Show Notes
We are following up with part two of our conversation with Sherwood Schoch this week on the Pennsylvania Woodsman. We picked up from last week with the continued development and material first used in Jennings bows. Using trial and error they began to revolutionize the archery industry we know today. One of the four authors on the National Archery Association manual is Sherwood - and he also played a large role establishing archery in the olympics.
With the connections Sherwood made in his career, you can imagine the stories and people he met along the way. Stories with Fred Bear at Grouse Haven Lodge, and meeting celebrities like Ted Nugent and Ted Williams. We cover it all in this episode, with the living archery legend, Sherwood Schoch.
Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant outdoor content!
Show Transcript
Mitchell Shirk: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Pennsylvania Woodsman Podcast. I'm your host, Mitchell Shirk, and I am recovering. I think I've got my hearing back. I'm recovering from mild temporary hearing loss. I'm this is gonna sound pathetic, so probably make you laugh, but this is just the truth.
We got concert tickets this past weekend. It was actually a Christmas gift idea. We went to a Thomas Red concert last week on Friday, and I love music. I love country music. My, my favorite thing. Ever is, classic country music, I like stuff from the, like the sixties up into the nineties, even in the two thousands.
There's so many great artists and [00:01:00] musicians of that timeframe, and I just love that music. And I, again, I don't. It's not that I don't like newer country music, it's just a different style. Country music has morphed over the years. I mean from, thinking back into the fifties with Hank Williams and how it's transitioned, you get into the seventies and you got guys like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, bringing in the Bakersfield beat and people talking about how that wast country music.
And in my eyes that's country to the core. And then you get into to nineties and eighties had a vibe crossover with pop a little bit. And the nineties, we got into a little bit more rock and roll with it and so on and so forth. So country music has evolved and adapted, and that's, I think that's where we're at now in 2023.
It's just getting it's just getting away from what I enjoy and but anyway, Thomas Rt Heck of an artist, heck of a show. Really talented individual. And there was two other artists there, but [00:02:00] I was so mad that I didn't bring earplugs because and it's not because I didn't want to hear 'em, it's because it was so fricking loud.
I couldn't stand it. The bass was ridiculous. And the whole time I'm like I've really. Don't have that much interest in going to a concert. But I love the concept of it cuz it's family camaraderie. We went with my wife and my brother-in-law and my sister and my parents and that was really fun that whole evening, it was just so loud.
There was. Drunk people in front of us and falling down the steps and having to get escorted out, and it was quite the fiasco. But I, like I said, I've sailed and say I've got like mild hearing loss and damage that I'm trying to recover from. But it's all good. I'll I'll have, hopefully I recovered. I might have to get one of those hearing aid amplifiers this fall for deer season, which is around the corner.
I can't believe how close we are to deer season is starting to scare me. [00:03:00] But hey, going into to this week's episode. So if you guys turned or would've tuned in last week, you would've seen that we had The pioneer of the compound bow, and that's what this week's episode is all about. We are part two with Sherwood Shock and the just his career story of shooting through, building the compound bow and this second half of the conversation.
First of all, if you missed last week's episode, go back, check it out. It's a pretty cool episode. Gives you the highlight, the foundation for what we talk about this episode. We pick up with the compound boat development. We start, he starts talking about people he worked with the processing materials, a little bit of, the tinkering that was involved and that transitioned into his shooting from, he would've shot at a highly competitive [00:04:00] level with a recurve.
And that transition into doing so with the compound gets in a little bit about the National Archery Association. If you look at the manual for. National Archery Association. There's four authors on that, and Sherwood's name is one of those four authors. And he talks a little bit about the development of the Olympic team and the.
The place that he had in that development. And then we get to talk about something that I found is really cool is his experience being around Fred Bear and Fred Bear's hunting Camp Grouse Haven. In Michigan, and he also talks about his introduction to meeting Ted Nugent and a couple neat stories of Ted Nugent and Ted Williams, and just a couple other really cool names and experiences that you go, wow, pinch me.
That's [00:05:00] pretty cool. So again I hats off to Sherwood. Thank you so much for being a part of our show, sharing your experiences, and I really hope you guys enjoy this show. Before we get to the show, just wanna give our shout out to our sponsors, guys, Raddock Hunting. If you are trying to get your cameras out, expand your cameras, you wanna get more standard, pull your SD cameras that Gen 600 has you covered.
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Tell me a little bit about the evolution of your shooting itself. So you started shooting, a recurve stick bow. Yeah. Bare bow. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about that shooting and how your shooting adapted over time, cuz you went through to a release aid and sites
Sherwood Schoch: and stuff like that.
Okay. As an amateur then I won the amateur and. I was seeing the other guys that shot better scores than me because they were shooting sites. And so I [00:07:00] shot Bear Bowl when I won the national. Just a no sight, no. Nothing. Nothing. Now, when you was that
Mitchell Shirk: quote unquote instinctive, looking at the target, no reference, instinctive?
