Glenn St. Charles, age 97, enjoys the convention with his son Joe. Glenn found-ed the Pope and Young Club in 1961.

most memorable events related to bowhunting are highly social affairs, and one of my favorite events is the Pope and Young Club's Biennium National Convention and Awards Banquet. This year, the 26th Biennium Convention took place in Denver, Colorado, April 23-25.

Maybe these P&Y conventions are like mountain man rendezvous in the 1800s. The mountain men lived isolated, lonely lives for months on end, and then they gathered for rendezvous at select spots where they caught up on the latest news and traded furs, lies, and who knows what else?

Today, the rendezvous take place in air-conditioned hotels, and the participants constantly text, dial, and check e-mails on electronic devices -- I think the mountain men would freak out at this -- but, otherwise, gatherings of bowhunters today are probably very similar to rendezvous of 200 years ago. The 1,000 serious bowhunters who gathered in Denver might not have traded many furs, but they traded plenty of tales (maybe even a few lies), got caught up on the latest in bowhunting, and went away excited to do it again in two years.

FRIENDSHIPS
Topping the list of reasons to attend a bowhunter rendezvous would be camaraderie, the opportunity to re-establish old friendships and make new ones. It's life enriching, and it's fun.

It's also educational, because a gathering of serious bowhunters pools a staggering depth of knowledge. I personally attend the P&Y conventions as a sponge, ready to absorb as much wisdom and knowledge as possible. What better place to learn the what, where, when, how, and why of bowhunting?

And what better place to meet the who? P&Y conventions attract the who's who of bowhunting under one roof, and it's always a little humbling to meet in person those people you've admired all your life. At the top of that list at P&Y, of course, is Glenn St. Charles, founder of the Pope and Young Club. At age 97, Glenn still attends every convention, circulating among the crowds like a living history book of North American bowhunting.

For me, a highlight is seeing old friends like P&Y President M.R. James, Founder of Bowhunter Magazine and my former boss. It was also great to see G. Fred Asbell, who wrote for Bowhunter for many years and served as P&Y President for 18 years. Also, sports stars often attend the conventions, and as a baseball fan I enjoyed meeting former major league pitchers Mike Timlin and Mike Myers.

THE ANIMALS
The big game exhibit is always the centerpiece of the convention. This year, 105 of the largest animals entered during the last two-year recording period represented all 34 categories of North American big game -- 28 subspecies, and six velvet deer and caribou categories. Among the entries were four new world records. (See the sidebar and photos for details, page 139.)

Total record book entries now total more than 80,000; more than 41,000 of which are typical whitetails. For the two-year, 26th biennium scoring period, entries totaled 8,368, broken down as follows: 73.8% – deer (five categories); 8.7% – elk; 6.8% – bears; 5.9% – pronghorn antelope; 5.0% – all remaining categories