Happy 90th Birthday - Owen Jeffery

[TonyW]

Owen's son Tom says it best:

Owen began his career in 1950 when he joined Earl Hoyt of Hoyt Archery Company.  There he became a master bowyer, designing and building the world's finest recurve bows.  In 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 surpassing Pen Pearson.  By 1973 Owens products were in such demand the Bear Archery supplied over 28% of all bows in the US.  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.

Thanks for the takedowns!

[TonyW]

[TonyW]

From the greatly missed Grant Young a few years ago:

Owen was a good friend when I lived in Columbia SC in the eighties and I'm pretty familiar with his contributions. He began his professional career as Earl Hoyt's bowyer- both had worked for Macdonald Douglass. He came aboard with Bear around late '65 or '66- I'm doing this without notes so forgive me if my dates are shakey, but it was after or about the time Stewart left Bear- and was instrumental in developing the Takedown design, especially the limb configurations and latch system. He also was the primary reason for the changes you can see between the '67 Grizzly and '68 models, softening the reflex and taming the handshock. He also shortened the bow a couple of inches though it went back to 58" a little later. He was a Bear Vice-President under Victor.He also was the archery coach for the French Olympic team during this time. As the company changed under the corporate umbrella, Owen was hired by Shakespeare to head their archery division- that's how he ended up in South Carolina- and as the compound took hold and Shakespeare's mkt declined, they decided to eliminate the archery division, Owen bought the plant and opened Jeffery Archery. Don's right- Owen was still building Big Dan's bows when I was hanging around there and he was building bows for other "bowyers" as well. Fascinating character and an incredible shot. Great machinist and an innovative mind. The best days of a not so great period in my life were spent with Owen. Grant

[shick]

Happy birthday, Owen.  Simply amazing.
Shick