Sherwood Schoch: Yes. Okay. You weren't allowed to have anything on the pole. You couldn't even put a piece of tape on the window with a mark on it. That was considered a guideline. Had to be strictly like that boat setting up there, nothing on it. And And that's the way I wanted, I wanted to shoot a higher score and be more precise and I wanted, so I knew I was going to, I knew early on I was gonna shoot a site because I wanted to hit the targets off than they did, cuz I knew they weren't better arches.
I knew they had better, they had a equipment advantage. Which I eventually had with a compound bow, and nobody could beat me with a compound bow when they shoot recurves. You just couldn't do it. I could be sloppy and beat 'em, or anybody else could beat so, so the, and answer to your question, it's hard to do this transition sliding through here from going from a recurve to a compound bowl [00:08:00] 69.
70. 70. Yeah. In 1970. That was a very special year for me. I'd gone into a compound bowl. I won the Pennsylvania State Field Championship in Seven Springs. I shot the first perfect round ever shot in state competition in a state championship perfect round being, being 10 that time. Five 60 score.
Gotcha. 20. Points per target and 1828 targets. Gotcha. Five 60 was perfect and I shot a five 60 round at seven springs in the state championship on the hunter round, and that was the first one that was ever accomplished. But I did it with a compound, right? Yeah. And I let me back up here a little.
I gotta get my head straight. I shot that with a, Damon Howard Recurve Bow. I'm sorry I gave you a wrong, okay, because I, then I switched over to the, because [00:09:00] Pennsylvania state would, didn't recognize the compound bow, it was, couldn't allow to, so I couldn't use it, but I'm still fighting that battle.
But then in 74, I wanna say, I think 74. I didn't shoot in a couple years out there at the state championship. It was all held seven springs. I shot the perfect score in 70. Then I didn't shoot in 71, I think in 72, but 73. I'm pack at one with a compound bow then okay. I think that's the order of business I got over there.
And the thing, I got metals hanging there. I'd have to look at the ears, right? I don't honestly remember. So how did I do? I, the last time I shot, Competition on a national basis was in j Vermont, shooting with my fingers, but a compound bow. And I had a very super unfortunate thing, and again, this is gonna sound like bragging.
I don't mean to be that way because [00:10:00] it wasn't, I'm leading the tournament by 15 points and I'm in, we're in the, there's five rounds every day, week run, I'm leading and we're in the third round. And I go to put my air on. The rest, it's gone. The air rest, I totally broken off my bow. I had a, and you're allowed to step back, let one group through you.
If you can't be ready by that time, then you're disqualified for equipment. See? So I had to let one group through while I've. Screwed around with that, trying to get something on there to get it and then aim it, make it go where I wanted to go. So till I got to where I could count on where it was gonna go, I dropped like 25 points.
And I was no longer in first place. And I wasn't in first place. And I, then I got it. I got it to where I could really do it, and I was climbing a ladder, but in enough time I ran out of time. But then I got third. It got third at [00:11:00] Sha Vermont with the com, with the shooting, with the finger division in compound bow, in the highest division.
Prior to the release being in yeah. Prior to the release being developed? No. The, no the release was in development and I'd even made one, but I wasn't shooting it in national. The guy that won the national, the highest score, I've all shot a release. I just wasn't using it. I see. Don't forget, I was trying to walk both sides of four streets.
I was trying to sell the boats everywhere. And so many people were afraid of or didn't want to use the release days. I, you can do it this way. Two guys, here I go, I'm gonna show you how to do it this way too. So that's why I. Was I went release aid then off of it, then back to it, and I shot a release aid with the recur bow.
Mitchell Shirk: Okay. Yeah I've heard of people doing that, but that's not very
Sherwood Schoch: common. I, one of first guys do that and Sherwood loop. At Gil Fry, you cross bow [00:12:00] champion. Showed me how he tied it on there to make it real precision and not come off in his eye. That's what I did. I put one in my bow and then what happened?
Then they were having, initially they had just a steel pin hanging on the string. After I put the loop on the string, peach shepley of all people immediately put a loop on the release aid, right? Yeah. And so you could go round the string with a loop and hook it on the pin. And take it off that thing.
I was skipping that portion. I was putting the loop on the string. Right? Not on the release aid. So most kind unfair now, and I'm credited for that. Around the industry. Didn't know any most of 'em are dead now. I don't know anything anymore. But the knowledgeable people and at the time they all knew where it came from cuz it was talked about a lot.
Sure. And I had a lot of attention cuz I had the stage, I was doing the seminars, I was doing the illustration so I could, my mouth, I could blob anything I wanted to say. I'd tell 'em I was and it was good. [00:13:00] So they didn't worry about that. It got to the point where I had bought spools of non thread, big spools of it.
I forget where I call him anymore. And I would cut strips of that and everywhere where I did his seminar, I'd give 'em to anybody that wanted one, put it on their string. Okay. And later on I, I was selling like 20 foot at a time for a dollar, because I was buying. But at any rate, that was how that really devolved.
And anyways now another thing what do you do for a cable on a. Compounded by the olcott cables. Where did they come from? I didn't know where it come from either, but I was from aviation and had aeronautic engineering training and so I knew, again, it near St. Louis. There's an aircraft company there that was making cable for Cessna.
