When I was 8 years old,(1956) a family friend, Clyde Mead, gave me a light weight lemonwood longbow. He was a target archer and kept me supplied with cedar arrows - whenever he would break an arrow, he would just cut it down and replace the point. I terrorized our chickens daily and also had a heavy cardboard 'charging' lion in our hayloft - and went on many pretend safaris. A couple years later my dad picked up a couple recurves at a pawn shop or farm sale. (I still have the one recurve - 48 inch Black Hawk.) I ordered a 42# Bear Grizzly in 1966, the year I had my first deer permit.
Clyde passed away a couple years ago - I'll be forever grateful for the introduction to traditional archery. (Of course back then - that's all there was.)
Thanks for starting this post - it brought back many great memories.
Craig