the fields there where I lived to get to my neighbor's place and ask him if I could borrow Bale A to shoot at for practice.
SPEAKER_03:And you had to pack that hay all the way back.
SPEAKER_00:And uh he was an older man, him and his wife, and they were from Sweden, talked real broken English. But their son went to school with my son, my brother, my older brother, and uh graduated together out of high school. So they were like most people are when they know their neighbors, or kid wants to shoot a bale, hey, they'll do it. That's what happened. I can't remember exactly, but it was within the next year that there was a club in Centralia, Archery Club, and they had a couple of guys that would go to the fairgrounds and shoot indoors in a winter. I don't know how they swung it because it was a county fairground, and they were just a couple of private citizens, but they must have known somebody. It's been so long I don't remember. But we'd go to get together like every Wednesday night and go into one of them big fairground buildings and set up a couple of bales and shoot our bows and arrow. And they did a little tournament shooting. At that time, I never knew anything about tournaments. I was 21 or 22 then. And uh I had just got married and had a little boy, and so that's how I got started shooting a bow and arrow was with that guy I ran into, when we go elk hunting with him, was real friendly and stuff. We went elk hunting, we drove clean to Olympics, was 75 or 100 miles one way, and we'd drive up there and hunt, and sometimes we'd find a motel room for the night, and sometimes we wouldn't, and sometimes we'd drive home. But it was rare that we didn't go up there and get into herds of elk. If I had a chance to hunt elk then, like I do now, I would hold world records. I can remember the first day I went elk hunting, I did shoot a fork at hornbill. The next year I went hunting because I had an elk. So the next year I went hunting, the first day that second year, I missed a seven-point bull elk at 20 yards three times. I missed a six-point bull a few minutes later at 15 yards.
SPEAKER_01:And beginner's luck.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, the elk were thick. I mean, the first the first time I went up that year into hunting, I walked up this road where we parked the car because you couldn't go no farther. It was washed out. And I walked up past that about a half a mile and they came into being an old clear cut. It was just below a mountain called Mount Matheny Ridge. And it was up at the very end of Canoe Creek Road. And at the end of that road, you could look right up in the air, quite a few thousand feet, see the top of Mount Matheny. And there was it was a clear cut, probably a couple hundred acre clear-cut, but it had but the jack fur in it was thick, and they were probably 15 feet high, and it was raining like a like you're in a shower. And I walked around a corner on the end of the road, there was a herd of elk all over all around the end of it. I mean, you could hear them barking and beeping and bugling and everything all around the end of the road. Three of them were up on the hill, and I think at the time the world record was like a 260 or something like that, 280. Wasn't what you call a monster now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But there were three of them there. All three of them would have broke the world record at the time. And I decided to go down the hill because I didn't want to walk up the hill through all that jack fur and get soaking wet. And I walked down the hill and I'd hadn't gone 20 yards off the end of the road, and a whole bunch of elk ran by, and I took a shot at a cow and hit her in the back, in the back of the front leg, and it was underneath her armpit, and it finally cut enough that we found her down at the bottom. Of course it was down at the bottom. And then she crossed Martini Creek and died just on the other side, and it was a Chinook wind come up, and uh it was a foot or a foot and a half of snow. And by the time we could gut that cow out and drag her to the creek was raging, probably instead of halfway to your knee, it was halfway to your waist, top of your waist, and it was roaring down through there like a flood coming from Mount Masudas or something. It was a horrible day, a horrible flooded crick. So what we did is I had to scoot across on a log that was clean across the crick, right about where the cow would land. I scooted across there, set down a log and scooted inches of a time across that log, and then got off on the other side and butchered the cow out and put the stuff on my backpack and skiddied back across the crick. I had to do that because there was no way you couldn't get in a crick. Oh yeah. You couldn't get in a crick. Well we got the cow out. And there turned out to be two or three guys from Centre before it was over the years that I hunted with that hunted that same area. It was a good area. Every day we went up there, somebody got into the elk anyway. I don't never remember getting anything unusual for the area. I mean, it what was nowadays, if you'd have hunted, if I'd have hunted that nowadays, I'd have had a dozen record book bulls and six points and stuff. There was just elk everywhere. But we're hunting the border of the Olympic National Park. We only had to go walk a couple hundred yards through the timber to get to the boundary line, and all the trees on the boundary line, every tree that was on the boundary had a big yellow sign that says Olympic National Park. So you could follow them up or down or hunt between it and the road where we drove in on, or so you couldn't hunt in the park.
