Three years ago, if you asked Hunter Telleen’s loved ones which sport he’d excel at in high school, archery would likely never have crossed their minds.
They’d probably have guessed cross-country or track, pointing to the records Hunter set running meets as a 7th grader at Waverly-Shell Rock Middle School. Buck hunting, a hobby the Telleens practice every deer season on their family farmland in Lucas County, was another possibility. They might have even chosen something equestrian, since Hunter’s dad Lynn Telleen was the longtime owner of The Draft Horse Journal, a quarterly publication out of Waverly, Iowa focused on heavy horses. (Fun fact/disclosure: Lynn recently sold DHJ to Little Village owner Matthew Steele.)
Sure, Hunter enjoys all those things. But his sport of choice takes him off school grounds and out of Iowa to competitions around the country, where the 14-year-old shoots for perfect scores and ranks among the top youth competitors in the U.S.
Hunter became incurably curious about archery in 2021, after shooting some arrows at foam targets with a friend at a local 3D shooting range.
“I wanted to get a bow, and then I got one,” Hunter said. “I shot it so much that it was, like, falling apart, so I got a better one and then I started shooting competitions.”
They bought his first bow up at Cabela’s for a few hundred dollars. His new bow was specially ordered online and cost upwards of $3,000.
“I felt like I had to practice a lot better,” Hunter said.
The quality is something you can feel, he explained, lifting the blue aluminum and fiberglass contraption out of his dad’s truck. Hunter shoots a compound bow, which utilizes a system of pulleys and cables to make handling the bow at full draw easier than recurve bows (the kind you see in the Olympics), improving accuracy at great distances.
“The bow with everything on it is like 13 pounds,” he said. “You want it heavy because then it doesn’t jump up in my hand as much as a lighter one. You have a sight and rest, put an arrow on the rest, and then you have this little D loop here, you usually have a release, pull back and then — let go.”
Hunter’s parents have been supportive of his passion from the jump. They had no idea what it would mean to raise an elite archer, but it was clear Hunter had a natural talent. They’ve taken cues from Hunter’s coaches, including Linda Beck, a bowhunting world champion and USA Archery-certified coach with North Central Elite Archers.
“It’s kind of an elite archery club that you have to be invited to,” Lynn explained. “[Coach Linda] scouted him out. Being involved with the North Central Elite Archers involves getting some one-on-one coaching with her, which is invaluable. She’s got several Olympic archers under her. She’s top-shelf as far as a coach. So it’s all just compounded to make him even better.”
Less than two years after picking up his first bow, a 13-year-old Hunter attended his first major national tournament, the 2022 Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) Outdoor Nationals in Decatur, Alabama. “He was shooting against several kids a year older, with more experience, but still ended up 10th in his division,” Lynn recalled.
Rules, standards and scoring systems vary depending on the competition — there’s indoor and field archery; recurve, compound and barebow styles; target, field and 3D competitions, etc.—but Hunter typically shoots down 30-meter ranges (adult competitors shoot up to 70 meters) at five-ring targets, a dime-size X marking the center of the smallest ring.
As Hunter sums it up, the goal is “just trying to get them all in the middle.”
This March, Hunter placed ninth at the National Field Archery Association’s Indoor Nationals tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, scoring 299 on the first day and a perfect 300 on the second day of the competition.
“My scores used to be like 200, and now they’re like 299s out of 300,” he said. “A lot of it is really mental because you want to shoot a perfect score.”
This drive fuels some friendly rivalry with his fellow shooters. Many of Hunter’s best friends are archers he’s met at competitions, some of whom hadn’t even heard of Iowa until they met him.
“We place bets and we [put] a lot more pressure on ourselves than we actually need,” he said with a laugh. “We talk smack when we get to the tournament. We’re all like, ‘OK, hope you do good.’ And then after we’re like, ‘You’re trash!’”
These friendships are now more important to Hunter than mastering the sport. Asked about his ultimate goal, he said with a grin, “To beat all my friends.”
Lynn is happy to see Hunter thrive, even if Lynn’s still a bit confused about the scoring system at competitions. The single greatest investment he’s made in Hunter’s archery career has been time — hundreds of hours spent on the road heading to shooting ranges across Iowa, driving to monthly practices with Coach Beck in Zimmerman, Minnesota, and to competitions in the Deep South in the heat of summer.
Hunter doesn’t take this support for granted. “If they didn’t [drive me], I might not have the opportunity to [compete] and wouldn’t have as many friends around the archery community as I do.”
Being a high schooler is all about balance, but Hunter admits his focus “is pretty much all archery” right now. He has no idea what he’ll study in college, but he knows he wants to shoot on a college archery team somewhere like Texas A&M; his dad would love to see him earn a full-ride scholarship.
Hunter said he’d like to coach someday, “showing young people how to not struggle with what I struggled with just getting into archery.”
“Archery is pretty much for everybody and you can have any setup,” he added, recommending first-time archers visit Plum Creek Archery in Dyersville, Iowa. “They’ll help you set up a bow and they’ll even tell you how to fix your form or your release or something.”
If you’re down to practice, practice, practice, making countless miniscule adjustments on a long road towards precision, competitive archery may be for you.
“It’s [very] challenging, and it’s really rewarding when you shoot really well or get an achievement,” Hunter said.
In a touch of serendipity, the 2023 JOAD Target Nationals, hosted by USA Archery, will take place in Des Moines, July 12-16. Hunter hopes to attend the largest indoor archery competition in the world, the Vegas Shoot in February 2024, which attracts around 4,000 archers of all kinds from around the world to shoot for cash prizes up to $50,000. The Telleens are also considering a trip to France so Hunter can compete in a world cup tournament.
Hunter and his family can’t help but dream about seeing him shoot for an Olympic gold medal someday, even if the odds are stacked against him.
“While the 2028 Olympics in L.A. is a real goal, they currently only involve recurve bows,” Lynn explained. “Hunter shoots a compound. We are hopeful that the Olympic Committee will add compound bow competitions by then. If so, Hunter will be 19 at the time. So, it’s still a bit of a pipe dream at this point — but a pretty cool one for a young kid from northeast Iowa who only recently discovered the sport.”
“I think it’d be really cool,” Hunter added, “the opportunity to shoot in front of the whole world.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s June 2023 issue, Rec’d.
