I tried being a lumberjack and it was OK

By Kieran Dahl

It’s convenient that “axe” sounds like “ass”, because it means that venues offering axe throwing, the latest offbeat activity to infiltrate urban bars and remodelled warehouses, can pepper their marketing copy with PG-13 puns. Interested in “kicking axe and taking names”? Want to have a “kick-axe axe-perience”? Then you better, uh, “back that axe up.”

The trend traces its roots back to 2006 when Matt Wilson and some friends were hanging out at a cottage outside Toronto and had a timeless boredom- and beer-induced idea: throw an axe at a log. Back home in Toronto, Wilson bought a cheap hatchet, set up a duct-taped wood target in his backyard, created a point system and began inviting friends over for some macho competition. The Backyard Axe Throwing League (BATL) was born. It soon grew so rambunctiously popular – booze plus testosterone-fuelled physical activity equals noise – that in 2011 the league moved indoors, into an old munitions factory in Toronto. Today the BATL is one of a host of successful axe-throwing franchises in Canada and America, with competitors including Bad Axe Throwing, Bury the Hatchet and Blade & Timber. It didn’t take long for it to spread further afield. Axe-throwing venues can now be found on every continent except Antarctica, in countries as varied as Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Jordan, Russia, South Korea and South Africa. New ones are opening so often you’d think we were preparing for a zombie apocalypse.