SPEAKER_01:Oh no, nobody. Oh, you still can't. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:No. It was the Olympic National Park. Yeah. And which is part of the Olympic mountain range. Yeah. But there was lots, there was lots of elk there. And I shot a deer there one time, and I couldn't find her. And it had run about 40 yards after I shot it. It was bounding, and I was falling in the track of the snow, because of about a foot of snow. And then pretty soon there was no tracks. I couldn't figure out what happened is she jumped, fell in a hole, and died in that hole. And then walked right by it and never figured out before dark. And it was just before dark that she'd win that hole. So the two of us went back the next day. I was hunting with a guy and walked right up there and looked down. Oh, there she is, because enough daylight you could see.
SPEAKER_01:So were you uh archery hunting from the start?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. When I got out of the military, I did. I shot a couple of elk with a rifle. Okay. I think even after I got out of the military, I hunted a couple times with a rifle because the same guy I started archery hunting one wanted me to go rifle hunting with him. But I didn't prefer it. And I think after about two years, I haven't done anything since. I okay. When I was taking bear hunters out and stuff, if they want to hunt with that, it's fine. But my idea of hunting ever since there has been archery. I mean, I don't care if a guy hunts with a gun. I got rifles and pistols and stuff, but they're in a safe a couple of them. I haven't even shot and they're brand new. And I've had them for five or six years.
SPEAKER_03:Smoke, you are a very accomplished hunter. You have multiple record book animals, not just elk and deer, but you know, mountain goat, black bear, caribou. You and Annette have done everything. And you were Mr. You're known as Mr. Roosevelt in the record books. So how did you go from that to nothing now?
SPEAKER_00:At my age, I can't do nothing. So how'd I get there? I mean, just old age.
SPEAKER_02:Just because you were self-taught. What do you attribute that separated you from everybody else?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think I was just a year or so after I was out of the military and married my wife, and we had a kid on the way. I moved to Centre, started working for warehouse in a plywood. And they had a really active club here in town, and I wanted to shoot my bow and arrow, and I ran into a couple guys that were leaders in that club, you might say, and they did it. And so I ran into them and they invited me to join the club, and I did. I'm kind of a if I get hooked on something like archery, I'm hooked on it. I don't try and look at rifle hunting anymore. I try and look at archery and figure out how to hunt archery and be successful. I put way too much time in it as a husband and a worker to try and make a living and be a good family mind too, meaning that I push my limits all the time with the family and any spare time I got. It cost me two or three wives. I'm on my third wife, and her and I have been married for 40, about 43 years.
SPEAKER_03:You had to think about that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I got to say it was 82 and it's 25 now, so it's 23 years. Good at math. That's the only thing I was good in school is math. I was good at getting my button beat, and so on. I'm the kind of a guy that if I like fishing, I like flying. I started out fishing with gear, drift fishing, and I learned how to do it. Then I bought a bunch of flies in Japan when I was in Japan in the military and brought them home. And I think I paid 50 cents for 50 flies. Oh, yeah. They were on a cardboard box, and I brought them home. And I my wife and I moved back close to where my father and mom lived, maybe a mile or so from them. And there was a little place called Black River out by Rochester that ran by the house. And I went out there one night and threw a few flies out there. And the first fly I tried was a gray ghost streamer, and a fish stole the fly, and I was mad. I went back to the house and got another gray ghost, went back there and cast it out again. Another fish came by and stole it. And I think it hooked me. And I never fly fished seriously for several years after that. In 2021, I wore my hips out, and the doctor said I needed new ones. So while I was recuperating, it took about seven months to get them replaced. I started fly fishing on the Calyx River, and I'm still fly fishing on the Calyx River. In fact, I built a fly or two just minutes before I left the house to come here. And I'm very addicted. I got about nine fly rods, I think, in the house and shop. I've got probably three or four hundred flies that I've built over the years. And some of them work, some of them don't. And the ones that don't are the ones I didn't catch a fish on. The ones that do work is the one I did catch a fish on. So I'm addicted to that too. Forty years ago, my wife and I got married, and she's my third wife, and she's just addicted to fly fishing and archery hunting as I am. Fortunately for me and for her both, because I can't and don't want to stop fly fishing. I can't and don't want to stop archery hunting. Now I archery hunt, but uh I'm 83 years old. I got neuropathy of my feet. I can't feel nothing from my legs down. I got a brace on each leg. I've had two artificial hips, and I can tell you about 15 other operations I've had over the years, and it starts at my big toe and runs all the way to my throat, and actually all the way because I had my eyes laser twice.
