Archery enthusiasts bring skills straighter than ‘Arrow’ to Las Vegas Shoot

It was a little before 8 a.m. Friday, and the South Point already had morphed into the world's largest quiver.

Archery people from around the world and around the United States — but mostly from places such as South Dakota — were making their way to the Equestrian Center. They wielded high-tech bows affixed with pulleys and wheels. Quivers of arrows were strapped across shoulders.

This was Las Vegas Shoot 2016, billed as the world's largest archery tournament. More than 3,000 bow-and-arrow types from South Dakota and elsewhere competed.

Oliver Queen would have loved this.

Oliver Queen is a character in the DC Comics and now on television. His (not so) secret identity is the Green Arrow, or on TV, just "Arrow." Arrow is a total badass. He wears a dark green hood and a mask and chin stubble, and he fights crime in Starling City by shooting arrows at bad guys and exhibiting Bruce Lee-like skills in the martial arts.

(He also has a lot of girlfriends, though my wife would prefer he settle down with Felicity Smoak, his leggy, computer savvy-sidekick from Las Vegas, who feared she was destined to become a cocktail waitress if she didn't enroll at MIT.)

"ARCHERS … ON YOUR MARKS!"

The bow-and-arrow types from South Dakota and around the world reached into quivers and drew back on bows in the equestrian center, and also in a bunch of ballrooms by the South Point corporate offices, because when more than 3,000 archers are packing quivers, it takes more than a horse arena to accommodate them.

There was a moment of silence — born not of design or ceremony, but of rapt concentration. And then there was a SHHTTKK followed by a FWOOSH and a THWAPP, for those are sounds one reads in the comics, when Ollie Queen/Green Arrow draws back on the bow.

SHHHTKK, FWOOSH, THWAPP.

It went on like this all morning, all weekend, really. There was a clock, and when time expired, the archers would walk 20 paces to where the targets were.

Some pulled multiple arrows from the centers of multiple targets. I surmised these were the ones from South Dakota.

After a time, the SHHHTKK, FWOOSH, THWAPP dulls the senses. The mind wanders. Hypothetical questions are raised: Were somebody to attempt to rob the Steak 'n Shake downstairs, could one of these archers pull back on the bow and shoot the pistol right out of the bad guy's hand, like Arrow on TV?

"Technically, you could," said Bruce Cull, president of the Las Vegas Shoot. Cull is from South Dakota and said he has never shot a gun out of a bad guy's hand with a bow and arrow. He did shoot a 2,200-pound buffalo once, which, if you ask me, is more impressive.

Ted Nugent was best man at Bruce Cull's wedding. And while I have never shot a buffalo with a bow and arrow, when I was high school I would cruise around with my buddies and listen to "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Free For All" and "My Live is Like a Tire Iron" on 8-track.

"Archery's precision comes from the human element," Cull said. "You have to be stable. If you're under pressure like that, with moving objects, it becomes more difficult, obviously. It's Hollywood, but a lot of things are possible with a bow (and arrow)."

Cull said he has seen only a few episodes of "Arrow" but added it has been a shot in the arm for archery, in the manner "The Hunger Games" at the movies was a shot in the arm.

Juan Carlos Holgado, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist in archery from the Extremadura region of Spain near Portugal, said he has seen every episode of all three seasons of "Arrow."

Holgado, wearing a black Hoyt archery polo shirt, was standing outside the registration window when he was asked if he — or somebody from South Dakota who also was a real good shot — could shoot a pistol out of a bad guy's hand at the Steak 'n Shake.

"I don't think so, especially not on the first try," he said with a bashful smile.

"There are many things they do in Hollywood that are fantasy. Shooting so many arrows, so fast with accuracy, and using the bow to hit back ... I would say there is lot of fantasy there. But I love the show as you do. I love the idea to promote (archery) through these kind of movies."

As we were talking about the comic books with which we grew up, professional archers, but many more amateur archers — a lot of novices not from South Dakota, myriad women and children — continued coming up the escalator on the way to the arena or the ballrooms. Nearly all were packing quivers.

One man inside the arena was not.

He had a delivery to make, and he had wandered onto the wrong side of the arena, the side where the targets were. In a minute, another long line of archers would be lining up and drawing back on their bows.

I told him many of these archers were from South Dakota and they were pretty good shots, but you should have seen him hightail it out of there.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski