If it looks like a bear and smells like a bear but shoots like a bow, it’s a bow (photo 1). Just call me “Black Bear.” Robert H. Miller, in his article Yes, But Will It Fly, introduced me to a word I am unable to find in Webster’s dictionary: “Tweakability.” I heartily thank him for introducing that word into my vocabulary. To me the word means, “There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to archery.”

Bear hair tufts are glued on to the back of the bow, one at a time, with TB3.

In the same article, Mr. Miller explored the idea of wind signature, giving me an idea. If I were to install tufts of bear hair on the back of each limb of my self bow, it might allow the limbs of the bow to shoot the arrow faster. I hypothesized that as the hairy limbs moved through the air as the arrow is released, the thousands of round hairs would give less resistance to the air than the flatter surfaces of the bow’s back (photos 2 & 3).

Trim a tuft of bear hair flat and liberally coat it with TB3, then roll it out onto a line of TB3 on the back of the bow, and use a toothpick to press it down.

Another article Mr. Miller wrote is entitled Is Deflex Really that Bad? My response, now that I have had the opportunity to experiment with two inches of deflex while building my first self-bow, is that deflex is very definitely good! I think it makes my bow a bit easier to string using the slip string method and appears to put less stress on the bow once it’s strung. I did, however, have to give Black Bear a little haircut so the string slips a bit easier towards the nock (photo 5).

Yew stave with propeller twist and deflex was clamped and twisted using a heat gun. I gave up trying to totally remove all of them.

Black Bear shoots fast, and we nailed a nice rabbit from 57 feet on our first day hunting. Black Bear has not been able to completely remove my buck fever, however, as I missed a fine doe at 45 feet three separate times. I was sitting at ground level when the doe approached behind me. I carefully swung around and fired off three arrows in no time flat. The doe had no idea where I was, as the windwas blowing towards me and I was in full camo, looking somewhat like another stump. The doe was with last year’s fawn, and this year’s yearling, and she got within 20 feet of me while I was machine gunning arrows towards her. I didn’t know the yearling was there. Panic set in for the yearling when it saw me, and it made a hasty retreat which confused mother as she could not figure out where the arrows were coming from.

Black bear gets a haircut.

After that little episode, I realized I needed a lot of help in my shooting, and I now restrict my shooting to 25 feet. I target shoot my broad heads every day and shoot reasonably well. That darned adrenalin. I’ll have a talk with Black Bear suggesting that, in the future, all our shots should be similar to the shot we made on the rabbit.

Black Bear is 67" tip to tip, and 47# at 27 1\2" which is my draw length.

I never really thought I would build a self bow. My Ben Pearson recurves were shooting just fine. Just prior to the Firemaker Rendezvous, our primitive skills gathering here on Vancouver Island (July 4-10, 2011), I got the urge and started to build my own bow. During Firemaker and for five more workshops, I assisted my son Jamie who was teaching twelve first time bowyers, plus me, how to build a self-bow from a yew stave he provided.

The leather arrow shelf is almost invisible in the rabbit skin. The shelf is holding an ironwood shoot shaft that I stoned with an egg-sized river rock. I didn't use any overcoat finishing materials.

The building of my first self-bow went much slower than I ever expected. After twenty days of rasping and sanding and heating and twisting, I finally got the stave to my newly constructed tillering tree. The draw length got stuck at nineteen inches and stayed there for four days. I rasped and sanded each day, and on day five it got to twenty inches. Wow, that was a long five days! Another few days and up pops my magical number: 47# at 26 1\2" (photo 6).

Heavy piece of leather is glued on with TB3, then trimmed to form the arrow shelf and handle. The rabbit skin is then stretched over the belly of the handle, and trimmed where it meets on the back, again using TB3.

I’m one happy bowyer! Did I struggle building my first self-bow? You bet! Am I ready to build another bow? No, not just now. I am continuing to bond with this one and cannot imagine building another I would like better.

I wish to thank my son Jamie who acted as my teacher and guide both in person and by e-mail on his web site www.Ravenbeak.com. Many times during the building of Black Bear, I would take a picture of it on my tillering tree and send the e-mail off to him. One of his responses read, “You could be working a bit on the fades.” At that time, “fades” meant nothing to me other than something that paint does, but I remembered that Marc St. Louis explained the meaning of some archery terms in an issue of Primitive Archer Magazine. I went through my back issues and there it was. “Fades –Where the handle of a stiff-handled bow feathers into the working part of the limb.” I went to work on those “fades” right away, and, believe me, that word was significant in my ability to move forward in my tillering process.

When I started shooting Black Bear, I found the handle to be a bit small and glued a thick piece of leather on the back of the bow and cut and trimmed this piece, giving me a leather shelf as an arrow rest. I let this dry, then stretched on rabbit skin and glued it all down using TB3 (Photos 7 & 8). Patience, persistence, and passion come to mind if I try explaining the process of building a self-bow