SPEAKER_03:So you're practically brand new.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm just a couple of screws short of having all new parts. We can build it. And I would have liked to have a dad to hunt and fish with my dad liked to hunt, but he just didn't have time to hunt with us kids. And my older brother didn't like hunting like I did. And I'd go fishing by myself, I'd go hunting by myself. And if I could get my brother in a position where I'd get him down and put his arm behind him, I would. But when I let him go, he'd kick the crap out of me. I'd go back and do it the next time I got, and I'm still that way. I can remember my brother get me down and make me promise I wouldn't fight him. And he'd let me go and he'd get up and walk off, and I'd jump up and act like I was a hound dog trying to bite him. I'd ride on top of him again. But I'm I I'm kind of a dictat. I played football and basketball and baseball in school, and I ran in track in school and in grade school. We didn't have track until I senior year, and I was too busy playing football and basketball and baseball to play track, but didn't because I wanted to. So I've kind of been an outdoor person, athlete, and tried to become a really good artist. I shot so many tournaments, 3D tournaments. In fact, you want to know the truth? I shot in the very first 3D tournament they ever had in the state of Washington. I shot on the very first 3D targets it as ever made. They were made in this state by a guy named, oh my, why would guy ask me that? Well, anyway, it was he he worked for tax Jonas Taxidermas in Seattle, and he got the molds and brought them home and to his home and made a bunch of rubber deer and elk and moose targets and stuff, and then he rented them out to Vancouver Archery Club. And I went up there and shot the very first 3D tournament, those targets ever been shot on, and nobody had ever had a 3D tournament for that. Now, Vancouver had built some cardboard targets that and where they were three or four inches thick where they had layered the cardboard together. And they even had a caveman that was probably 15 feet tall that they had made. And so as far as a flat cardboard, yeah, they had those two, the only club in the state that had them. And then we started shooting those 3D targets in there, and it just started taking off. Other clubs got that guy to bring his targets over, and then they started getting the molds and making their own targets, and that was in the state of Washington. I don't know what they had in California at the time, but I have gone down to California and shot twice in the world team championships down there in Fresno, California, and now it's Reading. Fresno don't have that. Reading kind of took it over, and I never did go to Reading and shoot, but I've shot, Dave knows, I've shot with Dave in lots of tournaments. And I don't like to shoot 3D if you really want to know the truth. If I have a preference, I would shoot a bullseye target. One I started out when I started Archery, they didn't have 3D targets. They'd have a piece of paper up there and you'd shoot a dit with an NFAA target, but it wasn't a wasn't a 3T target. And then they years later, four or five or six years later, I can't remember when Vancouver came out with it, and other clubs develop a way to have 3Ds by renting them. So I I went all over shooting tournaments every weekend for all during the summer and spring when you get out. And uh that's about the time I lost my first wife. Pretty soon they started shooting 3D targets solely, all over. You can't go to a a bullseye target now, and they're the people just don't make money in their club when they have a bullseye target or a field face, you might say. They have to be 3Ds. That's because the only guys that'll go to tournaments are the ones shooting 3D, they don't want to shoot bullseye targets. I started out shooting field faces. Uh-huh. I'd rather shoot a field face tournament than I would a 3D face because when you shoot at a bullseye target or a field face, you shoot four arrows each position. You have to be a better shot to shoot and hit good scores at a field target than you do an animal target. Over the years, I haven't practiced for 3D targets. I have been almost strictly a bullseye shooter, but I go to the 3D tournaments because there's nothing else to go to. And I I've never had to practice to be happy with the way I'm shooting when I go to a 3D tournament. Now, I could have said to be a winner of the best score at them 3D tournaments or something like that, but I wasn't concerning on beating everybody else. I was concerned about getting a score I wanted to. And if I didn't shoot the best score of the tournament, that wasn't important. Because I had my standards, I still have my standards, what I think I can shoot. And if I can shoot above them standards, or at least equal to them when I go to a tournament, whether it's a bullseye tournament or 3D tournament, I'm happy. Dave and I have shot enough tournaments, indoor, outdoor, that he understands that. He understands how I am.
