I met Dan in 1988, after a house fire that destroyed all my equipment. I had been shooting an early Jennings compound, but was thinking about a take-down recurve so I could pack it easily when flying. I saw one of Dan's ads, and called him. I lived in Conyers, GA at the time, not too far from Athens. He was still working out of his house, and when I walked in, there was a pile of bows in front of the living room hearth, literally. He asked me if I had ever shot a longbow, and I told him I started with a fiberglass Bear as a kid. He pulled a Bamboo Longhunter, 67#, from the pile and we went outside. I loved the bow, and Dan gave me some coaching which immediately improved my shooting. We started discussing wood arrows, and the need for stronger, better quality shafts, and next thing I knew we were in business. Dan was my sales manager when I opened Tallahatchie Woodworks to make the Superceder shafts.
Dan's video was simple, just him shooting and describing the process. He used a push-pull method of drawing, looking down the arrow to the target as he brought the bow up during the draw, and only paused enough at full draw to settle in his sight picture. He strongly advocated the longest draw possible, saying another inch of draw was like adding 10# to the draw weight. I learned more about archery from him in the first year than I had managed to learn on my own in the previous 30.
He used a tab of his own design, heavy leather with holes for the first and third fingers instead of the middle one. I still have the one that he took off his hand and gave to me. He put the string at the first joint of his fingers, and advocated the heaviest bow you could handle because you automatically got a cleaner release when the string left, among other reasons.
Dan was a brilliant man and a true iconoclast, and people either loved him or hated him. No one was ambivalent about him after a conversation. He didn't hold back. I loved him, because I always knew where he stood. We were close friends as well as business partners for years, and I stayed in touch with him up until his death. I still think about him frequently, like every time I pick up a bow.
I still have that Longhunter, and killed a bull elk with it the first year I hunted with it. With his coaching, I became good enough that I rarely left a 3D shoot without a trophy, usually first place, including several state and regional championships. His son DD was/is a phenomenal archer, and once won the GA state archery tournament, shooting his 90# Longhunter bare-bow against field archers shooting recurves with all the accessories. Dan didn't shoot competitively while I knew him, but I shot with DD several times, and it was always much fun. I could occasionally best him on the range, but he usually won. John Hood was his shooting buddy, another phenom. The three of us shot together at the HH World Championship one year and had a blast. John won it that year with his 90# Longhunter. I shot in the top 5 more than once there, but 4th was my best showing.
Dan believed that traditional bows were better hunting tools than compounds, but didn't hesitate to innovate and change things, always experimenting. He was not a bowyer, but his commercial bows were all made to his specifications, with most made by Jeffrey and some by Martin. Owen Jeffrey and Dan were old friends, and argued archery endlessly. Owen would criticize Dan's designs, and Dan would make him make them that way anyhow. Dan modified the shelf of his bows after he and I experimented with cutting away most of the shelf so that the arrow only touched a small spot at the bow back, but contacting the side of the bow directly above the grip to reduce torque. His commercial bows were made that way in the last year or so that he had the business, but the new owners went back to the "traditional" shelf, not understanding the improvement it made, especially when your form wasn't perfect.
The last modification I saw him do was to use putty to extend the shelf farther, a bit out in front of the back, to get the longest distance possible from the contact point to the string.
When FF strings were developed, he converted most of his bows to use them, recognizing the increase in performance that could be had by using a lighter-weight string. The commercial bows had 14 strands, but he went as low as 8 for certain customers who couldn't shoot heavy or long draws.
Wonderful memories! I still miss the old rascal.
Topic: Ben Pearson, John Schulz, Dan Quillian (Read 430 times)