Cause I checked with them. So I went to him and that's where we started. And inside of five years, we bought more footer [00:14:00] cable than the aviation industry did. Oh my goodness. Yep. How things happen. What the hell? We needed a cable. We just go look for one. Sure. So those kind of things.
And initially the cable wasn't coated. Okay. But they had coated cables right from the start. They didn't repair cables, but we had to learn to work with them. We had to attach it to the wheel and pin it fast, stuff like that. So we had to go through that process, but that didn't take long. It went hard and we got it done.
But these are the kinda stumble blocks we hit all the time. But now if you sold. 500 bows and they had the nun coated cable on, and that made a little difference on how you did the wheel. Then you sell that same dealer, the one that has the cable coated with a slightly different color in the wheel. You get upset customers in a hurry.
Is that right? Yeah. They don't want, it's hard for them. Because they sold a boat to one guy. Now another guy comes in and got another, they look at him and they go in there and say, look, he bought his boat. I bought [00:15:00] mine a month I had, and I don't have that. He said, you gotta be very careful.
So I did my best to sell all the ideas to everybody all the time. It's no fixed thing. This is a moving target. And and that's what it was. We were really. We didn't have enough qualified people machinists and so forth, and we didn't have so many things you can get now with technology that's out there.
It wasn't there. You had to figure it out. And even like where to drill a hole in the wheel for the cam, we shifted that all over the place. Cause the closer you make that hole to the edge of the limb, the more relaxation the boat gets. You can get it back to our realization that it doesn't perform efficiency.
Cause when you let go here, it's gotta return. And if it's really lazy returning, it's not very efficient. So that was a stumble. We went through stages of this thing and then our little home built machine, we would deliberately draw the boat at a certain point, shoot it [00:16:00] and different punch and then and graph it.
And that was all hunt. That wasn't any. We weren't any brains or anything. We just tested and trial. Trial and error. Do you remember the percentage of let off on those early bows? Oh, sure. The ones that came out of Alan were about 30%, but it also depended upon which size wheel we had on what the percentage of let off was, and the size of wheel determined.
The troll length. Okay. It was really variable. It was always a variable. It was never a dead set figure. And Hollis had it around 30% because, don't forget, he had a half round aluminum limb, so he didn't have very efficient product to cast the arrow. So he did what he could do with it.
He had to keep it up there, or the arrow would've floated out. See? But when we got laminated lens, we quickly knew we were gonna let, give us some, let off. What were some of the speeds of
Mitchell Shirk: those arrows and them first Jennings bows?
Sherwood Schoch: We were.[00:17:00] We knew how to build 'em faster, but afraid to sell 'em that way.
Because they breakage. But we were delivering bows with Matt Starro in the 200 2230 feet per second and no recur bow would do 200,
Mitchell Shirk: will recurs at top ends usually between one 70 and 180. Yeah.
Sherwood Schoch: Okay. Pretty close,
Mitchell Shirk: right? So yeah, light, light worlds obviously
Sherwood Schoch: difference there. Now if I, if you tapered the limb down to where you didn't want to use it much for competition, but you could make it shoot faster, that's why I tell 'em I flight poles, because you build them different, you couldn't shoot competition very well cause it wasn't accurate.
It wasn't stable enough, but it was stored the energy and release it. You make the air fly further. And that's always a judgment. In speed when you have a chronograph shoot the same rate that arrow further, it's faster, right? It's always to that. So
Mitchell Shirk: you, you mentioned working through the game commission to try to get the compound [00:18:00] bow legal in Pennsylvania, which, that did get accomplished in the early seventies, I think you said 72.
72. 72. So go down the road a little bit with us. What else did you do as far, cuz you know we talked a lot about your career in shooting developing the bo working with companies and stuff. So tell me a little bit more about that. Work in the community type thing, the stuff from, compound bo getting legal to working with you did some coaching too, I believe, as far
Sherwood Schoch: as shooting, isn't that correct?
Yes, I did. You're cutting in a lot of area here. This gets real complicated. I. I was very much involved with the National Archery Association as well, and there is a Natural National Archery Association. Instructor's Manual has four authors. I'm one of 'em. Okay. Okay. It's been published in eight different languages and stuff like that.
And who were the other three names on that? It was Bud Folks and. I see. I, no, I'm gonna make an excuse, [00:19:00] but it's true. I got brain damage, I had a stroke and I can't remember things, so I can't, you gotta gimme a little timer. Oh, you got all the time in the world. I'll tell you what I'm gonna tell you.
I, here's a copy of the manual. I'm gonna look at the names on it. Oh, perfect. There was two ladies and bought me.
Mitchell Shirk: Okay, we're going to get the manual here. He's got all the names on it. This is this over on your on your wall here? The Wall of fame. The wa Yeah, it is a wall of fame. And
Sherwood Schoch: Julie Bowers.
Say that again. Julie Bowers name is not Bowers anymore. It's now Bo.
