 I’m
60 years old and have been an avid bowhunter for over 30 years. I began
in archery with a Bear recurve and cedar arrows in Minnesota. I hunted
there for five years, getting a deer each year, before I opened an archery
shop with a friend in Sauk Rapids, Minnesota, as a sideline business to
try and promote archery in the area. We were in business together for five
years while I was a copywriter for an advertising agency in St. Cloud,
Minnesota.
I moved to North Dakota as an editor for a small weekly newspaper. I finally purchased the paper a few years later and stayed there until I sold the paper in 1985. I then went back to college and got my degree in Divinity and took a call to a small Lutheran church in Moab, Utah in 1987. I moved to another church in Buena Vista, Colorado in April of 1998. As far as my writing career is concerned, I have been published in several major outdoors magazines, have had my photos published in Life magazine, had numerous news feature stories published in newspapers all over the U.S., written a chapter on newspaper writing for a national school textbook, and won numerous state and national awards for writing and photography. Finally, I have been nominated for a Pulitzer in news photography (didn’t win it). In my lifetime with a bow I have harvested over many deer, elk and other species. I have also shot black bear, turkeys, coyotes, fox and other assorted small game. I have always had a love for archery, both target and hunting. But more than that, I have always tried to get others interested in the sport and help them along as so many people helped me when I was beginning. Today, I serve as the pastor for a Lutheran church in Buena Vista, CO. I go hunting a lot. I am very active in a local archery club and am a state director in the national Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) as well as the local chapter president. I spend a lot of my time promoting the NWTF, archery and giving instruction to youth. I have always been the kind of person who fended for myself. If I wanted to take a hunting trip away from my home area, I called a lot of people, studied a lot of maps, did a lot of homework and went off hunting. I have never gone on a guided trip. This experience has made me somewhat of a "do it yourself" expert insofar as hunting excursions is concerned. The purpose of my Hunting The West column and the Bowhunt The West forum on Bowhunting.Net is to help hunters learn that going West for a deer or elk hunting trip is not something you have to fear. There are ways that you can do it yourself if that’s all your budget will allow. That is not to say I am against guided trips. I just have always been poor enough that I couldn’t afford to do that kind of thing, and there are plenty of other people out there like myself. In my column we focus on hunting in the west, particularly Colorado and all of Utah for deer, elk and turkeys. There’s some excellent hunting out here on public land, and I hope that the people who visit www.bowhunting.net will get some insight from my column. I have excellent connections with the Utah and Colorado Division of Wildlife employees and can get good, straight answers from them. My best friend is the local game warden and we golf together, ride in the field together, and share many good times. Good Hunting, John E. Maynard |