About us
The chronicle
Active Club Zala24 the “Hungarian Bow Paradise
Hi, my name is Jürgen Stenzel, I am the founder of Target24 Zielscheibenbau and the active club Zala24.
As a German, I live with my dear wife Doris (Hungarian) and our two wonderful children since 1996 in Hungary, not far from Lake Balaton, in Kehidakustany, a small, little-known, thermal spa.. (Which is a shame, our thermal & family pool in town is just the bomb). My hobbies: I am an avid archer and a passionate hobby cook.
In 2006 my archery hobby began, without really realizing it this was to become my profession and future life.
In 2008 I “slipped” into the later active club Zala24 (today the hungarian bow paradise) u nd the bow target building.
> It all began quite innocently. As an archery fan, I built an archery training facility in our beautiful small private forest with Austrian and Hungarian archery comrades for our own use. I built the targets and 3D targets myself with my buddies. The hillside terrain with its enchantingly beautiful panaroma view over the entire Zala Valley (hence our club name zala24), the lush green meadows at the edge of the forest, had an unexpected effect.
> The archery comrades were able to inspire their families to come along on the weekend for “training”, which is otherwise rarely successful, as many family members have other interests than archery. There was barbecue, playing and frolicking on the grounds. Only 3 km away, the family and thermal baths, as well as a super well-kept equestrian farm and the proximity of Lake Balaton animated of course additionally. Everyone could create their own recreational program here. This quickly, like a stone thrown into the water, drew larger and larger circles.
> We built and build (this will probably be a never-ending story with the many inspirations from our guests) the facility more and more and gave it the name: “Active Club Zala24” , with the motto: “Archery & recreational fun for the whole family”. . Today, the Active Club is Hungary’s most popular archery facility with three 3D courses, a hunting/field course and over 20 other sports, games and recreational activities. Our archery enthusiasts affectionately call the active club: “The Hungarian Archery Paradise” .
Unexpectedly, this developed into a new line of business: “target construction”. The self-made targets made of Pe foam, found great appeal among shooters because of the good durability and the universal application possibilities. Over time, word got around and more and more archery clubs wanted our bow targets.
I registered the “Target24 Zielscheibenbau” as a as a small business in Germany and together with a friend I started to develop the targets further and to sell them under the name of Target-24 to distribute.
> The goal was to develop a usable bow target for the hard club use, which can be shot with all arrow types and draw strengths. The commercially available foam targets were and still are unfortunately not particularly suitable for hard sport shooter use.
2017 Active Club Zala24 is registered as a non-profit association.
In the meantime we were able to finance a 300sqm club tent with private support and have built up good programs and maintain social commitment, such as our annual “Children’s Day” on which we invite over 100 children from the surrounding schools to an excursion and of course finance this. Here is a short video 2019
“Children’s day at the active club with the support of the Hungarian military”.
The club developed well and we could always generate enough income to maintain everything.
2018 The New Active Club Zala24 Section: Cooking Club “Gulyas Arena”.
Since I am an enthusiastic hobby cook in addition to archery, we have created a great cooking club with the main goals: culinary pampering of our club guests and the cultivation of traditional Hungarian country cuisine.
Here is a short video of our cooking team at the National Goulash Cooking Competition.
2020 there it went steeply downhill through Korona.
To this day, the events are literally overlapping:
“
Korona crisis
” hits the club financially almost fatal.
The active club was this year completely booked with Austrian groups (with the proceeds should be financed a necessary new roof for our club tent). Due to the Corona madness measures, with border closures, closure of sports facilities, etc., understandingly not a single guest came. The loss was existential for the club. (compensation aid we got 800 €)
2021 there was still no sign of stabilization of the virus situation, so we did not open the club facility at all, another bitter loss.