This story was originally published in the March 1982 issue of Outdoor Life.
In the early 1940s a seemingly insignificant event took place. A man from New York, who worked for the Coming Glass Company, walked into a small archery company in Detroit, Michigan. In his hand he had a piece of fabric woven from tiny fibers of glass. It was a novelty-cloth made of glass and the owner of the company saw it that way until the New York man mentioned that glass in this form was slightly elastic. It would stretch about 3 percent.
That remark combined instantly with another piece of knowledge that the bow maker had in his mental catalog of information. And this was the moment the birth of modem archery and bowhunting took place. That unknown bow maker had two pieces of information and the common sense to combine them. This was the cornerstone of the $150 million-a-year business archery is today.
That bow maker was Fred Bear. And what he also knew was that a glue recently had been invented by Chrysler Corporation that would hold rubber to metal under extreme conditions. That glue, called 5509, was the first epoxy.
Bear wondered. Could 5509 be combined with glass cloth to create a new material that could be bonded to the front and back of bows making them stronger, lighter and certainly more durable than the yew, hickory and osage wood bows dominant at that time? The chief chemist of Chrysler, Don Swazey, agreed to saturate several layers of the cloth with the epoxy, then put it in a press and cure it at 325°.
Bear found that the new fiberglass and epoxy material worked well on the outside, or back, of bows, but not on the inside, or belly. The woven glass on the inside kinked and crushed under the compression. A different material would have to be used on the inside — aluminum. With more help from Chrysler, Bear was able to make the first bow using fiberglass. It had a fiberglass back and aluminum belly.
But unlike other bows of the time, its limbs were wide and flat like a leaf from a car spring. Also, the limbs were light and would spring forward quickly.
”The first one I made, I covered with masking tape so no one could see how it was built. And when archers would come into the office, I would hand it to them and ask them what they thought of it,” recalls Bear.
”The bow looked like it might pull twenty pounds. The archers were amazed at how strong the bow was for its size. Then when they shot it they were more amazed at the arrow speed. Later developments didn’t do a whole lot more than that. That first bow was the breakthrough with glass.”
Soon after that, Bear developed a way of making glass in which strands only ran lengthwise on the bow limb. Fiberglass could then be used on the inside of the limbs as well as the outside. Bow making has virtually stayed the same since.
For the first time a person could walk into a sporting-goods store and buy the best bow that could be built right off the shelf. Fiberglass made possible the mass production of bows. The lone artisan in his shop shaving out a single bow at a time from a stave of wood was a thing of the past.
Fred Bear in one step had advanced bow design from the long bow that the English took on the Crusades in the 10th and 11th centuries up to the 20th century. Actually, laminated bows with recurving limbs were an ancient Turkish design. Sinew was used on the outside and horn on the inside, but no waterproof adhesive was known, and when the bows got wet they came apart. Bear had eliminated the weight and slowness of the English bow and the structural defects of the Turkish design.
Fred Bear was born the son of a toolmaker in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on March 5, 1902. From his father, who lived to be 85, he acquired a love of working with tools and building things. From his rural surroundings he gained a love of the outdoors, and in particular, a love of horses.
The first joint of the third finger of Fred Bear’s right hand is missing as a permanent reminder of that farm life. His sister cut it off with a hand-operated hay chopper. Young Fred and his sister were cutting hay to prepare a mixture of horse feed. The first step required chopping the hay into short lengths in a trough-like cutter with a shear handle, like a paper cutter.
Fred fed the hay and his sister chopped. Soon it developed into a game. Fred would put the hay in and pull it back before his sister could cut it. With a little experience, she began to plan ahead, and Fred’s hand didn’t quite clear the chopper.
Fred rushed to the house where his two Mennonite aunts treated the remainder of the finger with lily leaves and rosewater while they took the time to clean the boy up before going to see the doctor. Even the tips of his sox, which were sticking out of holes in his shoes, were summarily snipped off with scissors.