SPEAKER_01:And I'd say a lot of that's rubbed off on Dave and how he's approached, just with doing the hunting because it's not that competitiveness with others, competitiveness with yourself, and wanting to improve what how you're doing. And that's a lot of how Dave approaches things. He wants to he's not competing.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm tickled pink that that's the way he's competing, because personally I have a feeling in me that that's the only way to really become a better archer is to compete with yourself. Because sure, you could go shoot against Levi Morgan, and if you were really really good that day, you might be able to come within 50 or 70 points of shooting good, shooting, overshooting him. But I can I've gone to I remember one time I went to a tournament in Olympia, and it was a state champion, and I'd shot against everybody in our class. There was about 50 people in my class, and we were 3D, we were bare bow shooters, three fingers under or one above, two below, corners of mouth, or whatever. And when it was over, my son and I were walking back to the truck, and a guy I had knew and have shot in the same tournament with him over a period of years asked me what I shot, and I can't remember what I said. He said, Well, that's pretty good. He said, You're about 15 points above everybody else. And I to toot my horn, I said, Well, I guess it's good, but there's nobody here to compete with me because I've beat everybody here every time I've shot against them in the last few years. But it doesn't mean that I'm better than for one to be uh a good shooter, and Dave understands this because we kind of taught each other a few things about this. We shot in a tournament one time, and and uh when it was over, Dave said something about the score, and I said, Well, if you want to know how what I think about it, come down to the archery range in town and I'll shoot with you. But we'll shoot indoors, we're gonna shoot with bullseye targets, we're not gonna shoot with 3D targets. And so we did. And but he had never had that much experience except with me and a few other guys and stuff that he went out on his own shooting tournaments when I wasn't there.
SPEAKER_03:And I don't know if anybody this was the beginning of a very long group therapy that I had to attend after this. He was in my rig crying afterwards.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I'm sorry I didn't make you make you cry. He says, Okay, I'll meet you there. So we went down to Bob's sporting goods in Longview and shot during the week sometime just him and iron. And he shot a 265 on an indoor bullseye target, and I shot at 290 or 292, something like that. And that was pretty close to my best. And he says, I beat you in the 3D tournament, and he says, How did you beat me in this tournament this morning? I said, Well, Dave, it's just the way you look at it. A 3D target, you have a spot about a foot or bigger every time you shoot at a 3D animal. On a bullseye target, you got a target about from an inch to two inches, and you gotta put four arrows in that target to be to shoot good score. On a three, you got one. And you got a bigger bullseye, even though you're guessing the distance most of the time, but it's easier to hit a good score on a 3D than it is a bullseye target. Because you got to shoot four arrows in a good area, and you're gonna get one in a bullseye target, uh in an animal target. And so it wasn't long. Dave was shooting perfect scores, 300s indoors, because that's the kind of a guy he is. If he thinks he should be shooting or doing something better than he is, but he finds out he isn't that good, he goes out and works until he can become that good. And that's what he did. He went out and shot and practiced and he learned how to shoot better form, better follow-through, better release with his hand or trigger, whatever he was shooting, fingers. And pretty soon he was at that category he wanted to be. And that's one of the nice things that that I think Dave deserves a lot of respect for. Most guys wouldn't do that the way he did it.
