Mission Valley Archers Information

Mission Valley Archers (MVA) is a non-profit organization that has been operating throughout the valley for the last 10 years. The archery club's purpose is to promote the sport of archery and bow hunting while maintaining the spirit of good fellowship among all archers and to preserve the history and heritage of archery. Currently MVA has 22 members, the most it has ever had. Many of these members are employees of Plum Creek-Pablo Division. Due to this, they give up sleep to assist with setting up courses for our shoots and other club activities. They are co-workers, archery club members and friends who travel together to out of town shoots. This group of hard working Plum Creek employees shows the same dedication on the job as they do off the job when it comes to responsibilities for MVA. The Plum Creek employee match program has been a great source of help to our club and each year for the last three years they have done four matching employee donations in the sum of $250 each. These funds have been used to help advance what we hope to make into the largest and best shoot in the State of Montana The Blacktail Money Spot Shoot. Along the way, our President also wants to make our archery club the number one club in the state. He has high goals and has all along. Surprisingly enough many of those goals have come true and the entire club can see that other things will happen in the future. Things like having our own land to host shoots on that include a permanent building on that land to hold all our targets and shooting supplies as well as an area to set up a shooting range/course for club members to practice on. In the last 5 years the club has grown from a small group of members with a 4O+-target inventory that was not in the greatest shape. In 2001 the club was able to obtain a loan to increase their target inventory to 100 targets and start the 3D Blacktail Ski Lodge Shoot. The shoot promotes the idea of archers shooting down the mountain and then riding the ski lift back up the hill to the lodge. Great idea, but three feet of snow can cause problems. The first two years 2001 & 2002 were rough ones. Both years the weather hindered our progress and we barely made enough to cover our expenses each year. In fact, the second year we had 90+- degree weather to set the course and awoke the next day to 3 feet of fresh snow that continued all weekend and completely drifted in one leg of our course. The 90degree weather returned after the weekend was over. The club refers to this shoot as "the money spot" as we always give away $2000 in donated cash money from 4 different $500 money spots that the shooters have a chance to shoot at as well as over $3000 in donated merchandise for our raffle. The Blacktail Ski Lodge shoot is a lot of work and time for every member involved and work on this late June shoot starts as early as January/February. In 2003 we all had our fingers crossed for good weather and had high hopes of finally making this shoot into what we knew it could be. Something worked right in 2003as we ended up with beautiful weather, 230 shooters and 60 non-shooters who walked the course with the shooters. Over 130 people went home with raffle items and the money prize winners were as follows: three with checks for $166.67 each, four with checks for $125.00 each, six with checks for $83.34 each, and one with a check for $500. The one $500 winner was also one of the four $125.00 winners! We had a large turn out of kids this year and it was a joy to watch their excitement over the sport and to see so many of them take home trophies. The look on their faces meant a lot to club members. In 2003 the club was happy to be able to payoff our target loan and go into 2004 with some extra money to improve other club needs. To top off our good luck at the shoot, the President of our club learned the day after the shoot from two top archery organizations that if you were looking for a club to handle a shoot for you or a club to work with that has high standards, that MVA is the club to contact and they did. We now have a couple of serious decisions to make about the future growth of our club, but it is nice to learn that we are considered to be the number one club in the state as well as the number one club to host a shoot. I guess hard work does payoff eventually and that is exactly what MVA has been about. One group of people who are willing to work hard, be dedicated, help out when needed and continue to work side by side with the rest of the group in hopes of improving things for the sport, for our club and the personal enjoyment we receive when we hear how much someone enjoyed one of our shoots.