Bear in later years became a left-handed archer, which meant he could draw the bowstring with his left hand. This may be a result of his childhood accident, because he shoots both a rifle and shotgun right-handed.
In his late 20s Fred Bear moved to Detroit where he worked in a company that subcontracted work from the major car companies. Bear worked up to managing the operations — but a problem soon became apparent. The Great Depression was on and the owner of the company needed cash. Twice he tried to set the place on fire, but each time Fred discovered it in time. The third time, he didn’t.
Out of work and with no jobs around, Fred teamed up with a man who had connections that could get them subcontract work from Chrysler. In 1933 these two men, with a total of $1,200 in tools and cash, opened up shop in a large garage. They did silk-screen work for the car companies on such things as tire covers. But in one corner of the building, Bear started another tiny venture. It couldn’t pay its own way, but Fred wanted it. The company was called Bear Archery.
Fred knew how to make bows, but he soon realized he would have to create a market for them. First came the Detroit Archery Club, but Fred noticed another possibility.
“I found that the newspapers would run the scores from archery tournaments we had but it didn’t mean anything. However, if you gave them a picture of a deer or a bear that some archer shot, that might make the front page. So I got in the promotion business.”
Bear has been promoting archery and bowhunting ever since.
By 1939 both companies had grown, and the partners split it up. Bear took the archery company and continued with it in Detroit through World War II. But he wanted to move out of town, so Bear Archery was incorporated with three stockholders. His original partner sold his business and bought stock, a friend put in $20,000, and Bear’s holdings, the majority, were the remainder making the total about $100,000. In 1947 they moved the company to Grayling, Michigan. Calamity was waiting for them there.
The small corporation was short of money. Just at the moment when it needed to do some business and make money, an all-aluminum bow came on the market. For a year, until problems in it began to show up, the aluminum bow captured the market and nearly broke Bear Archery. For two years during the warm months, Fred Bear and his wife lived in a tent along the Manastee River to keep costs down.
Though the fiberglass laminated bow was a revolutionary breakthrough, it still hadn’t taken a major share of the small bow market. But by 1950-51, Bear had worked out a way to make uni-directional glass that eliminated the cross threads, so the material could be used on the inside of the bow as well. Fiberglass bows were on their way. Nothing would ever stop them.
In 1960 a mysterious increase in bow breakage occurred, and put the company on the ropes again. Bear was determined to replace every bow that broke and about one out of five did. The reason, which took two years to discover, was in the face of two of the heated presses in which bows were made. The face had warped and would not properly bond the laminations.
Another problem was winters in Grayling. The very dry winter air in northern Michigan caused the wood in the bows to dry out. Bows made in winter and later used in humid climates absorbed moisture in the wood and broke the laminations.
In 1960-61 Bear Archery was in serious trouble. It had lost $180,000 through breakage. The company was making television cabinets for Admiral for extra income, but they still owed the IRS about $15,000.
“The IRS came to Grayling and picked up a state policeman. They were going to lock the place up.”
Fred was out in the plant when his financial man came out with the news. “It looks like we’ve had it. The IRS is here and we haven’t any money in the bank. What are we going to do?”
And Bear replied, “Well, I’m just going to keep on working, and you’re going back in there and sell then some kind of a bill of goods.”
What he did was give the IRS a bad check for $500 and convinced them to take it. When the check returned, the Grayling bank was supposed to warn Fred, but this time they missed. The check was bounced. But Bear had friends who believed in him. He explained the desperate situation to one of them and ended by saying he needed $500 for 30 days. The man turned to his wife and asked her for his checkbook.
People seemed to want to help Fred Bear. One of his employees, a bachelor, realized things were tough for the company. He took his paychecks, but refused to cash them for six to eight months.
For another 10 years of amazing growth, Bear Archery continued as an independent company. But offers to buy were frequent and attractive. Finally the corporation sold to Victor, and Victor a few years later was taken over by Kidde, the present parent company of Bear Archery. Also, in the late 1970s the company moved to Gainesville, Florida.
