Bowhunt America

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Opportunities are greater today in the archery industry than at any time in history. That’s because so many of the players––from consumers to retailers, distributors and manufacturers––are primed and looking for the next big thing. Everyone hangs, understandably, on the possibility of the next truly innovative new product, the next category leader, the next market mover.

“We started with the concept that if it wasn’t new for the time, we didn’t want to pursue it,” says MidAtlantic Archery Products President Scott Mackie. “We had no desire to be ame-too company with me-too products. Our push was to see and jump on opportunities for creating genuinely new and exciting products for archers.”

In a very real sense, luck in business is the ability to recognize opportunities, combinedwith the ability to make something of them.

“I got the archery bug early,” says Scott. “I remember going to Sears to buy more arrows when I was about ten years old. They had the best selection back then, and I was going through arrows at a fast clip.

“By the time I was in high school, I was deeply immersed in the latest in bowhunting equipment. In particular, I was enamored with arrow speed. Most of the time I was trying to obtain the best possible combination of arrow speed and kinetic energy, and have it all work for serious bowhunting. I spent an inordinate amount of time experimenting with different draw weights, different gear and calculating kinetic energy for everything as I went.

“One of the things I found, however, was that the faster I arranged for my arrows to go, the more problems I experienced with arrow flight and accuracy, especially when shooting broadheads. That didn’t seem right to me and early on I saw it clearly as an opportunity to improve things. Even all the way back then I was beginning to envision possible solutions.”

Archery wasn’t the only thing that captured Scott Mackie’s imagination. Baseball also took center stage, so much so that Scott was courted by major league baseball while still in high school, went on to star in baseball in college and was eventually drafted by the Cleveland Indians.

“I played three years in the Indians’ farm system,” Scott reveals. “Playing professional ball was the sort of experience I wouldn’t give up for anything, partly because I met and played with so many wonderful people. Some went on to have Baseball-Hall-of-Fame careers. Others slid off in other directions.

“Baseball was hard work but we also had a fair amount of time off, and one particular playing partner and I took full advantage of that to fish, hunt and shoot our bows.”

After baseball, Scott got involved in real estate and construction, eventually founding his own general contracting business. But always he stayed in touch with his old baseball/hunting buddy and together they continued kicking around how to improve their fastest archery setups.

“One of the ideas I had toyed with for years was creating a broadhead that imparted spin to an arrow. My old baseball buddy had gone on to become involved with government contracts for the Kennedy Space Center and in that capacity rubbed shoulders with some of the nation’s most brilliant aeronautical engineers and thinkers. Together, we ran our ideas by some of those men, and with their help refined our notions of a broadhead with airfoils on the back to spin-stabilize the head and the arrow.”

In 1999 the two old baseball buddies decided to form a company to commercially explore their spin-stabilize ideas.

“In a burst of over-exuberant creativity, we named the company 2XJ Enterprises, the 2XJ standing for ‘two ex-jocks.’”

Over the next two years the partners advanced their broadhead concepts, polishing their ideas and in due course being granted U.S. patents for what they termed “variable degree axial flow airfoils” on the aft end of broadhead blades and a unique V-lock broadhead-blade attachment system.

“By 2002 we had created the very first 2XJ Crimson Talon Spin-Stabilized Broadhead, and that January we introduced that revolu-tionary new three-blade broadhead at the ATA Trade Show. Our sales pitch was straightforward and easy for everyone to understand. The Crimson Talon utilized patented Spin-Tite Airfoil Technology to stabilize a broadhead and arrow in flight like never before. This benefit was particularly evident the faster the archer shot arrows. The faster the arrow, the faster the Crimson Talon spun the arrow and the more stabilized it became. Finally, bowhunters could get the most out of their fastest bowhunting setups.

“At the same time there was a second significant benefit. When the spin-stabilized Crimson Talon hit an animal, it cored or drilled a hole rather than making a simple, straight slice. That cored hole had a much more difficult time closing up and in turn delivered a better blood trail and quicker, easier recoveries of game. The term we used to describe the effect was ‘spiral wound channel.’

