Archers Target Home on the Range

Claudia Marks drew an arrow from the leather quiver strapped around her waist, took aim, and launched a shot with precision that would have made Robin Hood green. Another bull’s-eye.

Marks, a former state field archery champion, rarely has trouble finding her range with bow and arrow. If only finding a range to practice was so easy.

Gordon and Claudia Marks, the president and vice president of the Conejo Valley Archers, spearheaded an exhaustive 10-month search for a new site for the club’s field archery range. The group was forced to vacate its range in Thousand Oaks this summer when the 25-acre site was targeted for a housing development. The CVA had called Thousand Oaks its home for 16 years.

After rejecting several other sites in Ventura County, the Marks settled on a 30-acre parcel of Camarillo Regional Park property, located just east of the Camarillo State Hospital and Development Center.

Since signing a one-year lease with the County last month, the Marks and other club members have cleared an archery range from the brushy weeds and brambles covering the property. With volunteer labor and equipment, it will probably take another year of bulldozing and clearing weeds before the property begins to resemble the range that the CVA left behind.

“It was much nicer in Thousand Oaks,” club member Bill Willis of Newbury Park said. “There were lots of trees there and it was more up and down. This is pretty flat.”

The club’s new range is more secluded, an advantage over the Thousand Oaks’ site. The Camarillo property is located more than a mile off the closest paved road, tucked in a narrow valley surrounded by rolling foothills.

“When we get the whole place developed, I think it will be a better range than we had before,” Gordon Marks said.

The Marks joined the CVA in 1980. After years of practice, Claudia won the state field archery championship in 1983 and placed second in ’84.

Most of the 115 families in the CVA prefer field archery to target shooting, where an archer stands and shoots at one target. In the field event, archers follow a course and shoot at targets ranging in distance from 10 to 80 yards.

Throughout the United States, field archery is more popular than target shooting. There are about 2,500 target archers nationwide, but more than 20,000 field archers, according to Butch Herold, the executive secretary of the National Field Archery Assn.

“Field archery is growing in all aspects, the number of clubs and archers,” Herold said. “It’s much more diversified than other forms of archery.”

The CVA leased approximately 30 acres from the Recreation Services Department of the Ventura County General Services Agency. The property that is being used by the archers is part of a 355-acre site that Ventura County purchased from the federal government in 1985.

A prison had been planned for the land, but when that fell through, the government gave 236 acres to the County and sold a 121-acre parcel.

The County originally targeted the land, which is set aside for recreational use only, for a theme park, according to Bill Tanner, administrative assistant for Ventura County Supervisor Madge Schaefer. Schaefer, who represents the 2nd District, acted as a conduit between the CVA and Ventura County.

The Marks learned about the Camarillo site the day before they planned to sign a lease on property in Thousand Oaks.

The CVA plan is to continue work on the range despite an uncertain future. There won’t be a decision until next year on whether the club will remain in Camarillo after its lease expires next July.

The master plan for the property is still being developed, however, and will not be submitted to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors until early next year. It won’t be determined until then whether the lease will be renewed.

“If they are not a part of the master plan, then their lease can be terminated,” said Blake Boyle, manager of Recreation Services for Ventura County.