CRAZY Archery Shop Stories
General Topic
What is the funniest thing you have heard from an archery retailer. You know, the statements that are made that make no sense from a guy who can ring a cash register but nothing much else.
I was in one yesterday and the guy was telling a customer he needed a certain arrow "in case he wanted to head out west, to like Ohio, and hunt elk".
Sounds like something you'd hear at Walmart.
Heard a guy at a gun counter tell another customer that when shooting a rifle you didn't want to be too close to your game. Reason being because the bullet was still accelerating the farther it got away from the gun and itneeded to reach top speed before it hit your target animal.
Wtf??
Not in a shop but I once shot in a big trad 3-d shoot with a guy who let us know up-front that he worked in the Bass Pro "pro shop".
The other three of us were very proficient and were drilling targets. This guy couldn't hit the ocean. His setup was terribly tuned. As he scratched around looking for his fourth miss in six targets he turned to us and said,"Well, that's traditional archery.."
Had a guy put on new winners choice strings on my bow. He put them on backwards and I told him he didn’t do it right. He said “yea I did..draw it back.”
I couldn’t even draw the bow back.
He said “they must have built the strings to the wrong length “
I bought my own bow press after those days and haven’t looked back.
Not the staff, but I was in a BassPro in SoCal picking up some odds and ends and couldn't help but overhear a conversation between an "old bowhunter" and a couple young guys looking to buy bows to hunt with and hear his "advice." Among other things, he said the most important thing in bowhunting was good camoflage. The conversation that ensued and what happened after were ridiculous and I've meant to make a thread about it for a while, as after I called him out for his BS, he went to town on me for being the whippersnapper that I was because he'd been "Bowhunting" so long. Turns out, I bowhunt more in any given year than this guy had in any decade of his life and kill more animals in a year than he had his entire life. But he was old, so he knew better.
"I bought my own bow press after those days and haven’t looked back."-- Yup:-)
There was a customer wearing a body brace. He'd recently fallen from a treestand for the third time and, this time, had broken his back. He never wore any kind of fall protection.
He was going to go out hunting with his broken back and his body brace... with what I would think would be zero possibility of drawing his bow and hitting anchor...and no form of fall protection.
Was at a shop a few weeks ago, the manager was telling me about a guy that brought in his brand new xxxxxxx bow that he had just bought. Bow was all derailed strings/cables eveywhere etc. Customer says “don’t know what happened, I have not even had a arrow through it yet” tech says “yeah, you have shot this bow, this doesn’t just happen” customer: “nope, don’t even have any arrows for it yet, just been pulling it back and practice shooting with it”
Ummmmmmm, warranty just voided ;)
—Jim
Christ, I think anyone who's been in the sport for a while could write a book on the subject. More bullsh*t in this industry than the used car sales business. Below are some of the gems I've had said to me:
"Seriously, you just sprinkle this stuff on the ground and the bucks come out of the hills right then to get a taste!"
"This guy is amazing. He instinctively shoots golf balls at 100yds" (talking about a trad archer)
"A guy I sold this to...sprayed this on his boots and walked to his stand. The buck came in from down wind, followed the path he walked in on, licked his boot tracks, and then started licking the rungs on his ladder! This sh*t works!!"
"Just spray yourself down with this stuff...I had a P&Y buck directly downwind of me last year and he had no idea I was there. This sh*t works!!"
Don't really have any stories from shop owners, just some of the patrons.
One of which is the brute force from a mechanical prior to the blades deploying - practically knocks an animal off its feet.
A young guy working in an archery shop was telling me that actually these new turkey calls are amazing and quite well respected. I asked for a demo because I have never seen this type of call and had no idea how to use it. He proudly opened it up and give it a try, said he needed one open for a shop demo anyhow. Did not sound like a turkey at all, no one in the shop could make it work. Owner said he'd call the rep and get it figured out. These guys are normally good, but you better know what you need or they will tell you what you want to hear and sell you whatever they have in stock. That same kid also pushes Rage.
My hunting partner and his dad were in the BassPro shop in Springfield MO years ago. Before they ziptied all the bows down to prevent drawing without assistance. His dad picks a bow off the rack and pulls it back...and lets go of the handle...8^0 It smacks him in the face! Blood everywhere!!! They clean him and the mess up, slap some bandages on him and send them on their way! LOL!!!
I went to warranty or buy a new set of limbs last month for a bow that's been on the hill over 400 days since I bought it. After a half hour of giving the guy information for his computer system, he asks who's my cell service provider! I couldn't believe it. Needless to say, I walked out of there.
