Bows

Sometimes, we never know what’s going to grab us for the rest of our lives until we get a little nudge in the right direction.

For Grady Kane, that nudge from being an archery spectator to a committed, trophy-winning athlete came from his grandfather.

“I was wanted to shoot a bow from watching bow hunting on TV,” Grady recalled. “Then my grandfather showed me videos on USA Archery of a pro shooting, and it looked like it was fun and cool. That got me involved in target archery.” 

As is often the case of youth participation in the hunting and shooting sports, an organization helps participants find their own path to success. With Grady, Explore Archery, which is operated by USA Archery, supplied the necessary resources.

Seventeen-year-old Cade Thomas began pursuing white-tailed deer with archery equipment back in 2017 at age 11.  He started with a crossbow and then progressed to using a compound bow.

This past season, he harvested his personal best whitetail buck on the Horn Ranch & Rancho La Tinaja in Kinney County, Texas where his father, Bobby, leases a spot. The deer was one of the few survivors left after anthrax plagued the property’s deer herd back in 2019, and it scored approximately 171.25 inches.

According to Ranch Manager and landowner, David Price, the ranch lost an estimated 700 deer due to an anthrax outbreak in 2019, and Thomas’s buck was one that survived that event.