Sports
Athlete Is Back With Fixed Knee

Mustangs Boast a 700-Seat-Bleacher Athletic Complex

Birthday Boy Takes Title at Torrance Fair Rodeo

Estancia Has Season's First Practice

Lady Pintos Feeling Good About New District

Sports Shorts

Sports Briefs

Sorting Contest Begins With 1st of 3 Shows

Moriarty High Volleyball Star Sets Sights on State — Again

Grueling Trail Run Up La Luz Pays Off

More
Sports

HOME	CLASSIFIEDS	OBITUARIES	SPORTS	OPINION

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Boxer Holly Holm’S Mother Is A Title-Winning Archer

By Harold Smith
Mountain View Telegraph
      Tammy Bredy isn't as well-known as her daughter, boxer Holly Holm, but Mom has had some success as well in her chosen sport.
    The 53-year-old Bredy won a New Mexico Games women's age-group archery title at the annual event's 20-yard indoor competition at The Archery Shoppe in Albuquerque in 2007. Her Cedar Crest backyard has an outdoor range replete with a bull's-eye on a stack of hay bales situated amidst a stand of pine trees that frame an expansive view of Tijeras Canyon and the northern reaches of the Manzano Mountains.
    She also, since her rookie season in 2004, has garnered 3D outdoor unlimited women's titles with her trusty BowTech with a 50-pound pull at tournaments in Red River, Gallup, Belen and at the Sandia Crest Bowhunters Archery Range in Tijeras. “Unlimited” describes the type of bow, one with most of the bells and whistles like pulleys, a release, and sight pins in a “spot hog” to factor in yardage.
    But though she enjoys the competitive element of her avocation, the notching of target arrows isn't what makes the California native go all aquiver.
    “There's nothing better than elks meat,” Bredy said.
    It took some kindly urging from her 26-year-old pugilistic offspring for Bredy, with a camera clicking all the while, to show off her kill, a shoulder-mounted elk with a grandly swept back rack. The bull's head was hung for the first time on her living room wall earlier that day on Sunday afternoon.
    “C'mon, Mom, you know you're proud of it,” Holm said.
    Bredy bagged the animal in the Gila National Forest on the first day of hunting season back in September. But that's as far as Bredy and her husband of six years, Jim, will go into detail on where she shot the elk.
    “We just got it back from the taxidermist,” Bredy said. “Jim saw the whole thing. But he stayed back about 20 yards.”
    Then she leaned in and impishly whispered, though her husband, only a few feet away, obviously could hear her every word.
    “He's too noisy,” she said.
    That particular hunt — Bredy also has downed deer and turkeys using a bow and arrow — was truly surreal for her, so much so that she even wrote a story about the experience. Excerpts include:
    ï�® “I watched the elk for a week… I noticed that the cows were not as vocal as the years before. When other hunters would use cow calls, the elk remained quiet. I thought that perhaps the elk are getting smart to the fact that humans were making their sounds. I chose to put the calls away for the year.”
    ï�® “When the tree was between us, I made my draw to conceal my movement. The many hours of practice came into play. I was confident that I could make a good 40-yard shot. I placed my sites on his body when he cleared the tree. I remember telling myself to stay calm and hold my bow still after the arrow left my bow...”
    ï�® “My heart was pounding as I tried to slow my breathing down and hold my breath. I double-checked my 40-yard pin on his heart, then let my arrow fly. I heard my arrow hit, then looked to see blood streaming down his body… The shot was perfect, and the kill was quick, just what you pray for.”
    Bredy, who definitely has an artistic bent, also draws, in pencil and charcoal, panoramic vistas of mountainous terrain, nearly always with a stately elk near center.
    Bredy, if gas prices don't preclude it, plans on competing at the inaugural State Games of the West archery shoot at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs on July 24-27. She said she qualified for the event and the 2009 national State Games of America with her victory at the New Mexico Games last year.
    “That's one of my goals,” said Bredy, who as a massage therapist by trade gives her athletic daughter the works about once a week. “My other goal is to always have organic meat (from her and her husband's kills) in my freezer. I really dislike buying meat because of all the hormones and chemicals they put into it.”
    Bredy's other children are Brian Holm, 30, of Albuquerque, and Weston Holm, 28, of Houston. She has one grandchild, Clementine, who is Weston's daughter.
    For Tammy and Jim, the best thing about bow-hunting is that they are able to do it together.
    “I really like that we, Jim and I, do this together,” Tammy Bredy said.
   

---