Mitchell Shirk: Okay. Julie Bowers And what was the other one? Patricia Bayer. Julie Bowers CR Folks And Sherwood
Sherwood Schoch: Shock. So you so now see this was all part of the picture. The National Archery Association is what I did with the magazine and I became very acquainted with the persons of importance in that thing to try and help them along, to publish for them and remake reports for them and get it covered [00:20:00] timely.
And I personally went to places and wrote the article. Did they took the pictures and. The whole thing just to keep it. Somebody had do it and I did it. So those are the things that, this was all overlapping each other. And I wanna say this too now. I shot competition, but truthfully, I was cheating myself in a way cuz I was never ready.
I didn't practice Harley at all. I, that wasn't how I made a living and that wasn't what I was doing for the industry, right? I like shooting, but. Man I throw my stuff in the trunk. Think of this with golf, you're a pro golfer. I throw it in the trunk when we got done with it, round on Sunday and not take it out till my shooting time, the next event.
Gotcha. But I've competed. I still placed, but I knew well, but I did as well enough for what I wanted to do. I was very present and I was known and I kept myself where I could communicate with people. To keep the ball rolling. Sure. Sir, what, can you talk about the [00:21:00] the Olympic team? Weren't you didn't you do something with the Olympic team?
Yeah I was Steve Lieberman's coach Steve Lieberman is right now, this time the only four time all American at Arizona State University. He was my student. He also won the World Championship twice my student. And then, and now back to Olympic again. Ic, remember earlier I mentioned Bernie Tik, the guy that took me to Philadelphia.
Yeah. He had a daughter. I came along and I brought her in a pretty good, and she got third place in, she got the bronze medal in Korea and the Olympics. Wow. So I've had been, and then any number of state champions I was involved with, and then Jenny Kelly, I definitely brought her from something.
She had the talent, but she didn't know what to do and got it rounded up and she wanted to state champ, but not only her, a half a dozen, I can't even remember. Yeah. So remember, I don't remember. It doesn't, there, there's, and [00:22:00] I don't want to make a claim on him. Yeah. I helped him. Yeah, I instructed him. Yeah.
I was around for him. And, but the other thing, one of other things was always my favor. I was very much of a technician with equipment. And I said this many times, I said it to, said, guys don't even want to hear it. I was competing about, I says, you're a better archer than me, but I'm smarter than you.
That's true. Yeah. Especially with the compound bow, I knew how to make it work better than they did. And and I wasn't, me being smarter, it's just that I get, I can make my bow do this. You can't, this has got to be well known. And then there's thing like aero stability and then I had a contract with Eastern Aluminum.
Okay. And we were balancing arrows and this is something I learned in the military cuz I was in ordinance and delivering missiles and bullets and stuff like that. A balance point form. And you can balance a, everything as a balance point. Sure. At some point, you wanna, there's a certain [00:23:00] balance point on a given arrow for its own mass weight.
As to make it stabilize. And I was having, like Steve Lieberman that won the World Championship, I could, he was shooting now he shot the call of Target that he was naa. And he's the one that won. He was a four time world. Four time All-American at asu. I'm shooting around Target. Because that's what they, that's all college did. I stood on the field with him and no end, and he could hit that target every time with no fletching on the arrow. That's a well-tuned
Mitchell Shirk: bow and a good
Sherwood Schoch: shooter. Everything was right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And Steve was the best mechanical guy I ever worked with.
He's good. And so while you take the guidance system off the arrow, you gotta get it balanced just right for that equipment or it's gonna go all over the place. Sure. And and you talk about, and I could take my own arrows and I cut two of the veins off with guys [00:24:00] looking shoot right in the middle.
They couldn't and they'd, hell if they lost one feathering competition, they'd go nuts. So I I've heard that your coaching continues, you're now working with a grandson on archery. No, but I got him a bow and he shoots nicely, but. He isn't get interested in getting into competition.
He's in the other sports. He's a very good baseball player, and so he's got his heart in that nowadays. And I try to get him going with golf, but I can't get him going. He didn't wanna do it. And then that's one of
Mitchell Shirk: those timely things. Yeah. Like I enjoy golf, I like to do it. My dad loves to golf as Randy.
I like to do it with him, but at the same time, it's not one of those things that we're good. So
Sherwood Schoch: all you may want to speak briefly about your experiences up at Fred Bears camp. Oh, yeah. A little bit. Grouse Haven. Yes.
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Sherwood Schoch: Fred Barer has a, he leased 2,600 acre farm from a General Motors executive. In Rose City, Michigan. And its name was called Grouse Haven. And it had a, when I say fence around, it was not a high fence, like for that kinda, it was just a security fence.
It was a fence. So people, but people got in it all the time and deer got in and out. That was okay. But any rate, it was all marked private. And we had guy lived there to try and keep it, [00:26:00] cause we had a hell of a lot of deer in there. And we also had a creek going up through it. This time we went up, we used to get 'em out of there.
But that was at Rose City, Michigan. So what Fred did was he was a very good promoter all was he? He was always reaching out for the industry. And so he set up Grouse Haven and he would invite particular valuable people, so to speak, VIPs, whoever, someone with magazines, someone with tv, some of 'em of all sort walks of life.
