My father, whose bow this was, was Roman Gray. If anyone out there knew him, I'd like to hear about it. I don't know much about his earlier days in the 60s and 70s, but he was pretty serious about his archery. This is from Bow & Arrow, in 1968. In his later years, he was busy doing a lot of other things, but was always passionate about bowhunting, even though it ceased to be his top priority.
He was working up sort of a 40-years-later field test of the Gamemaster with Jack Howard when Jack passed away. Then, a few years later, Dad, my brother (not in my profile picture), my brother-in-law, and I were all planning on a fall caribou hunt in Alaska, when dad suddenly passed away unexpectedly in the spring of the same year.
Dad had dug deep and bought matching Black Widow recurves for all the men in the family, as a way of passing on his archery heritage to the rest of us. The caribou trip was to be our 'maiden voyage' with our new bows.
So, this heavy bow is not a strange relic that was found by itself in a dusty corner; we have a strong archery heritage.