2016
Inductee
About Owen Jeffery
1924-2016
Competitor, Bowhunter...
Owen Jeffery, a living legend in American archery and bow making who invented many of the innovations now standard in modern bows.
A charter member of the Professional Archers Association.
As a competition archer, Jeffery won numerous championships. He was a six-time Missouri State Champion, Midwestern Champion in 1954 and 1955, National Broadhead Champion in 1961, and Southern Regional Champion in 1962.
Owen Jeffery's Achievements
In the early 1950s Jeffery joined the Hoyt Archery Company in St. Louis as a bowyer. While at Hoyt, he designed and built the world’s most accurate target bows. The top archers of the day used his bows to win national and world archery titles.
He developed the first pistol-grip bow handle, which was patented by Hoyt. He also created the first bow stabilizers, which revolutionized bow stability, then he developed the torque flight compensator, allowing the bow to move smoothly out of the way of the arrow. Today’s flexible stabilizers, also patented by Hoyt, are a direct result of Jeffery’s creative genius, as are all the improvements in the use of fiberglass and other materials developed over the past half century.
In 1966 Jeffery joined the Bear Archery Co. in Michigan, where he was president of manufacturing and hunted and fly fished with Fred Bear. There he designed many of the bows that the legendary Fred Bear hunted with and produced for the archery public, including the famous Fred Bear Takedown Bows, Super Kodiaks, and Kodiak Magnums.
Jeffery also developed Bear’s first compound bow, the Alaskan. The compound bow, which distributes energy via a system of cables and offset wheels, revolutionized bow making.
In 1973 Jeffery moved to Columbia, S.C., as head of the Shakespeare Company’s Archery Division. Three years later, when Shakespeare divested several divisions, including archery, he established Jeffery Archery in Columbia. He designed and built all the presses and other equipment used in making bows in the company’s manufacturing area.
Although Jeffery Archery carries major archery brands, the company specializes in traditional archery equipment, creating longbows and recurves for both competition archers and camo-clad bowhunters. Jeffery Archery has produced custom bows for governors and stylized archery equipment for princes and presidents, from the King of Butan to the president of Mexico.
Notes of Interest
• Owen Jeffery was inducted into the Archery Hall of Fame in 2018, class of 2016.