That he thought could help the industry or was important to him, plus his dealer network, plus his distributor network, plus some of the people that rep for him, salesman. And and what he did, the season up there ran six weeks. He'd have five day blocks. He'd have anywhere from four to six people each five day.
Okay. I ran his camp for a little bit and [00:27:00] so again, because I had, everybody knew who I was and I knew who they were so bad, so I had that job and so we would, they'd fly into Saginaw or wherever. Near by some of 'em drive in. You come all kinds of ways. Some of, there's an airport there, some of 'em flew in and stuff.
And when I say airport, a private airport, a strip, right? Cause Grouse Haven, that 2,600 acres was originally Air Force Base had a airstrip on it. Okay. Okay. So they'd come in land there, and every now and then I'd see an airplane land. I knew who was landing, but I'd find out pretty quick. I'd get out there and knew who came on board.
And and Grouse Haven itself, we had some bunk rooms and outside we had a couple of out little log cabins. That's somebody's a hunter. Had bunk there to sleep in and a shower and a. Like a little trailer would be or something. And we had. [00:28:00] We had three of them, and then we had the one we called the TA Hall.
The really important people went in there. If we had somebody coming in, real important, and we had a lot of, at the time, were VIPs one way or another. We had the governor of Michigan and into it. So you got the. I was gonna say, can
Mitchell Shirk: you tell us a little bit like what some of those is there names that people that would know that would go to that topic?
Like
Sherwood Schoch: what did that, I'll give you one big name that's well known. Ted Nugent. Is that right? Ted Nugent, a very good friend of mine. In fact, I talked to him last week, but, Ted lived in Jackson, Michigan. He was a Michigan person. His father was a policeman in Detroit, and so he thought he was gonna be a cop always.
In fact, he trained for it early on. But then he got so good with a guitar and he made so much money doing that, that he now has a 2000 acre ranch in. Texas. And you see him on TV and stuff and there's hunters. That's where he is hunting out of his [00:29:00] camp there. And then he also has
Mitchell Shirk: a place in Michigan too, I believe, right?
Sherwood Schoch: Jackson? That was his old home there. And he's got not hell, I slept in with him at his house there. He's also an automobile collector. He's got a pole barn there with about 40 cars in it. In Jackson. Yeah. That's incredible. I don't know if it's 40 or what is I only ever, one time he just didn't even wanna take people in there.
He was private to him, but he had tree stands set up around there. He food plots everywhere. Kind like with you got. And so yes, they hunted, but he only took very few people got to hunt that except him and his family and very close people to him hunted the Jackson place. But now Fred, now Ted himself came up the, now I'm gonna tell you the story there and this happened.
I arrived up there, a guy by name of Hat Fling was with Bear Arch Company for a long time and he was a major guy running Grouse Haven. From [00:30:00] the logistics point, for people being invited in, made sure they got a letter to him and made sure they got picked up at the airport, which I eventually helped him with, but always his command.
But this is what happened the first time I went there, and I'm gonna say it was 82 I think, but it doesn't matter. First year I get in there and it's late when I get there, 11 o'clock and Haps in the main room in there waiting for me to show up. And so I couldn't talk to him. And he says you goes. He says, you're gonna bunking the trailer behind the TA of the hall.
At this time anyway, I go over there and he says, just go in there. He says, the guy's sleeping in there he is. Got a couple of dogs, but they're very friendly. They won't gimme any problem. So I did. So I go around, park my car and stuff like that, and I go to the trailer door, I knock on a little bit and I hear the dogs inside.
I'd open the dog and the dogs are really friendly and I look up and here's blonde hair hanging over the bed. I thought that hap set me up with something. He's gonna, this is not good. [00:31:00] I thought there's a joke going on here or something. That hair belonged to Ted Nugent. That's how I met Ted. I didn't know him after that point.
My goodness.
Mitchell Shirk: How did that, how'd that friendship strike up from that
Sherwood Schoch: point then? Ted's a really decent guy. I think a nice guy and he's very much a family man and he's real easy to get to know, and once again, Ted's an aspiring target shooter, right? No, what I said earlier, no Brager, please don't take it that way, but a guy can hit the middle more time, suddenly a hero.
So Ted was really nice to me and really good to me and very honorable all the time. And so it was really easy to get to know him. Because he really liked the game. He liked equipment and he wanted to know about compound bows, and he wanted to know about the limbs and so forth and. So that's just how it came together and I got to know him very well.
And I'm not even sure how we just got along good. And [00:32:00] then over time and since that time I kept the relationship a little bit. I don't bother him. He's a very busy man, he's always on schedule, but he cut himself with a chainsaw and I called him and he had a real serious case of COVID.
About two years ago now, and I called him and his wife's name is Charmaine. She answered Ted's phone and that just doesn't happen. I thought, boy, it turns out she was just screening any, cuz very few people call him in that phone is a private line. And so then I told her it was then She told me he was doing well and going back to work, and about 10 minutes later he called me.
He was doing better. Good. And I don't remember who that was. That was about two years ago. It was public notice that he was, had covid and was quite sick. I see. He was, they were worried about him surviving for a while. But he's, he was okay. But any rate, And if he does a concert anywhere I can get to, if I give him a call, he'll say, how many you want?