Fred Bear is one of the few people alive today who was a personal friend of Art Young — the “Young” of Pope and Young, the recognized trophy-record keeping organization of bowhunting. In fact, Bear’s first interest in the sport came from seeing Art Young put on a demonstration of shooting at a Rotary Club in Detroit. Young made his living putting on such shows, although he had gained fame through films on bowhunting in Africa and Alaska. Bear did not know Dr. Saxton Pope, a medical professor at the University of California who teamed up with Young on several hunts. Young was 10 years older than Bear, but he died when he was 45 of a ruptured appendix.
“He was my hero. Anything he said was gospel,” Fred remembers. ” He was a great, clean-living fellow. Big guy, good looking, no bad habits. I was kind of amazed I could keep up with this guy in roving.” (A type of shooting in which archers roam, picking targets and seeing who can come the closest.) Young never shot in tournaments.
” At that time archers had different ways of measuring how good they were. One was to see how many arrows they could keep in the air at a time. Young used a Mongolian release that lends itself to fast shooting because it combines nocking the arrow and pulling the string. He could shoot fast.”
However, few people know that Fred Bear about this time was the Michigan State Target Champion.
Fred Bear in his own way became a much greater advocate of bowhunting than either Pope or Young ever dreamed of. For one thing, by the time Bear began to make promotional films of his adventures and to appear on television on ”The American Sportsman” and “Arthur Godfrey” shows, bows of quality were readily available to anyone who wanted to try the sport. So there was much more potential to bring people into bow hunting. Bear also made many more films and through television reached millions more people.
Bear’s hunting trips to India, Africa, South America, Alaska and the Arctic had as their reason the promotion of bow hunting and Bear Archery. But Fred loves to hunt, too. At one time, Bear held five Pope and Young trophy records. He still holds two, brown bear and stone sheep.
Although the first big game he bagged with a bow was a deer in northern Michigan in 1935, Fred Bear’s favorite animal to hunt is, naturally, bear. Once on a hunt in British Columbia he saw 62 grizzlies in 25 days. Some of his tightest moments have also come on bear hunts.
On a grizzly hunt to make a television film for ABC, he was charged by a sow grizzly that put him up a tree and kept him there from late one afternoon to 8:30 a.m. the next day.
He was charged by polar bears twice. The second charge came instantly after Fred had hit it with an arrow at 30 yards. At 20 yards the guide dropped the bear with a rifle. Fred walked over to it to pull out his arrow. At that moment the bear stood up, and Fred had to kill it with a .44 Magnum handgun. The rifle shot had only creased the bear’s head, stunning it.
In Africa, Bear along with his white hunter and natives were pinned in a small brush blind for half a night by a lion that could have jumped in on them at any second.
But sometimes his hunts resulted in amazing twists. When I was hunting with him in Alaska he shot a bull moose at 15 feet. And then there was his Indian tiger.
Perched in the top of a palm tree, Fred was waiting for the beaters to drive the tiger past. This was in a small canyon. Suddenly Bear saw the cat about 90 or I00 yards away. It was pacing back and forth at the base of the rimrock that formed the side of the canyon. It was apparently trying to find a way to go over the side.
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”Finally I decided that maybe if I shot an arrow beyond the tiger, he might tum back my way. So I picked my poorest arrow and shot it. I hit the tiger right through the lungs and killed him.”
Innovating, designing, promoting, hunting, Fred Bear has lead the way. During the interviews for this article, I tried to encourage Fred Bear to describe his role in the development of American bowhunting particularly in relation to Pope and Young. Politely, he dodged the question.
It took a while, but eventually I figured why. Without Fred Bear, there is a chance that the modern fiberglass laminated bow would either not have been invented or would have been invented much later. Without Fred Bear but even with the fiberglass laminated bow, the promotion of bowhunting might never have taken place.
So what does it all boil down to? Well for one thing, without Fred Bear there probably wouldn’t have been a Pope and Young Club. Think about it. Bear made the sport that created the organization. I’ll bet that Saxton Pope and Art Young would welcome having a name like Fred Bear alongside theirs.
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