If you know anything about bowhunting history, you know names like Fred Bear, Howard Hill, Roy Case, and Doug Easton. And, if you know anything about the pastime’s rise in popularity, names like Chuck Adams, Byron Ferguson and, of course, Ted Nugent.
There’s one name, however, that you might not recognize. Yet, without him, bowhunting might have never been what it is today.
His name is Stan Chiras, and he almost single-handedly organized and galvanized the business of the archery trade.
Back in 1988, Chiras was making treestands (Vantage Point) and trying for new ways to market his revolutionary product. An avid bowhunter, he designed a stand that was lightweight and easy to set up, using a mounting pin that screwed into the tree.
“I had several problems back then,” Chiras admits. “First, I had entered a highly competitive business. I was competing with companies like Screaming Eagle out of Montana. It was a tough road. And second, I was trying to sell treestands to mostly gun-deer hunters.”
Determined to build his business, Chiras bought booth space at the 1989 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Dallas. The show was entering its 10th year, but it was nothing like it is today. The 2024 show attracted more than 65,000 attendees from across the globe.
“I was dismayed. It was nearly all gun dealers. Gun-hunters simply didn’t want to use treestands.”
To get a better read on the business climate, Chiras that week enlisted the help of some of his pals to conduct a survey of SHOT show exhibitors. Surely, they had to have bowhunting customers.
“Boy, were we off base. It was like only one in fifty exhibitors did any kind of archery commerce. But that didn’t discourage me. When I got home, I immediately got to work on the concept of an archery-only trade show.”
Endless hours of planning, preparation, and hard work that spring, summer and fall, Chiras rolled out his idea the next January (1990) with his Bowhunting Trade Show in Louisville, KY.
Why Louisville?
“I did a lot of research on that,” he said. “I crunched numbers from wherever I could get reliable data and found out that like 80 percent of all the bowhunters lived within 500 miles of Louisville. I then secured a deal to run the show at the Commonwealth Convention Center in downtown Louisville.
“The show was a success; we used about 40,000 square feet of that convention center the first year. But when word got out, things really got crazy. The second year (1991), we had 275 exhibitors and covered 100,000 square feet. We really hit our stride the third year when we sold out and had more than 500 exhibitors.”
By 1995, Chiras had to move his trade show to Indianapolis to accommodate a surging new industry.
Industry veteran and American bowhunting legend Bob Robb vividly remembers those days.
“Without Stan Chiras’ love for archery and bowhunting, and his entrepreneurial vision and hard work in creating the very first national bowhunting trade show, the sport would never have grown as rapidly as it did back in the 1990s,” Robb said. “I worked with him on those first shows, and the amount of time and effort required to pull them off was Herculean. He is truly one of the legends of modern bowhunting.”
Ted Nugent agrees.
“When it comes to vision-driven entrepreneurs dedicated to furthering the thrilling bowhunting lifestyle, Stan Chiras stands with all the greats. He is certainly a mystical flight of the arrow bloodbrother!”
To be fair, Chiras didn’t exactly invent the bowhunting industry. But he certainly created the venue for entrepreneurs to get their new bowhunting-related products to more Americans. Before he started his trade show, there wasn’t a national convention for the industry. And, before he even rolled out his first show, he tried to work with the existing entity, the Archery Manufacturers and Merchants Organization (AMMO) on a joint venture.
“We discussed it a lot, but they really weren’t interested,” he said. “They were kinda lukewarm to the whole concept. I had meetings with them in Florida before 1989 on ways we could co-sponsor it and share revenues. They declined to become involved. I said, “Well, I’m going to do it anyway!”
After setting the world on fire those first few years, Chiras soon found himself in competition with, you guess it … AMMO.
“My last show was in 1997. I ran it for seven years. I would’ve done it forever had they (AMMO, which is now the Archery Trade Association) not came in and basically stole it (the idea for a national archery trade show) from me.”
Chiras admits he was quite bitter for a while.
“I was so disillusioned that I didn’t even bowhunt for 10 years,” he said. “And bowhunting was my life. My passion was mule deer. Oh, yes, mule deer in the High Country. I’ve shot 24 elk in my life, but mule deer … that was something else. I do miss the West, but I’m 75 now. And I have returned to bowhunting around here.”
After spending years of his life in Wyoming, Colorado, Florida and Tennessee, Chiras, 75, now resides in northern Kentucky.