He'll have [00:33:00] pickup tickets. He'll have tickets for me at the pickup window. Wow. So very cool. And I've done that. And then on the numbers occasions the Pennsylvania Boners Festival, I was very much involved with that for 50 years. That would've lost the, we'd lost outta couple times that we hadn't been running hard.
But at any rate, he did a show in Williamsport, and of course I had called him and I knew he was gonna be there, and I went to the show and that, and he made the announcement on the stage that night that I was in the house and that I was the operator or the, whatever the hell it was of the pole festival.
Yeah. Yeah. And he always gives it a pitch. He always does. And he does. His Fred Bear song in the show Absolutely. Talks about Archie. It's
Mitchell Shirk: the well known song, the Spirit of the Wild. Absolutely.
Sherwood Schoch: And. Mitchell, we heard a lot of names being thrown out in this last hour, but you think about the names that we've heard, there's in Modern Archery, there's the big three.
Tom Jennings, Fred Bear in Sherwood Shock. Yeah. Known as [00:34:00] the Big three, right? That's Fred be sent me that card for Christmas, that laminated card on the end there. And that's Tom Jennings and me and Fred. And Fred wrote on there and says, what does this say? Christmas of 1986 from Fred. He was one of those kind of guys.
He did things like that, personal things that were, took attention. He did it for lots of people and he just was a real, the heavy duty threesome. Yep. That's what he called it. That's a joke. More or less. Sure. Sure.
Mitchell Shirk: That's that's the thing that I took away too, Randy, was the amount of names, we start throwing Fred Bear, Tom Jennings, Pete Shepley, Ted Nugent the amount of influence in people are there any other s outstanding memories of anybody specific or shooting or hunting memories that you wanna
Sherwood Schoch: leave us with here?
There's a lot of. Well-known bull hunters. My favorite, my personal friend is Bob Roski and he got a couple of books on how to Deer hunt and stuff like [00:35:00] that. Roski, there's books around here somewhere. There, no. Okay, there's F roski now, and that I got another picture, but I need, it just happened to be laying there, that very buck there.
We shot another puck and we have a picture like that with her alongside each other. We shot 'em on a tree stand. Same tree. Stan. I shot mine at 4 31 afternoon. He shot his at seven o'clock the following morning. That's Bob Roski. What is he? Camel Clothing. That's his design. He worked. Okay. Now I'm gonna tell you, Bob Roski.
If you saw LL Bean or any of the manufacturers with ducks on their sweaters only one company in the United States made them. And that was when no knitting mill Roy's their guy. He's the guy did it all. He was the artist. He's set up with 10 knitting machines. That's f roski. That's him. And there's, now, this is a guy from Boyertown that I had when I was running to camp at the time, I needed [00:36:00] some help.
And Dallas Miller from Boyertown went to high school with him. And I, he's the guy I had to hunting camp with up at I said a walker. Was that Potter County? Huh? Was that Potter County? No, this one up in English Center. In English Center. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. So any rate, I called Dallas cuz I need somebody that knew how to skin and gut and track and stuff like that.
And he'd come out to me and he was so happy to do it cuz he wanted to meet Fred and he at the time had a Suburban, so Fred, he had, Fred was in the front seat when they were going somewhere and he had Fred Bear right on his D with in total. And Fred Bear sat here and I used to kid him all the time.
You never asked me to put my name there. Of course they shouldn't either. But that was Fred. And he liked Fred a lot. Of course. Sure. Fred was a very likable man. I was
Mitchell Shirk: gonna say tell me a little bit about Fred Bear from your experience. I've heard a lot of people say he was a very
Sherwood Schoch: humble man.
He was very quiet guy. He was very tall. He had a, [00:37:00] gonna say this carefully. He had a, I don't wanna say a ladylike, but he had a voice more. Hi. Higher pitch voice or higher pitch voice. Yeah. Okay. Higher than mine yet. And, but, and when he left, he would laugh from top to bottom. He would giggle. He was a funny guy.
Good man. And he was a heavy smoker, so whenever he had to wear oxygen all the time. He had to use it all the time, and the way we promoted things, he would go to a big shore or say he wanted to, at Cowell Hall, he wanted to be there. I'd have to pick him up at the airport. And the first stop we'd make is at a place to get oxygen for him.
And we would've arranged outta time and he'd get the oxygen on. And then before he got the airplane, I'd have usually take him to the airport and then I'd take the oxygen back. See and it, and I only did that with him about three times, but somebody had to do that every time somewhere. Goodness.
But each time I did it for him happened to be in Michigan, cuz [00:38:00] he went there a lot. And at the time I was, I. I had an apartment up there. I I wound up at different times. I had three or four living quarters around the United States, and I had one in Michigan, so it was easy for me to do that. I see. Did you ever do any hunts with Fred where you were filmed?
I right there at Grouse Haven, but I never went out on any of that other hunt. But what I did do is Ben Rogers Lee again, Benny Lee. Ben Rogers league, Turkey calls. He was five times world champion. Turkey caller. I did videos. He and me did videos together. I did shooting, he did the calling and shot with a bone arrow.