“At that ATA Show we had exactly 24 prototype 2XJ Crimson Talon Broadheads in our booth. Ten minutes into the show we had a crowd of savvy archery dealers gathered around and one very interested Cabela’s buyer. They peppered us with questions. The eager Cabela’s buyer left, only to return mere minutes later with his boss who had only one question, ‘Would you accept an order right now and could you beginning shipping as early as March, just two months away?’

“In as strong a voice as I could muster, I assured him that we would and could, even though I knew that we had yet to work out final production, assembly and packaging details. ‘Sure, absolutely,’ I told him. Based on the interest and orders from dealers and that big order, 2XJ Enterprises was off and running.”

In the coming years, 2XJ expanded its lineup to include additional broadheads, all utilizing the common theme of revolutionary airfoils on the back of the broadhead blades to spin-stabilize the heads and the arrows they were affixed to.

“Slowly and carefully we added new Spin-Tite-Technology broadheads,” says Scott. “We introduced the 2XJ Crimson Tusker, a four-blade Spin-Tite broadhead, followed by the 2XJ Viper Venom and the Crimson Raptor. The Viper Venom was a wide and wicked cut-on-contact broadhead. The Crimson Raptor was a hybrid broadhead that featured both fixed cut-on-contact blades and two additional expandable blades.”

By 2008 the Crimson Talon line of Spin-Tite Technology Broadheads was both well established and well accepted in the bowhunting world, although things were about to change in a big way.

“While working attentively on better broadheads,” Scott admits, “we were also focused on a brand new opportunity—arrow rests. For some time we had been watching and admiring the rise of the whisker-type arrow rest. Its amazingly simple design and operation, and its phenomenal sales growth, had surprised everyone in the arrow-rest arena. Yet, it had some drawbacks, fletching contact and fletching wear being chief among those. At almost exactly the same time, drop-away arrow rests had emerged as the clear choice of those archers desiring complete fletch clearance and all the arrow-flight and accuracy benefits that such complete clearance bestowed.

“We surmised that if we could somehow create a secure whisker-type arrow rest that also guaranteed complete fletch clearance on every shot, we would step right into a huge arrow-rest opportunity. We developed a plausible concept for such a new-age arrow rest in 2006, but it took us over two years of diligent work to perfect that concept and create working prototypes.

“About the time we completed that project, we also came to another realization. We decided that 2XJ was simply not a name to build a larger company upon. While it meant something to us, it had failed to be meaningful or even memorable to others. With our quickly solidifying plans to expand into arrow rests, we felt that the time was right to change our company’s name.

“In 2008 we formed MidAtlantic Archery Products, and that new entity simply absorbed everything that was the old 2XJ Enterprises. MidAtlantic Archery Products became the umbrella company under which Crimson Talon Broadheads and our new TriVan Arrow Rests would be marketed.”

MidAtlantic Archery Products introduced the remarkable new TriVan
Vanishing Arrow Rest to the world at the 2009 ATA Trade Show in Indianapolis.

“The TriVan Vanishing Arrow Rest offered archers the best of both worlds,” Scott explains. “While the archer waits and during the draw, the TriVan Rest holds an arrow with complete security. Once the shot is triggered, the TriVan’s arms radially retracted like a camera’s shutter to provide complete shaft and fletch clearance for the speeding arrow. There’s also a unique draw-down feature that enables the archer to let his or her bow down without losing complete containment of the arrow.”

Brand new for 2010, MidAtlantic’s TriVan Vanishing Arrow Rests are now available in three distinct models––the TriVan Multi-Adjust Pro, the TriVan Original and the TriVan Contour.

“The new TriVan Multi-Adjust Pro features an upgraded mounting bracket with independent windage and elevation adjustment capabilities. The Multi-Adjust Pro also sports Vibra-Shield Damping Technology which is essentially a soft armor coating that effectively squelches shot vibration and noise. The Multi-Adjust Pro, of course, features all of the desirable benefits that made the Original TriVan Vanishing Arrow Rest so popular with archers and bowhunters far and wide, including complete arrow capture and security even during letdown, precise adjustments for any arrow size and Vanishing Arm Technology for total shaft and fletch clearance.