SPEAKER_03:I would say the smoke. I attribute that to you. Having so the way we kind of met, you had some electrical work that, and I may be telling on myself here, so hopefully there's no electrical inspectors listening. But you had some electrical work. I was gonna do a job for you, and we ended up spending most of our time while I was working, we just kind of sat and talked. And something you said to me that day has stuck with me ever since. And I'm gonna say it, and it's gonna make total sense to everybody listening. But it was like the light just came on, and I started thinking about things uh in our archery club. But what you said to me was, Dave, if you want to get good at something, then you need to talk to somebody who's already good at it. That's who you need to be listening to. Hunting wise, you and I both know, uh and Aaron, you know it as well. There's a lot of egos out there, and everybody wants to come across as I've got the biggest buck or the biggest bull or the most or whatever. And so there's a lot of puffing of the chest and whatnot. But the guy that brings the receipts. The guy that you know has, I mean, I walk into your house, Smoke, and it's like a tribute to record book animals. I mean, they're just all over. So when you say something, I tell guys all the time, if Smokey's talking to you and he said, you better be listening because the guy brings the receipts. And I gleaned that from you that day, and I was so pumped to spend the afternoon with you. That I come home to my wife, and I just I was all sky, and I was just telling her, Yeah, we spent all day we talked about this and this and this, and he oh, it's so cool and everything. And that kind of started. I knew of you before that, but that kind of started our friendship.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, it was after you started uh as an electrician.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so boy, it must have been early 2000s.
SPEAKER_00:Would you say, Smoke? Oh, could have very well been that. Yeah, I would say uh yeah, well even before that, because I'd say closer to the 90, because I started sh shooting a release about that same time.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, did you?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I remember you shooting fingers. I remember you shooting fingers, but it wasn't much longer before I started shooting a release, a trigger release. And then it hasn't been that long since I started shooting a thumb release and shooting at like back tension.
SPEAKER_03:Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00:So I went through three phases of archery tournament shooting and practice that every time I went into a different phase, it was like opening a different world to me in archery because I got better at the shooting of targets, I got more higher scores. I enjoyed doing the shooting better because I felt that it was doing it correct better each time I changing from fingers to uh trigger release to a back tension release. Every time I did it, I was learning how to shoot better form, better follow through. And the release of the arrow when I pulled a trigger or I pulled the back tension back through until it went off just amazed me. And it still amazes me about how good it feels to shoot without having that apprehension of jerking or twitching or pulling my hand away from my face or something. I shot better form, better follow-through, and I felt better about the way I shoot when I went into a different phase. A lot of people never learned that, I guess. But actually, when I started shooting, you go to a tournament and there was 50 to 70 percent of them were through finger shooters. And then as a time went on, they had better trigger shooters, and then Stanis Strawski came out with his back tension release, and it exploded at about the same time he came out with his back tension release. I used to shoot with guys that could shoot 300s with their fingers indoors. How frustrating is that when you can't do it. We had guys in the 70s and 80s that were finger shooters that shot so good. I mean, they held world records. I got to shoot with a lot of world champions and state champions. In fact, all the tournaments I went to here in Washington, there was some kind of a state champion or some kind of a winner for years. Then I went down to Fresno, California with a couple of my friends and shot in the Fresno shooting. Then I ran into the world champions that were one of the first nationals I shot through in Darrington was the world champions, not the national champion. They had people from all over England and all over the world, and after the shooting, everybody'd be out to practice range shooting, and sometimes you'd be over there helping a guy from England, or he'd come over and ask you how to how you shoot the way you do it, or you use two fingers, three fingers, or whatever. And so I I kind of feel myself lucky that I got to run into some of them people that brought our tree to where it's at right now. I meet guys like perfect 300 shooters quite often. I don't get to go to tournaments anymore because I can't walk around the ranges, but if I go to a 3D range, I talk to guys that are shooting 299s, 300s. One of the big things with those guys are they know they can shoot 300s or 299s, so they're trying to shoot instead of shooting 15xs or trying to shoot 27 or 28x's in a in a 30-round target. If you rub elbows with them people long enough or anything any enough, you're finally going to get