Shot a couple Turkey with a bone arrow you call in. Okay. So he was a Ben Lee was Ben Rogers Lee. So any rate other personalities, who can I tell you one of my favorites, just cuz I love the man himself is Ted Williams. Okay. And. Ted Williams one time down in Houston and I'd, [00:39:00] a lot of athletes love hunting and fishing and they go to the sports shows, the national shows. And they, of course, sometimes they were actually promoting somebody in there. But, so I got to meet him because they'd also shot bows. I must have given a 20 bows away over the years. A big guy, including Ted. And so we get to talk to him from there now and then, but one time.
Tom, Jen and I, it was like 9 30, 10 o'clock at night. We walked in the lobby at at the national show in Houston, and we sat down there for just a minute to talk a few things over, and Ted walked in. Of course we had both known him from before. He came over and sat and we talked to him for at least two hours.
He was a hell of a guy. He loved fishing. He liked outdoors. He liked hunting. He shot his bow and arrow. He liked that. And he was a, he was a. A marine fighter pilot, is that right? He was, and when he was deferred, he could have stayed deferred. He went back into active [00:40:00] duty to fly in Korea in combat. That was the kind of guy Ted was.
How was Fred at shooting at the bow? He knew how to shoot,
Mitchell Shirk: but could you whoop him?
Sherwood Schoch: Fred was left-handed. And he was a total snap shooter.
Mitchell Shirk: But I know there's a lot of information out there. People, did interviews and stuff that talked about him in instinctive shooting and running game and stuff like that.
Which is something that's not even talked about anymore. It's taboo to do that now, but it was a normal thing at that point.
Sherwood Schoch: For to do what?
Mitchell Shirk: For Fred as far as his instinctive shooting and talking about shooting at moving game and things like that.
Like it was a style that. I feel like Fred Bear kind of almost put a label on, or like it's that he was known
Sherwood Schoch: for. In a sense. He was known as being a very good sportsman because he did press that. But I wanna say this to, you know this. If anybody in the whole world says they saw Fred Baar shoot their lying.
Lying. Is that right? [00:41:00] He wouldn't do it. Oh, okay. I can. I said Okay. But they say he went to show Heung. Shoot. He wouldn't do it. He refused to shoot at the show. Okay. So he didn't do it. And a couple of years back, I had a guy at the both festival up there said that he had pictures of him and his dad shooting together up there with Fred Bearer.
Fred Bearer is narrowed to the boat vessel. Never was. I see. And in the early period they used to turn animals loose to shoot 'em there and he was opposed to that. So he, but so then when I came, became very deeply involved with it and was so close to him, said, Fred the, let that go a long time ago.
Cause in violation of state law too. And so we, we quit that way a long time ago. So he was scheduled to go there on two occasions. Both times was in the hospital at that time and couldn't go. But he was never to the PO vessel, not Pennsylvania point. He was never there. So if anybody says that they're, it's not [00:42:00] true.
Howard Hill was. Okay. Howard Hill was there in 1962 and he did a nice demo. He could do a good demo shoot. He was a good shooter. Okay. He's different stories. See, there's guys out there that were really good, do it, and knew that Fred wasn't trying to be, that he was a big game hunter. Was
Mitchell Shirk: Howard Hill somebody that you crossed paths with?
Sherwood Schoch: Me? Yeah. You I knew power. Yeah. Okay. I know his nephew's running, still has his business down in Arkansas. Okay. Jerry Hill has it. Yeah. Yeah, I knew him. Okay. I didn't know him well, but I knew him and he was buddies with a guy that I knew with him up in Milwaukee, and I met him up there and had spent a little time with him when he was with Wiffen.
Wiffen was a manufacturer that made. Aero feathers for arrow building Pros is what Wiffen did. But I met and he was good friends with, they went hunting together, places wiffen him. And so that's how I met him and got to talk [00:43:00] to him. And I talked to him on the phone also. Cause at one time I was soliciting for ads.
Way picking the magazine time. Yeah. And I didn't hesitate to call him. So I did. And
Mitchell Shirk: Yeah. A ton. We packed into this hour and a half. Oh. In incredible stories. Can. Did you believe we'd be talking about this kind of stuff for this long?
Sherwood Schoch: I did because I, it is scary. There's so many things that happened to be honest with you, and you just happened to be there and you don't even know for sure why, and you just, it happens in front of you.
And so many things came. It just seems unreal. Yeah, I knew we could fill an hour and a half because I golf with she Sherwood, and
Mitchell Shirk: now
Sherwood Schoch: I think that was the funniest. I think he edit that time a lot. I think
Mitchell Shirk: that was one of the funniest things that that my dad brought up was you guys were talking about that you, you brought up Sherwood, he said, and he's still a hell of a golfer.
Sherwood Schoch: Yes. I used to be a half a jock when I got outta high school. I had a contract Oh. At baseball. [00:44:00] Okay. And see at that time of the year, I. School isn't over till like middle of June and then I was playing American Legion, so I went down to Sarasota, Florida to the tryout camp and I was signed.
