Camp instructor wins in archery World Series
Paige PearceGore, an outdoor camp instructor for kids from Northern California, shot perfect scores last week to win the archery World Series Finals in Las Vegas.
PearceGore, 24, works at the Kids Outdoor Sports Camp in Red Bluff and also teaches hunter education for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
At the Las Vegas competitions, she posted perfect scores in compound bow women’s events at the Archery World Series Finals and what is called the Vegas Shoot. She called the events “the Super Bowl of archery” and brought home $19,000 for the victories.
I’ve met Paige several times over the future of youth in the outdoors, her trademark theme.
“Children don’t always grow up in environments these days where they learn outdoor skills,” she said.
Children who grow up loving outdoors activities are the ones who, as adults, are the most likely to help protect habitat that wildlife require, she said.
That approach inspired the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation to invite her to Washington D.C., where she met Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, many agency chiefs and members of Congress, and delivered her message.
In 2018, she was the first winner of the “New Movers, Shakers” category as voted on by members of the California Outdoors Hall of Fame. The award was designed for those under 30 whose achievements are gamechangers but whose short careers might not qualify them for the Hall of Fame.
One of PearceGore’s dreams is to compete in the Olympics. She said archers would petition the International Olympic Committee to allow the use of modern compound bows.
In most world competitions, archers use compound bows, where the bowstring is engineered with a system of pulleys and levers to create a uniform process that reduces the strain. The Olympics permit only “recurve bows” — a design similar to what Robin Hood would have used.
PearceGore previously won the largest outdoor 3D archery target competition in the world for five years straight and has traveled to archery events in China, Colombia, Turkey, Germany, France and El Salvador.