Legends and Pioneers. Owen Jeffery

[RickLB]

Who do I talk to about getting someone into that category?  Owen Jeffery is who I'm asking to be put into the legends and pioneer section. He did a lot for archery.

[RickLB]

Wow....is there a moderator I can email about this?

[TradBrewSC]

Agreed! Owen taught me everything I know about bowhunting and still miss him daily. He and Tom gave me my first job at 15 and owe so much to them for the man I am today.

[DCANAPP]

I won’t forget the times my friends and I went to his shop and walked away enlightened while stationed in SC

[RickLB]

I agree, always walk away enlightened after a visit there.
Owen will be inducted into the archery hall of fame this year.

[anatone hunter]

Howdy,
I now feel justified in making my first post here.
Owen Jeffery was a gem of a man. When I was with Bear Archery in Grayling many years ago, Owen was  the bowyer at Bear. He was my personal coach and taught me much about shooting tournament archery. I bowhunted right handed and when I became interested in shooting paper, Owen taught me how to shoot left handed to separate the techniques. It worked!
After he (and I) left Bear Archery, he went to Shakespeare briefly in Columbia S.C. I came close to moving there too, but yearned to move back West instead. I kept in touch a bit over the years. I was deeply saddened when I heard of his passing. I cried, and realized a true archery gentleman was gone.
Without a doubt, Owen deserves to be in the Archery Hall of Fame1
Thanks to the O P for bringing up this subject!

[Bud B.]

Originally posted by anatone hunter:
Howdy,
I now feel justified in making my first post here.
Owen Jeffery was a gem of a man. When I was with Bear Archery in Grayling many years ago, Owen was  the bowyer at Bear. He was my personal coach and taught me much about shooting tournament archery. I bowhunted right handed and when I became interested in shooting paper, Owen taught me how to shoot left handed to separate the techniques. It worked!
After he (and I) left Bear Archery, he went to Shakespeare briefly in Columbia S.C. I came close to moving there too, but yearned to move back West instead. I kept in touch a bit over the years. I was deeply saddened when I heard of his passing. I cried, and realized a true archery gentleman was gone.
Without a doubt, Owen deserves to be in the Archery Hall of Fame1
Thanks to the O P for bringing up this subject!

Owen helped or was responsible for the Super Kodiak, correct? What about the Kodiak Hunter?

Thank you for your post, anatone hunter!!

[Bud B.]

There is an Owen Jeffrey Memorial Shoot in SC this Feb, BTW.

[RickLB]

In 1966 Jeffery joined the Bear Archery Co. in Michigan, where he was president of manufacturing and hunted and fly fished with Fred Bear. There he designed many of the bows that the legendary Fred Bear hunted with and produced for the archery public, including the famous Fred Bear Takedown Bows, Super Kodiaks, and Kodiak Magnums.

Jeffery also developed Bear’s first compound bow, the Alaskan.

[RickLB]

Thanks Bud B for the info on the shoot

[RickLB]

anatone hunter you are right, he was a gem of a man. He is missed.

[Bud B.]

[Bud B.]

I hope that image size is OK with the mods.

[RickLB]

Thanks Bud

Owen Jeffery, a living legend in American archery and bowmaking who invented many of the innovations now standard in modern bows, died in Columbia, S.C., on March 18. He was 91.

Although he preferred to hunt with a simple recurve bow, Jeffery, a contemporary and hunting companion of the famed Fred Bear, was recognized as one of the major innovators in modern archery equipment. During his 66 years in the archery business, Jeffery was a world-renowned Master Bowyer who held multiple archery tournament championship titles. A charter member of the Professional Archers Association, Jeffery was recently nominated to the Archery Hall of Fame.

Jeffery became fascinated with the ancient weaponry as a boy in Arkansas. He fashioned his first bow from a red cedar limb and tied chicken feathers on a piece of cane for an arrow. He killed his first deer with a bow when he was 12 years old.

As a competition archer, Jeffery won numerous championships. He was a six-time Missouri State Champion, Midwestern Champion in 1954 and 1955, National Broadhead Champion in 1961, and Southern Regional Champion in 1962.

“I didn’t learn to shoot from books,” Jeffery said. “I developed the hand-eye coordination by doing it over and over.”

That included popping coke bottles with a homemade hickory bow whiled stationed on New Hebrides Island in the South Pacific during World War II. A Marine Corps veteran, Jeffery was a crew chief on B-25 bombers. After the war he hunted rabbits with a bow, leading his neighbors to nickname him “Robin Hood.”

In the early 1950s Jeffery joined the Hoyt Archery Company in St. Louis as a bowyer. While at Hoyt, he designed and built the world’s most accurate target bows. The top archers of the day used his bows to win national and world archery titles.

He developed the first pistol-grip bow handle, which was patented by Hoyt. He also created the first bow stabilizers, which revolutionized bow stability, then he developed the torque flight compensator, allowing the bow to move smoothly out of the way of the arrow. Today’s flexible stabilizers, also patented by Hoyt, are a direct result of Jeffery’s creative genius, as are all the improvements in the use of fiberglass and other materials developed over the past half century.

Owen Jeffery, a living legend in American archery and bowmaking who invented many of the innovations now standard in modern bows, died in Columbia, S.C., on March 18. He was 91.

Although he preferred to hunt with a simple recurve bow, Jeffery, a contemporary and hunting companion of the famed Fred Bear, was recognized as one of the major innovators in modern archery equipment. During his 66 years in the archery business, Jeffery was a world-renowned Master Bowyer who held multiple archery tournament championship titles. A charter member of the Professional Archers Association, Jeffery was recently nominated to the Archery Hall of Fame.