Brought my bow to Scheels. The guy asks for my name and my number. I even offered to pay for the new set. Calls me later that afternoon saying they will warranty them and send a new set of bearings for the cams! A week later I get a call saying they cam in.
There's still nothing like good old fashioned service both from Scheels and the manufacture to remind you there's hope in the world still.
Cheers, Pete
Not a story, but still kind of funny. When my GF wanted to upgrade her bow we went to a shop for her to shoot some. At the time she was shooting a PSE Brute X and had been for about 4 years. She wanted to try an Evolve. I asked the shop owner if she could shoot the Evolve and he literally said "That's too much bow for her, but I have a really nice pink stinger she could try" needless to say we took our business elsewhere.
P.S. she shoots her evolve very very well.
Shop owner telling a customer that camo is a waste of money because deer do not see well! Yup you got it heard this at Cabela's as usual you can't fix stupid, lol.
Some doofus dry-fired a bow right behind me in a shop. Next words out of his mouth: "I had surgery yesterday, and I guess the meds haven't worn off yet." Meanwhile, the shop owner is writing up a sales slip for the bow the idiot had just bought!
Saw a guy shooting at the shop one time. He had seven fingers. Pretty sure he was a finger shooter. Wanted to watch how he did it but just couldn't get my self to stare at him.
"Shop owner telling a customer that camo is a waste of money because deer do not see well!" I agree camo is not necessary. Especially on a bow, or arrows, or range finders, I will not pay up for camo. Deer see fine but it is the movement that busts you, or our smell.
lol, well Pat maybe after you have some experience you'll shoot some mechanicals.
I would have asked that kid since mechanicals have more room for error wouldn’t the less experienced want to shoot them and not the pros? He’d of been a mumbling and stuttering.
Was working in sporting goods department in early 2000s, before we got smart and put the zip ties on so people couldn't dry fire bows. Walked around corner to archer department and customer had drawn bow and had his head between string and riser looking toward the string. You can all guess what happened?...dry fired and slammed his head against riser. Guy exited the store fairly quickly with profuse bleeding from his head! I think he learned his lesson bow seemed okay, I am guessing his head didn't. Manager watched footage back with department, was fairly comical! Zip ties were installed the next day!
Was in the shop one Saturday afternoon. Two Amish guys come. One walks up to the counter and says to my friend who works there. Imagine best yooper type accent: I want to buy a bow. If you can picture this blonde Amish, in his garb and more "cross eyed" than anyone we have ever seen. My buddy looks at him and says, jokingly, How are you going to see to shoot. The kid laughs and says Yeah, I'm a little bit cross eyed. Buddy says maybe I should conk you with this hammer and they'd straighten out! They laughed we laughed. To funny. They set him up and he bought a bow.
yep. bought a good press over a decade ago....so no funny stories at all.
I'm fortunate, I don't visit any bow shops. Last time I did was in 2014 when I bought a new bow. I knew exactly what I wanted, and had a guy I trusted measure my draw, etc., so it was literally just asking them to order the make, model that I wanted. But the amount of disinformation out there is incredible.
A cousin of mine, very earnest young man, shot his first buck with a bow during Missouri's rifle season. VERY good buck for his area, I think it grossed low 140s. Local pro-shop guy told him he couldn't enter it in P&Y because he'd shot it during rifle season (mind you, it was a bow kill)
back in the late 80s, i had gotten a job in a sporting goods store. the owner taught me how to set up bows and that was my main job plus fletching arrows. it was fun watching 'strong' men trying to pull back 70+ bows at times. guys telling the owner about 'shot a BH through a 2x4 yesterday. it did such-n-such. what do you think?' his reply ' i will keep that in mind the next time i plan on shooting a house'. one guy kept asking me 'what is the most efficient bow on the market?' at the time this one woman would come in once a week to shoot her 30# bow at dots. i was told she had won the indoor state dot round a year or 2 before and was consistently hitting Xs 95% of the time. she was a very pretty middle aged lady and it was fun watching some young 20 yr olds trying to out shoot her with 60# bows on a 300 round.
These are great! Yea, Pat, you're inexperienced... better work on that. ;)
I walked into the old Oklahoma archery in OKC back in the 90s wanting to buy some new broadheads. I stood by the counter while two young guys behind the counter yucked it up. After standing there for over 15 minutes, I told my buddy let's go. As I was walking to the door, one of the guys says... "did you need something?" Really? I replied... "yea, I did." He has the gall to say... "All you have to do is ask!" Lol
A younger guy I knew years ago won a bow in a sales contest at a local sporting goods store. He never bowhunted and I think about the most he ever shot a bow was the cheap little red compound/long bow you buy for kids. Needless to say, within 2 weeks, he was an archery/bowhunting expert.