“The new-for-2010 TriVan Contour is a price-point arrow rest with unmoving rest arms. The Contour retails for just $49, and a single Contour unit is adaptable for either right- or left-hand use. The TriVan Contour, like the TriVan Original and the new TriVan Multi-Adjust Pro, features convenient arrow-size adjustability. It also features a Vibra-Shield Damping coating.”

The Crimson Talon Broadhead lineup for 2010 from MidAtlantic Archery Products is indeed advanced.

“Leading off that lineup,” declares Scott, “is the 2010 Crimson Talon XT, a six-bladed Spin-Tite Technology broadhead that has the toughest blades we have ever offered. Our customers are already saying that the Crimson Talon XT is the most technologically advanced fixed-blade broadhead they’ve ever seen. The Crimson Talon XT sports six spin-stabilized blades, three rigid airfoils and the patented V-Lock Broadhead Blade Attachment System.

“Next up is the Crimson Talon Hyper-Speed XT Broadhead. This is a unique broadhead we’ve designed specifically for the fastest bows on the planet, including today’s highest performing crossbows. The Crimson Talon Hyper-Speed XT features a total of eleven rigid airfoils, three on the aft edge of the main blades and eight more on the head’s distinctive tip.

“The 2010 Crimson Croc is an especially deadly cut-on-contact broadhead with a Teflon-coated and serrated main blade, two rigid airfoils to spin-stabilize the head and its arrow, two additional bleeder blades and a sweeping cutting tip designed expressly to penetrate deeply, even with lighter weight bows.”

The Crimson Cuda is a three-blade expandable broadhead featuring MidAtlantic’s patented Spiral Kut Tip, an especially tough tip with eight aggressive airfoils. Blades open instantly upon impact.

“The 2010 X-System is a most remarkable hybrid cut-on-contact expandable broadhead. It features main blades equipped with patented Spin-Tite Airfoil Technology designed to spin-stabilize the shot and provide a devastating spiral wound channel. The X-System also utilizes what we call, and which we have patented, an Inertia Trigger Cam. Unlike conventional expandable broadheads which often use rubber bands or O-rings to retain their expandable blades during flight, the revolutionary X-System utilizes an ingenious spring-and-puck system located inside the ferrule to impart a cam load on its expandable blades during flight. Upon impact that small spring-mounted puck moves forward and the blades are allowed to quickly deploy without any friction. The system is called the Inertia Trigger Cam and it is the expandable-blade retainment system of the future.”

Wrapping up the Crimson Talon lineup for 2010 is the company’s Turbine-Tip.

“The Turbine-Tip is the world’s first and only spin-stabilized field point. It’s available in 100- and 125-grain models and features eight aggressive airfoils carved into its leading tip. Those airfoils spin-stabilize the arrow from the front for tack-driving accuracy. If you shoot an especially fast bow, this is the field point for you.”

In just 11 years, the company now known as MidAtlantic Archery Products has risen from the minds of two ex-jock bowhunting buddies to become an innovation-based market mover within the archery industry. It’s currently housed in a 6,000-square-foot, two-level building in Maryland that’s organized into offices, assembly and packaging, warehousing and shipping departments.

“We’ve developed a strong sales structure, working closely with leading local archery pro shops, the nation’s best archery distributors and archery retailers and outlets of all sizes. We even have key distributors and retailers in Canada, Europe, Australia and Africa.

“The obvious key to our success has been our drive to identify specific archery-market opportunities and then apply ourselves to create genuinely innovative
new products in those opportunity niches that everyone––consumers, retailers and distributors––can benefit from.

“In the future we plan to continue that process, seeking and seeing opportunities wherever they exist and hitting them out of the ballpark whenever possible.”

For more information on MidAtlantic Archery Products, Crimson Talon Broadheads and TriVan Vanishing Arrow Rests, contact them at (410) 658-9660 or log onto midatlanticarchery.com.

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