M.R. James Named to Pope and Young Club Hall of Fame

Life is a journey filled with peaks and valleys, some of those moments expected and others not so much. But despite such uncertainty as we make our way through this world, Bowhunter Magazine founder M.R. James continues to look ahead, knowing that there’s always another summit to climb.

As the man who founded the nation’s leading bowhunting publication a generation ago, James admits that the pace has slowed somewhat in his own personal discoveries of new summits lying ahead. Nevertheless, at age 85, James gets up each day and keeps on climbing.

“The years keep adding up,” he said, with a presumable smile that could almost be heard through the wireless phone.

But even as the years add up, James remains healthy, keeps writing and taking photographs, and continues to bowhunt as often as possible on the Indiana farm he shares with his wife Janet. And as he looks for one more whitetail worthy of wearing his tag, James isn’t lamenting how many years lay behind, instead fixing his gaze ahead and focusing on the next bend in the trail.

But that doesn’t mean that others can’t look back and see the legacy filled footsteps that M.R. — which stands for Marion Ray James—has left behind. And when his peers look back, it’s clear that James stands head and shoulders above most who have ever pulled a bow back to full draw. So much so that James, and five of his colleagues and friends, were recently named to the Pope and Young Club’s prestigious Hall of Fame.

It’s yet another lifetime honor for a man who is truly a living legend among bowhunters.

“Where does this honor rank?” James wondered aloud. “I’d have to say right up there near the top. I’m blessed to have been inducted into the national Archery Hall of Fame, and now, into the Pope and Young Club’s Hall of Fame.

“Those two are highlights of my bowhunting career, recognition from my peers,” James continued. “That’s important to me, to have the respect of a lot of people out there that (have seen) what I’ve done in my life and career.

“It wasn’t expected, but then again, I guess it’s not a shock to me (either) to be inducted (into the Hall of Fame). Both of those honors are memories I’ll take to my grave.”

Joining James in the newest class of the Pope and Young Hall of Fame are five individuals who have risen to their own esteemed heights in the bowhunting world. Those include Dr. John D. “Jack” Forst, Roger Atwood, Billy Ellis, the late Charlie Kroll, and the late Carl Hulbert. All of those men were announced in early April as the newest Hall of Fame members at the Pope and Young Club’s 32nd Biennial Convention in Glendale, Ariz.

The path that James has taken to bowhunting's summit has been a journey with new adventures and discoveries around almost every corner. Born in Wabash County, Ill. in 1940, James' bio notes that he grew up amid the rich farmlands near the family's small riverside hometown. After initially attending Evansville College in the late 1950s, James would go on to receive his bachelor's and master's degrees from Oakland City (1964) and St. Francis (1978) Universities.

While gaining those two degrees proved to be important in James' professional life, they pale in comparison to the role that M.R.'s high school sweetheart Janet has played in his life for more than six decades now. After dating in high school, the couple married in 1960 and have now been husband and wife for some 65 years, a marriage that has seen them become parents, grandparents, and great grandparents.

In addition to his family roles, James was able to build his Hall of Fame career with a resume that few can ever equal. After founding Bowhunter Magazine with three friends in 1971, James would go on to serve as the magazine’s editor from its birth until 2006 when he retired and ended his so-called “magic carpet ride.”

Eventually reaching the lofty heights of over 200,000 paid circulation and reach of over a million readers, James — and the editors who have succeeded him including the late Dwight Schuh, and Curt Wells — all worked long and hard hours to turn Bowhunter into the sport's most iconic publication. Editor-in-Chief Christian Berg now oversees Bowhunter and related brands.

“When I sold Bowhunter, it had gotten to the point where I was doing more work than hunting,” James said. “When I hired Dwight Schuh to take my place, I wanted to relax a bit more and not face deadlines and all of the things that come with running a magazine.”

With all of his time spent bowhunting before and after retirement, James’ house is filled with all kinds of North American big game animal mounts after his many decades in the field. But it also features numerous awards from his Hall of Fame career too.

