Back in 2008 I donated snake backed osage bow to the ASTB to auction off at their Alabama Children's Hospital benefit tournament.
The guy who won it bought one $1 ticket, some people bought dozens of tickets. The guy was Tony Jetton, he was a top recurve and longbow shooter but this was his first selfbow. I shot with him on his first round with his new bow, there was an elk at 40 yards, Tony being a gap shooter held where he thought this primitive bow would hit and shot 4' over the top of the elk. He was shocked, he turned around and said, " That bow doesn't give up anything to my modern laminated longbow"
Tony shot the bow in every tournament for the next few years, he shot it almost every day at home as well.
I always told him if he ever hard a "tink" from the bow, stop shooting and let me look at it. About 5 years (just a guess) after he won the bow we were at a tournament when he came over and said "I heard a tink from the bow, what should I do"?
I looked the bow over and couldn't find a thing but a tink is a harbinger of doom for a selfbow. We actually got 4 or 5 guys together to watch Tony draw the bow, we looked for at least 10 minutes and couldn't find a thing. The sunlight was filtering through the trees, a ray of light hit the bow and our friend Scott said " I see, I see it", sure enough, the tiny crack showed up in a ray of light filtering through the trees.
I superglued the crack and put a superglued serving thread wrap over the crack. I told Tony to keep on shooing the bow, if it blew it blew but I had good luck with such wraps in the past. He said he was almost afraid to shoot it because he loved the bow.
My wife died 10 years ago, I dropped out of the tournament circuit and didn't hear any more about the bow until Tony posted a picture of himself coming in second in the IBO Worlds selfbow class, he was shooting the bow. Tony is on the left, ironically the guy on the right in third place liked Tony's bow so much he wanted me to make a twin of it for him, Nolan came in third with his twin bow.
I didn't hear about the bow for at least 10 years; yesterday Tony posted a picture of himself shooting the bow in the Catch-A-Dream shoot in MS, he came in second in his class. I contacted him about the bow, he said he only shot it in tournaments now, no practice at home to put more wear and tear on it. You can see the wrap on the top limb, still holding up just fine.