They come, two guys came to my house and said that, I could go down there for the tryout camp. And my mother said, told him no, he played ball long enough, he's gotta go to work. Sherwood at 89 years old still hits the golf ball at farther than a lot of the 70 and 65 year olds that we play with.
Yeah, that's sometimes by accident, but hey, I swing hard.
Mitchell Shirk: But I, in case my motto for golf has always been swing hard in case I hit it.
Sherwood Schoch: Yeah. I don't any rate, sure would. He's a good player. Yeah. Very, he's
Mitchell Shirk: very good. Absolutely. Sherwood, let's wrap this up. Yeah. We've been rolling for a long time.
Again I really appreciate you Yeah. Taking some time outta your day and talking with Randy. Thank you for introduction. Sure. Thank you for being here [00:45:00] with us and steering conversation with us. This has been great. Any parting words for this show?
Sherwood Schoch: I guess maybe I'm, something comes to mind now as we're talking, being, what's something that Larry said, Randy said earlier was about the Olympics.
We were very instru. We, the them authors there and me were very instrumental in getting o Olympic archery into the Olympics, right? The National Archery Association. Without us, it wouldn't, without that group. Because here's what happened. The Olympic Committee will not recognize a sport.
Unless it's standardized for in college. So we had to certify instructors, so we went to Penn State and we got an accredited course from Penn State to out in, what do they call it? Valley Steam Valley something, whatever. Okay. Summertime, two weeks where? Where prospective coaches or known coaches, but weren't [00:46:00] certified, we set up a certification program.
And had 'em come in and we certified them, paid everybody's standard off the standards in that book there. And so this became recognized by the Olympic Committee to qualify to, so we, our first colleges that we did big schools like Arizona State University, like Washington University, like Texas and.
Louisiana, we saw it outside and they had interesting people there that wanted to do some of it. So we had help in getting it going, and they'd send somebody and we'd get 'em certified. But that certification track led to presenting it to the Olympic committee. And the first year that the Olympics that archery was in the Olympics was 1972.
Mitchell Shirk: Same year as a compound. Yep. Yeah. That's
Sherwood Schoch: incredible. And that's, yeah, that's the first, and that's the first time. [00:47:00] Incidentally, terrorists remember terrorists at the Olympics and they shut it down for a while. Terrorists up on the stage and stuff. That was the year 72. Guess what? It was a building the oysters were in.
As fate would have it. And that's incredible. So I think that's a pretty, that maybe is one of the bigger steps I've was involved with. And it was, it took a lot of preparation and execution and time and I would spend them whole two weeks, what do they call it? Up over to Nittany Mountain.
That was something Valley Happy Valley, well known. Happy Valley. Happy Valley. Happy Valley. Yeah. That's what it's called. And Any rate, we'd go there and these people come in and we'd arrange, they'd get dinner in there and sleep there and everything. And get certified. We sent a lot of people away.
And those particular people, some of 'em became coaches I ran into later at the tryouts for the Olympics. And I attended a number that I was a, I [00:48:00] was also a rated official for Olympic tryouts, so I attended some of them. And these guys had come around, some of 'em that I saw some 20 years later that were still very much into it.
But they were students. Some were students, some were already the coach at the school they were at and some of 'em were lady coaches. We had ASU were the lady coach. Texas was a lady coach Louisiana was a lady coach. But they were very interested and I was glad to have them. Because what, in progression, what this did was we were trying to set up a network of certification.
So when we had these key college peoples, the, we had the assistant athletic director out of Texas of all things. And so she had a hell of a lot of influence. So with her influence and sending people, we pretty soon had Arkansas, we had Alabama and we had Florida State, and we had Florida and stuff like that.
[00:49:00] Influential people that could help us, and did. And so this whole networking to get it going till we finally got it rolling, got in the Olympic kit and they finally got us approved and. Steve Lieberman that I mentioned earlier was then the, let me get this right.
He was on the International Olympic Committee recognized as a world champion, not the Olympics, but a world champion, and Jim Easton of Easton Products, who was the United States representative to. For archery to the Olympics. Steve was the assistant. Wow. Okay. So that was again, and I was contracted, I had contracted with Easton myself along the way at different things, and I had one opportunity to probably go there, but I wasn't, I was busy.
I had something going. Yeah
Mitchell Shirk: we've picked up on that. There was a lot going on [00:50:00] in that sixties, seventies timeframe.
Sherwood Schoch: And it didn't let up eighties and nineties. It just didn't let up. I finally gave up. I gave in on the last thing I did besides the bowl festival. I did that until three years ago.
But the last thing I did actually at the national shows was 98. That was what I mean, that's 23, 25 years ago. So I completely got away from hell, everybody knew he was dying and I didn't, I go there, didn't have friends anymore. I knew who they were.
Mitchell Shirk: Gotcha. I think that's probably one of those things.
We'll probably have to do another one sometime and we'll unwrap more of the Olympics, unwrap more of the Bow Fest and some of those other things you did on. But I think for now we'll let you go on this one.