Same store where I overheard a salesman telling a guy that he really didn't need a scope because most deer are shot under 100 yards with a rifle and he should spend all his money on a gun and not the optics. This was a store in Kansas before baiting was legal!
It was that time when you are 16 and you begin to realize that just because someone is older than you and works in a field/industry, it doesn't mean they are smarter.
Years ago I bought a new bow at the local pro shop. It was the latest and greatest and I had a pile of money wrapped up in it. The following year I went in for something minor the guy working there told me "that thing is pretty outdated, not really worth putting money into" "may as well trade it in" I asked what the trade in value was and he offered me $50 I own a press now, I rarely go in there anymore. I get a kick out of it every time I hear how we need to buy local and support our local business's....... I try but I expect something in return if I am going to pay a premium. I just cut some arrows off for a buddy, they set him up with arrows 6" too long.
I too had the experience of going into a renowned archery shop and being ignored by the two gossiping salesmen while I stood at the counter with a bow in my hands. We left and drove 35 minutes to a Cabela's where we were instantly greeted and I exchanged money for goods. I now place a special premium on customer service.
Here is a good one around 30 plus years ago my brother and I walked in a bow shop in Kallispell Mt.We were passing through just stopped to check it out.We met the owner and he suggested we come back to Mt and elk hunt as we are from Tn.We both decided to give it a shot along with my now wife of 30 years. I stayed in touch with the shop owner and he gave us some suggestions on where to go and even marked some maps.So off we go to the marked areas and we had really worked on our bugling.First morning of hunting actually first 20 minutes we call in a great 5x5 no we didn’t get him but we were hooked.The next 4 years we both took elk and are still friends with the ranchers we camped close to. I think ?? the owner of the shop was named Dan.Good Luck All Lewis
I have way too many.
I was a P&Y measurer for 18 years and the only one in my area for quite awhile. New sporting goods store opened and I walked in to browse. Employee and a customer were talking and this employee was bragging how he had 6 bucks entered in the books, blah blah. I had no idea who the guy was, and when he pointed to one of his "book" bucks on the wall I knew it wouldn't make book just looking at it. At this point I asked him who scored his bucks for P&Y, and he mentioned a local poacher I knew. I told him the poacher wasn't a P&Y scorer and the buck he was pointing to wouldn't make book. He instantly called me by my full name, even though we had never met. He turned out to be a poacher too (convicted and lost his job!).
I was in a Cabela's with two friends, one of them with a bunch of P&Y animals (whitetail, mule deer, pronghorn, elk, cougar) to his name. Between the 3 of us we had nearly 40 P&Y whitetails. Guy behind the counter begins telling us how we need to hunt big whitetails, like he was an expert. I finally introduced him to my friends and mentioned we had a few book bucks with over 90 years hunting experience between us. He turned around and walked to the back and wouldn't come back out. We had to get someone else to help us.
Crazy but true story
In September 1964 I walked into an archery pro shop in Madison, WI and met the new owner and his wife. I was a young bowhunter and college kid looking for a part time job.
The years passed.
We worked together, he fired and hired me two or three times. We hunted WI together. We hunted Ontario together. We served on various boards of archery/bowhunting organizations together. More years passed.
In March of 2018 at our state bowhunters association convention I gave a speech about him and in front of a few hundred bowhunters presented him with an award plaque for his induction into the WI Bowhunting Hall Of Fame.
54 years of bow & arrows and friendship!
Case-Assuming Gordy?
When I was a sales manager for PSE I was at the Deer and Turkey Expo in Madison and had a hunter tell me that the reason so few sheds from big bucks were found was because mature bucks buried them.
When I was in college I worked at a shop in central WI. We had plenty of Illinois customers and sold one a three day non resident license. He came back after the weekend to get a refund because he hadn't gone fishing.
Both were dead serious.
“You don’t need to sharpen your broadheads; look at these things; if you hit an animal with that you’re going to kill it.”
Regarding a very well known and immensely popular COC broadhead that is razor sharp out the package a local bow shop guy said, "the problem with them is that they are so sharp they zip through the deer too fast to cut anything. So you don't get much of a blood trail."
Bowhunting's Yogi Berra I guess!
You simply can’t make some of this stuff up
Oh, you can... because people do!
Many moons ago I was in an archery shop in my home town, getting my first new second hand bow set up.
The guy had me draw the bow with an arrow nocked so he could get a measurement to cut arrows.
After he marked the arrow he grabbed it and gave it a tug to pop arrow off the string.