caught up in some of that. Yeah. And learn from them. And sometimes they even humiliate you by coming over and asking you how you did. I've won a lot of national state championships. I remember when I went and shot in three national championships in Darrington. I shot in the world team championships twice in Sacramento, but there were 3D tournaments in a red, like Reading format. I ran into them guys when you were shooting in Reading, Darrington for the Nationals, or if you were in Reading shooting for the World Team Championships, there was a lot of them guys you could rub elbows with. And I remember first one time, I think it was the second time I was down to Reading, the first target of the course, I was on about 10 or 15 on a course target, and that was where I began that day. And there was a 60-yard tiger down there, paper target, because that's what they were using at the time. And there was 15 guys on my target, and that and me, 16 otherwise. And there were two men to a team. Only one who wasn't a world or a national champion was myself. So I started out shooting with 15 national and world champions that day, and it's little old me from Longview. And believe it or not, I seen something I'll never forget. I seen all, and this was a 60-yard target at a tiger. That's a size four target in national class. These guys are national world champions, every one of them. And I every one of them missed a tiger, their first shot. I couldn't believe it. I've never seen like that since. Why? I don't have no idea. But I seen Ben Rogers and all the guys, and Ben Rogers, I don't know how many times he was a national bare bow shooter, and he missed it, and he was on the range with us. And I got up there and I said, Well, I know damn good and well I can hit that because I don't miss it at home, and I missed it. So all 16 of us. And then after that, there was, well, I don't, there was guys that never missed a target. I guess it was just, I guess it, I guess you could just say it was tension or something. A little bit of nerves. I seen Ben Rogers go somewhere on that tournament. What like about it was about a 30-yard target. Shot four arrows, and he walked back behind the guys who were shooting and was standing there, and one of them walked up to him. He says, I'm sorry to tell you, Ben. You didn't get a score on that. He says, Why do you mean? He says, Because you shot at the wrong target. You had certain targets that you right or left or upper head. And he thought, I'll just tighten up and shoot better. And he won a tournament. I mean, give me a break. That's funny. I've seen Archery grow from bullseye targets to whatever it is now. I actually don't like the different kinds of tournaments you see. And I'm not knocking Levi or Morgan or any of those guys that are shooting ASA and ABC and DAB and all that other type of tournament classes. Because when you went to a tournament when I was growing up shooting a tournament, you had blackface targets, which is the same as a field target, but it just had a solid black face but a white spot on it. But had the same scoring range, you just couldn't see them until you got up to the target. And it had field targets. And then you had paper animal targets on the last day. That was at the Nationals. So now you don't know you're going to be shooting at animal targets, rubber ones or paper ones. And so when I watch those tournaments, I watch to see how because they do run a cameras right up to the guy's face and the bow. And they'll have him in it encapsulating him in every picture in a movie. And I watch how that guy draws a bow, how he sets his chin up next to the string and lines his eye up with a peep if they got a peep. Sometimes you bare bow don't. And there is a couple young guys that's coming up now that have beat people. Bo Turner, right here, Vodie Turner, right here in Washington, is one of the best shooters in the world. And he's only about 20 or 22 years old now. And he was 15 or 16 when he won Vegas and beat all the top shooters. But I watched the form and the follow-through and the the way they execute their shot. And as far as I'm concerned, if you don't execute a shot, I can see what you're doing wrong. I almost always, if they miss a bullseye, I can tell you whether they flinched and why they flinched, or if they jerked the trigger, if they didn't pull their elbow back and follow through right, I see that. Because that's what I'm looking for. It's not as important to see them hit the bullseye as it is to see them make a whole process. But when you go to a tournament or shoot indoors in our own little shoot, and I used to go up there almost every weekend when I wasn't shooting, I still sat there and watched the guys. If they asked for help, I'd help them. And then there were sometimes guys that shot better than I did would ask for help. I said, Hell, I can't help you. You shoot better than I do. So you know, a lot of people don't think about them things. Right, yeah, right. A lot of people because if they thought about what I had said as an answer and evaluate it, they would probably some a percentage of them would realize what I was getting to and understand. But Dave knows this very well that 50% or 60% of the guys in there have no clue. They fling arrows, they and they ask for help, and they'll work hard right there that day, but they go out and shoot three or four times more at Bob's during the week before they come back, shoot with a group. When they get back, everything's gone in one air and out the other.
