This beatiful bow came about in a moment of weakness. I had just gotten out of the bush on my early September caribou hunt in northern Quebec and was killing time at base camp waiting for the plane to take us to Montreal. Wifi was avaliable at camp so I turned on my phone and hooked up. Not really wanting to sift through the gobs of email I had waiting for me, I surfed the internet instead and went to one of my favorite sites,
thewoodvault.com . There, Curt Noetzold has some of the finest looking bow limb veneer on the planet! Anyway...In a moment of weakness, I bought this beautiful spalted mango and a chunk of curly chocolate mango riser wood to go with it. So now I had some bow making material, I just needed someone to turn it into a bow for me.
That's where my good friend, Mike Dunnaway, of Wild Horse Creek Bows, comes into the story. Mike had come out with a new model longbow, the Destiny, about 18 months ago and I was itching to have one in my collection. So I called Mike up, told him that I had some raw materials for him, and he took it from there. I was in no hurry for the bow so I told him I would pick it up when I saw him at the United Bowhunters of Missouri Festival in February.
Putting the bow out of my mind, I continued to use the Quest longbow that Mike had made for me for this season. Then Mike called me in mid-November to say the bow was tillered and he had a string on it. If it would make the weight I wanted then he would have it finished soon. Woohoo! Now the Valentine's present to myself had been bumped up to an early Christmas present! The bow came out of the finish room last Sunday and Mike put it in the mail the following day.
Bow specs: The bow is a two-piece takedown, is 62" long, and pulls 51#@28". Mr. Dunnaway has a plus-or-minus 2 pounds on his bow weight. I wanted 53 pounds so 51 made the limit. The limb core is bamboo and the veneer is spalted mango. The riser is curly chocolate mango with cocobolo accents. I got to shoot it for the first time yesterday and there will be little transition between the longbow I'm shooting now and it. I might even get to kill something with it this season!
The veneer in its raw form
the chunk of riser wood
various photos that don't really do the bow justice
One of the cool things that Mike does is make an arrow footed with the wood from your bow riser and send that along with the bow.
Darren
Topic: An early Christmas present - My WHB Destiny Longbow (Read 772 times)