Take a guess what happened
Prbly close to 30 years ago and I still feel a little foolish.
I owned a full time shop lanes from 1964 thru 82. I have a ton but the most common was a new person, never having shot a bow & saying, I want to buy a 100# bow. I had a 70#er I would give them & see them struggle with..
Not real crazy but I remember one that was a bit strange. Shooting in a 3D league a few years back at a shop, there was a father/son there. Kid was about 12. One of the targets was a coyote partially hidden behind a fake pine tree. Father got all upset about how it was an unethical shot since you couldn't 100% see the vitals, started yelling at the 17 year old employee that had set up the range, created a big scene. Ended up shouting at his son that they were leaving and not putting up with this. They packed up and the father stormed out with his kid behind him.
I remember thinking "wow, why not just use this as a teaching moment?" Seemed odd to blow up over that.
OMG, almost the same story as Pats at a Cabelas in Reno.
looking for fixed heads and the guy says, "All of the pros use Rage....if you really want to kill something thats the way to go"
Is there a commission sales deal on those or something?
I had a guy tell me to try and use a Rage once... And my profile page is what happened! LMAO! (The Rage hate on here is laughable)
I didn’t see an rage hate just a scoff at the how “ all the pros use them” remark by salesman. I think you put on your wife’s panties this morning, you might need to check that. ;)
Beendare......the guy didn’t try to talk you into buying a Hoyt bow too, did he? ;-)
Don't want to derail thread with rage talk, but here goes.......
Like others have mentioned, there are tons of bow shops that don't do a very good job of setting up bows. You're better off learning how to do it yourself.
The problem is they hand guys bows that they did a half ass job setting up. Broadheads don't fly straight out of the. So, here you go use this...
The rage will get rid of some planing and accuracy issues on a bow that isn't tuned.
But, if you shot a bare shaft arrow out of those bows, it would stick in the target at a 45 degree angle. The arrows aren't flying good. That, coupled with light arrows, causes more penetration problems than the broadhead in my opinion.
They're trendy and I hate them, but they're fine if your bow is shooting straight and your arrow is a decent weight.
I'm out.
I had a fella in Norman, Oklahoma that ran an archery shop inside a Surplus store. He always pushed Zwickeys on everyone. Let's bash Zwickey!! Not really. :)
Several years ago I had a new string put on my Mathews MQ1 at a local shop that is also a Mathews dealer and when I picked it up and drew it back I noticed right away that it didn't feel right. I looked at the timing holes on the cam and I could see that it was way out of time and the string needed to be twisted. I handed it back to the young guy behind the counter and told him that the timing is way off and it needs to adjusted. He responded with "This is a solo-cam, there's no way to adjust the timing". I gave him a little lesson and taught him something he didn't know...
A few years ago, I went to a small local shop to buy my first bow with my dad. We were really just starting out and had no idea about all the details of archery (and I'm still learning!). While he was 'setting us up' my dad said "how do you know where to put the peep sight?". His response was "oh, I've been doing this for so long I just know". Took me a while to learn, but now I try to do as much as I can at home.
A few years back I was hunting my sisters place in central MN. We were having trouble with tree stands being stolen towards the end of the season (Dec).
My brother was at the local shop and overhead some gentle men talking about a hobby farm where hunting wasn't allowed but they let you on to look for sheds. (Everyone knew about the huge bucks living there). The landowner (an anti) told them to ignore the neighbors no trespassing signs (they are on my land she said), and if you see stands take them, those people are hunting my land..
Well my brother talked with them a little bit to get a description of the location, informed them that it was MY stands they were stealing. Asked for their names they quickly exited the store. Interesting that fellow bowhunters would fall for that crap. Now 20+ years later their relative is the mayor, tried to get rid of the police force, will likely try to get rid of hunting in the few areas of the city and former township where it is still legal.
A few years back I was hunting my sisters place in central MN. We were having trouble with tree stands being stolen towards the end of the season (Dec).
My brother was at the local shop and overhead some gentle men talking about a hobby farm where hunting wasn't allowed but they let you on to look for sheds. (Everyone knew about the huge bucks living there). The landowner (an anti) told them to ignore the neighbors no trespassing signs (they are on my land she said), and if you see stands take them, those people are hunting my land..
Well my brother talked with them a little bit to get a description of the location, informed them that it was MY stands they were stealing. Asked for their names they quickly exited the store. Interesting that fellow bowhunters would fall for that crap. Now 20+ years later their relative is the mayor, tried to get rid of the police force, will likely try to get rid of hunting in the few areas of the city and former township where it is still legal.