Jeffery became fascinated with the ancient weaponry as a boy in Arkansas. He fashioned his first bow from a red cedar limb and tied chicken feathers on a piece of cane for an arrow. He killed his first deer with a bow when he was 12 years old.

As a competition archer, Jeffery won numerous championships. He was a six-time Missouri State Champion, Midwestern Champion in 1954 and 1955, National Broadhead Champion in 1961, and Southern Regional Champion in 1962.

“I didn’t learn to shoot from books,” Jeffery said. “I developed the hand-eye coordination by doing it over and over.”

That included popping coke bottles with a homemade hickory bow whiled stationed on New Hebrides Island in the South Pacific during World War II. A Marine Corps veteran, Jeffery was a crew chief on B-25 bombers. After the war he hunted rabbits with a bow, leading his neighbors to nickname him “Robin Hood.”

In the early 1950s Jeffery joined the Hoyt Archery Company in St. Louis as a bowyer. While at Hoyt, he designed and built the world’s most accurate target bows. The top archers of the day used his bows to win national and world archery titles.

He developed the first pistol-grip bow handle, which was patented by Hoyt. He also created the first bow stabilizers, which revolutionized bow stability, then he developed the torque flight compensator, allowing the bow to move smoothly out of the way of the arrow. Today’s flexible stabilizers, also patented by Hoyt, are a direct result of Jeffery’s creative genius, as are all the improvements in the use of fiberglass and other materials developed over the past half century.

[Possum Head]

Great post. I would have enjoyed hanging out with him. He's deserves to be noted as a legend for sure.

Although Jeffery Archery carries major archery brands, the company specializes in traditional archery equipment, creating longbows and recurves for both competition archers and camo-clad bowhunters. Jeffery Archery has produced custom bows for governors and stylized archery equipment for princes and presidents, from the King of Butan to the president of Mexico.

Jeffery’s skills as a teacher were in great demand over the years. He built bows for and coached U.S., Russian, and Japanese Olympic archers and made bows for Indonesian and Australian Olympic archers. In 1978 he was invited by the French government to train the French Olympic archery team at the Paris Institute for Sports.

In 1961, when Jeffery became a charter member of the Professional Archers Association, he was one of only four master coaches in the organization who trained competition shooters in a professional archery school. He was also sought over the years as a speaker for various groups, from Cub Scouts to grizzled bowhunters.

“He had a speaking manner that engaged his audiences whether they were 6 or 60, inspiring them for an understanding and respect for the bow and arrow,” said Tom, who usually accompanied his father and assisted with archery demonstrations.

In the 66 years that Jeffery designed and built bows and taught thousands of archers to to shoot accurately, he maintained his base passion to the end: bowhunting for whatever was in season, from white-tailed deer and wild hogs to rabbits. Even field mice.

In 1963 Jeffery arrowed a 308-pound, 12-point whitetail buck on an island in the Mississippi River. A record book buck at the time, the mount hung in the Fred Bear Museum in Gainesville, Fla., for many years. He looked forward to the opening of deer season each year in South Carolina, but he honed his skills until then hunting wild hogs, which have no closed season with bow and arrow. He took his last deer at the age of 88 with, reluctantly, a crossbow, because he was no longer physically able to pull a regular bow.

“He was a tireless ambassador for the sport of archery and hunting,” said Tom. “He instilled his interest in the sport in literally thousands of people who took up hunting with bow and arrow, many of them simply because he introduced them to the game.”

 

Photos courtesy of Tom Jeffery

Owen Edward Jeffery, 91, recently nominated to the Archery Hall of Fame
March 22, 2016


Owen Edward Jeffery, 91, of Columbia, entered into rest, Friday, March 18, 2016, at Palmetto Health Richland. Born October 22, 1924, in O’Neal, Ark., he was a son of the late Owen T. and Sarah Belle (Kelley) Jeffery.

Owen was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and actively served during World War II. He was a crew chief on B-25s and saw action in the South Pacific.

During his 66 years in the archery business, Owen was a world renowned master bowyer and held multiple archery tournament championship titles. He was recently nominated to the Archery Hall of Fame. In 1976, Owen started Jeffery Archery which is a manufacturing and retail business in Columbia. In 1978, he was a guest instructor for the French Institute of Sports, training the instructors of the French National Archery Team in advanced archery techniques. In recent years, most everyone knew Mr. Jeffery as an avid outdoorsman, hunter and tireless ambassador for the sport of archery.

[Possum Head]

History:
Established in 1976

Jeffery Archery was founded in 1976 by Owen Jeffery and his son, Tom Jeffery. Although Jeffery Archery is now in its 42nd year of operation, Owen's bow making career spanned seven decades. In fact, all of the advancements in the traditional craft have occurred during his tenure as a master bowyer.
 
Owen began his career in 1950 when he joined Earl Hoyt of Hoyt Archery Company.  While there he became a master bowyer, designing and building the world's finest recurve bows.  During that period, the Hoyt bow won more national and world titles than all others.
 
In 1966, Owen was hired by Fred Bear of Bear Archery in Grayling, Michigan to redesign their product line.  With the new product line in place, Bear became the world's largest bow manufacturer surpassing Pen Pearson.  By 1973, Owen's products were in such demand that Bear Archery supplied over 28% of all bows in the U.S.
 
In 1973, Owen was hired by the Shakespeare Company to turn around their archery production.  He successfully more than doubled their production.

In 1975 Owen left Shakespeare to form his own company.  Since 1976 Jeffery Archery has been producing high quality traditional archery equipment. Until 1990 the company produced custom grade compound bows.
For over forty years we have continued the time-honored skills to produce the best performance and value in the traditional bow industry. Through extensive knowledge of all areas of the sport - manufacturing, hunting, archery championships and sales we created the best specialty archery facility in the state. Just a tad bit to add to Tony's contribution. Once again a fine tribute.