Could Movie Create Archery Interest

 

This weekend the West Virginia DNR will stage its annual Archery in Schools State tournament.   Krista Snodgrass who coordinates the program at DNR tells me in the last eight years since the program was created they’ve managed to reach 72,000 West Virginia school children and given them a taste of the bow and arrow.  Such is the point of the program.  

Many of the more than 600 students scheduled to shoot this weekend at the Charleston Civic Center may never have picked up a bow had it not been for the volunteers who get involved in these archery clubs and teams.  

However, if you think kids are getting into archery now–wait until they see the new blockbuster movie "The Hunger Games."    The movie apparently features A LOT of bow and arrow shooting–maybe the most since Robin Hood.  

Admittedly, I haven’t seen the movie or read the books on which it is based.  However, I have read enough reviews and background on the story to realize the bow is a key element.  It’s literally the characters’ lifeline.   A group of kids, age 12 to 18, are hand picked to got into the wilderness, live off the land, and hunt (and sadly kill) each other.    There’s only one winner.

The heroine of the movie is a girl named "Katniss."  She’s from a post-apocalyptic Appalachia and she knows her way around the woods.    You can call it a stereotype if you wish, but a country girl who can shoot is more reality than a made up idea.   I suspect kids, especially girls from rural West Virginia, will identify with "Katniss" and want to emulate her.   It will, at the very least, draw some attention to archery skills.   

It will also likely draw (I hope) some rare positive Hollywood style attention to hunting.   I understand from reading different reviews the players, when they aren’t hunting each other, are in fact hunting animals for food.   "Katniss" is apparently a master hunter and does it as an occupation to sell the meat on the black market.    The United States has apparently gone through a social and economic upheaval and food is scarce.   When the world has gone to hell conservation, hunting license, and game checking tags aren’t considerations.  In fact, I think in the movie regular hunting has been outlawed.  

Since I haven’t seen the movie I have no idea how this story is packaged.   I would hope it shows archery and hunting in a positive light.   It’s certainly an opportunity to showcase hunting as a food source and to let youngsters around the world who’ll flock to the movie there is a connection between the food they eat and the taking of animals.  

I doubt "Hunger Games" will do for bow hunting what "A River Runs Through It" did for fly fishing, but one can hope it does offer positive exposure for the activity to an audience which is rarely reached.  Teens were willing to have their teeth altered to look like a vampire after the "Twilight" movies, why is learning to shoot a bow and arrow after seeing "Hunger Games" such a reach?