SPEAKER_03:See, that's I would say that's that's one thing I learned from you, Smoke, that hitting the bullseye is not necessarily the sign of a good shot. The sign of a good shot is shooting with good form, regardless of where the arrow hits.
SPEAKER_00:And that includes follow-through. Yep. And if you have excellent follow-through, excellent form, you're going to be a good shot. Because practice form follow-through is what makes Levi Morgan, Dan McCarthy, and all of them guys.
SPEAKER_03:It's 100% repeatable.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard them say that in a podcast. I'm going to get him on podcasts or walk up to him in a shoot and say, What are you going to do here? Well, I'm going to shoot best form I can and try to do the shot the way it's supposed to be done. And then I'll have a chance. I remember one time we had a shoot at Portland and it was a pop-up target shooter. And Jim Jones was a kid named. He was a kid that I'd shot with a few times in the tournament, and he wanted really to be winner. He wanted to be a real good winner. And I'd watched a show a few weeks before the show at Portland and asked Tim Strickland how he won the indoor nationals at Vegas. And he says, strictly foreman follow-through. He said, every time I'd go up to I'd say, now shoot foreman, follow-through. Shoot foreman follow-through. He said, I'd tell my they every shot. And he says, I did win and I did hit the targets, but because I couldn't get my head off of shoot form and follow-through, because I know that's what makes you a winner. And if you haven't got that, you aren't going to win. And I remember when Jones got up on the stand and started shooting them pop-up targets. He asked me for help and I said, Well, if only thing I can help you with, I said, every shot you take, remember follow-through. If you're not shooting good, follow-through. I said, shoot good form and follow through. He won that tournament. And it was a free hunt somewhere for a one-week hunt, someplace in Oregon, is what the prize was for winning. But he came down to me afterward. I felt really good about it and thanked me. And I said, no, you just, you just remember it's not me. You were doing the shooting, and you did shoot good form, and you did shot good follow-through. And so you weren't jerking your shot. You were releasing it and getting away from it like you should have. Just remember that. That's what you I've always tried to help people. I can remember being at the Nationals with a guy that is one of the top shooters in the United States when it comes to shooting animals. He's killed every manual in North America, big game category, twice. Once with a compound and once with a recurve.
SPEAKER_03:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:He's written books that cost$500 to buy his book. And he also has a book that he puts out paperback, charges you$150 or$200 for. I can't remember. And I shot with him in the Nationals back there in 1985, I think it was. Worst shot I ever seen in my life. And he had asked me all day, he says, How do you shoot like that, Smoke? So I'd show him how I anchor, how I got my fingers on his string and everything else. And the next target we go up, he says, How did you do that? And then we did that for all day long. I was so mad at him. By the time I got done shooting that day, I was hoping nobody'd ever tell me where he was the rest of the week and shooting. And I still know the guy, and he still can't hate himself. But his point of aim is so low on his, his aim on anchor is so low on his point of mate out there is 107 yards at the point of his arrow where he pulls it at 108 yards. Well, you had to shoot pretty damn good form follow-through, shoot 108, 100 some yard shot. And then he's one of the top killers, you might say, hunters in North America. And I don't want to say his name because I don't, I might get sued. But as far as I'm concerned, he's probably the worst shot I've ever seen in my life. But he pins poo money to go all over the world to hunt. And he's had some sterling incidents when he's hunting. Animals charge him and polar bears, grizzy bears, brown bears. But he can't hit himself. He killed a sh dull sheep, spent six hours crawling up to it, and shot it at eight yards. Oh my goodness. Because he could have taken the shot earlier, but he couldn't hit. Damn thing, he knew it too.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for joining us for the Blacktail Coach Podcast. This is part one of three with Smokey Cruz. See you next week.