Over the past five decades, James has served in leadership roles as officers and a board member for the National Bowhunting Education Foundation, Physically Challenged Bowhunters of America, the Pope and Young Club, and the Archery Hall of Fame, among others. He also served as the editor of the Pope and Young Club’s first record book back in 1975. And there are plenty of other Hall of Fame honors, lifetime achievement awards, numerous writing awards, and much more leading to his induction in 2003 as the Archery Hall of Fame’s 54th member.

Now, with his 2025 induction into the Pope and Young Club’s Hall of Fame, an organization he has been with in some capacity from its beginning, James’ upward climb is all but complete in an industry he has watched grow for nearly six decades.

During his long tenure in the bowhunting world, James admits that it’s an industry that has changed, and not always for the better in his opinion.

Some change has come at a turtle's pace, while other change has occurred at warp speed. Early in his career, James said there was no compound bow, just traditional bows and bowhunting gear. That changed in the late 1960s and James got to witness the birth of bowhunting's modern era when he chose to begin using Archery Hall of Fame member Tom Jenning's new-fangled compound bow.

"My personal opinion was that they (Jennings’ compounds) were better built, so I started hunting with them," James said, noting that he used a compound in the tagging of several western mule deer over time during those early years of the compound bow’s history. "I wrote about it and said it's an amazing development, but it also could be a problem."

Why is that? “Because so many of us that liked traditional archery saw it as a threat,” James said.

But even though James remains an ardent traditional bowhunter to this day, he embraced the compound from its beginnings because in his opinion, "...it opened up the sport to many others who might not have become bowhunters otherwise."

A longtime traditional archer at heart, James has seen waves of change as the archery industry has progressed, with the bowhunting market turning decidedly to the compound bow in the late 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, even the compound bow has given ground to the ongoing march of progress as the crossbow has become more advanced and used by more and more hunters across the country.

Now, James has moved beyond those days of being close to the heartbeat of the bowhunting industry and its progress forward. Instead, he’s content to be a Midwestern resident with a 165-acre farm, a country spread that is filled with white-tailed deer and other critters in Perry County, Ind.

But mind you, just because he’s retired, that has hardly slowed M.R. James down.

“I used to think that I’m going to go on this hunt and that hunt, for elk, sheep, mule deer, antelope, and all kinds of big game animals,” he said. “I can’t do that anymore, but I get out on the farm we live on in southern Indiana and have shot about 12,000+ photos of deer and other wildlife on the farm. There’s no limit with a camera.”

Don’t think for a second, however, that James has retired his traditional archery gear.

“I still love it (bowhunting) as much as I did so many years ago,” he said. “I try not to go to other places now, other than heading over to Illinois to hunt a friend’s farm once or twice a year. I’ve taken my own farm and made it as deer friendly as I can and all that we do here is bowhunt.”

Ever the consummate educator, James finds a special joy in helping young men and kids take their first deer. “Last year, I watched one young man shoot this big old doe,” James said. “I helped him blood trail it and recover it—memories like that are priceless to me.”

While James didn’t shoot a deer on his own last fall, he took photos at 20 yards of bucks that would have scored in the 150s and 160s. And yes, you can trust James’ numerical guesses here since he’s a longtime official measurer with Pope and Young.

“I still like going out to see what will show up,” said James of his own hunting. “The year before last, I killed the biggest buck I’ve ever killed, one with 14 scorable points (a cover story that James told in the pages of Bowhunter Magazine).

He loves all facets of the archery season each year, from the warmth of early fall to the bleak days of late season. But if James has to choose a time when nothing else gets in the way of his own personal hunting time, it will be the November rut in his own backyard.

“People ask me what crops I raise on the farm,” James said. “I tell them I raise whitetail does, because by doing that, I know that during the rut, the bucks will show up. I’m not always sure where they all come from, but they always show up in the rut.”

With the Hoosier National Forest, along with the area’s hilly terrain, ridgetops, and farmland serving as the rural backdrop outside his home, James admits that he is in a different place now than he was years ago when he started Bowhunter.

“At this stage in my bowhunting career, I don’t have to have blood on my arrow to have a successful season,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “But I do have my eyes on one (a big buck) for next year though.”

And that’s something that almost every single reader of Bowhunter Magazine and bowhunter.com can understand and appreciate, because don’t we all have one in mind for the season to come? After all, it’s the bowhunter’s way.

---