North Carolina teenagers Jacob Brown, left, and Davis Dunnican take aim at a target on the practice range behind St. Bernard's gymnasium on Thursday. The two are in town for the Archery Shooters Association pro-am.

The Archery Shooters Association (ASA) has only been back in Cullman a couple of days, and there’s already an illegal entrant for this year’s pro-am.

Hey, Mother Nature, ever hear of registering?

Despite steady showers Thursday morning, two legitimate participants, North Carolina teens Davis Dunnican and Jacob Brown, were among a handful of archers out on the range at St. Bernard practicing for the weekend’s events.

Dunnican’s been to Cullman twice and called it one of his favorite shoots. The 15-year-old’s particularly a fan of the facilities, which he said are nicer than most on the circuit.

Brown, 17, is a first-time attendee to the monastery. He’d only been on campus a short while but already picked up on how organized the whole operation is. He also liked how there are roads to pretty much everywhere, including the practice and competition ranges.

Both youngsters have their reasons for taking up the sport. Brown joked his is to keep him out of trouble. For Dunnican, it’s all about the community.

“You run across very few people that you don’t get along with,” he said. “Most of the people are just normal people. Even the pros, they just act like normal guys. You’d never know.”

This is the ASA’s fourth trip to Cullman and first since signing a new contract for another three years last fall. A few changes come with the new deal, most notably that the Cullman stop is now a regular season pro-am and that the tour’s championship event, the ASA Classic, will now be hosted by Phenix City.

As a pro-am, the usual Thursday, Friday and Saturday rotation of competition will be shifted to Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with the pros hitting the range on the weekend. There will also be less international flair than in years past because most generally hold out for the Classic.

Even still, ASA owner Mike Tyrell is expecting around 1,700-1,800 archers — which would top last year’s high of 1,600 — to flood St. Bernard’s expansive grounds. He said there were 1,900 participants in Kentucky in June, 1,850 in Illinois last month and that participation has been up by at least 10 percent at all five events so far this season.

Tyrell and Co. set up one of their beginning men’s classes in Kentucky based on historical participation but wound up having more than 100 people sign up than expected. It’s a good problem to have, though it did make for some tricky last-minute adjustments to accommodate the massive field.

“We’ve had several of those kind of occasions where all of a sudden it’s like whack-a-mole,” Tyrell said. “You don’t know which one’s going to pop up each weekend. That’s been kind of a fun challenge.”

Tyrell’s theory for the rise in interest is two-pronged, and neither has anything to do with the popularity of archery-heavy movies like “The Hunger Games” and “Brave.”

The first is what he calls a reactivation into the sport. Those who were intimidated by the level of difficulty associated with shooting 3-D targets at unknown distances are still coming back since the ASA added known-distance classes about 10 years ago. The latter allows the use of range finders and is admittedly less challenging, but not to the point where it’s a cake walk for anyone off the streets.

Tyrell’s other line of thinking involves the impact of youth-based programs like Scholastic 3-D Archery, which partners with the ASA.

“Most kids we had prior to that were coming because the parents shot,” he said. “Now we’re having parents come join the shoot because the kids are shooting.”

When the ASA signed its new contract, it also reached an agreement with members of the Cullman Hospitality Association — which represents several local hotels — to set room prices at a reasonable cap. Hotel prices had been a hot topic since the 2013 tournament and were at one point the only hurdle standing in the way of Tyrell fully committing the ASA’s return to Cullman following the original contract.

This year, the ASA website featured six local hotels offering anywhere from 40-100 rooms at fixed rates ranging from $79-$128 for a two-night minimum. Tyrell pointed to at least one other hotel that didn’t agree to a guaranteed deal but still dropped its prices around $20 from last year.

In the past, the event’s economic impact has been estimated at at least $1 million.

Though there won’t be as much at stake as when Cullman was the site of the ASA Classic, the tournament will still end with a Shoot Down featuring the weekend’s leaders and a line of foam 3-D animal targets at various distances. The event, which will be Sunday at 1 p.m., has been moved from the soccer field at St. Bernard to a 40 x 120-foot tent behind the gymnasium.

The tent was purchased by the Cullman City Parks and Recreation Department for the annual archery fest and a number of other functions it puts on throughout the year.

“We’re still getting great support from the city and the parks department and everybody else that comes out here,” Tyrell said. “It’s unbelievable. Any time you have guys like Waid (Harbison) and his group and then the parks guys like Ralph (Gutierrez) and Jeff (Hill), it’s like you don’t even have to ask anymore. It’s there.”