Sorry I’m late with this post but I’ve had some family health Issues pop up unexpectedly the last week and a half. My mind has been away from archery for a bit because of the seriousness of the situation. However, I find archery to be a great stress relief and very therapeutic when life throws you and your loved ones curveballs. Here it goes. I have been shooting a recurve since the late 80s/early 90s. I remember being at my grandma and grandpas house around the age of 8 and thumbing through a gander mountain catalog and for some reason I was just drawn to the archery section. No one in my family did much of anything with archery but they were all avid wing shooters. My 4 uncles, grandpa, and my dad all were serious outdoorsman. I don’t think we ever had a family function where everyone wasn’t blowing duck and goose calls in the garage or showing off a new shotgun. My oldest uncle even took it as far as starting his own hunt club in vandalia Illinois called “kecks marsh” and at one point he had about 3500 acres of farmland That he managed for waterfowl. Needless to say, it was a fun childhood being able to go out hunting with the family just about every weekend either local or down in southern illinois. Anyways, My dad was the only one in my family with any kind of archery experience and it was pretty much limited to an old Shakespeare recurve he had growing up and him and his friends rolling old tires down the hill and shooting them with their arrows. He used to go out for rabbits as well. I think that bow was only 35# or so but he had given or sold it to one of his buddies before me and my sister came along. I showed him the recurves in the gander mountain catalog and told him I wanted to try archery. He immediately tried to push me over to the compound side trying to explain let off to me and I wasn’t having it. I had a martin x200 picked out and that’s what I wanted. Well, my dad ended up finding a recurve at a garage sale and it was an American archery barracuda And it had 6 yellow bear cedar arrows with it. I remember seeing that bow for the first time and thought it was the most beautiful thing i ever laid eyes on. My dad bought a few hay bales and it was off to grandmas house where there was a little more room to shoot. To this day I still can see that first arrow my dad shot out of that bow. It was one of those yellow bear arrows and I was immediately hooked. That bow was 45# and me being the age I was couldn’t quite pull that bow back and it drove me crazy. My dad was actually able to come across another garage sale Ben pearson that was 35# and that was a lot more manageable for me. i was in business! We shot and shot and shot and had a blast. I remember having that American archery recurve in my bedroom and I would spend all day trying to string that sucker. I wasn’t quite strong enough and we didn’t own a bow stringer so I would try to Boy Scout that thing for hours just so I can practice pulling it back to build my strength. What I did do was twist this shit out of those limbs! My dad was not a happy camper! As the years went by we acquired a ton of bows. We bought every garage sale recurve we could get our hands on! I think we had to have had about 20 old bears on the rack and boxes and boxes of arrows! As I got into my teens I didn’t shoot too much. I was big into football and that took up all my free time in the fall. That carried over into my late teens and early 20s. There was a small college in Nebraska that gave me a little money to play football for them for a few years. The summer of my freshman year my dad showed me a want ad in the local newspaper looking for old archery equipment and I needed money being a broke college student so I called the guy up and told him what I had. he ended up coming to the house the next morning and buying I don’t know how many bows and arrows from me for about 350 bucks. This was before the archery websites and I had no idea what the stuff was worth but I do remember I had dozens of brand new pearson arrows all equipped with deadheads. I think I may have kept a kodiak magnum out of all those bows but I can’t remember. Well about a year or so after I sold those bows I quickly realized college wasn’t for me so I came home to try something else. I was able to get into local 142 right off the bat and I was in business. I remember coming back from golfing with my buddies to my parents house where I was still living and my dad told me about a recurve he had found at a garage sale earlier that morning. He said it was a bear and it was in really nice shape. i told him i was going to go check it out so I went Over there and it was an old Kodiak with a leather grip and they wanted $10 for it. They also had a browning wasp new in the box for $40 so I bought both of them suckers. As luck would have it, the bear turned out to be a 1959 56” Kodiak. I had ordered some arrows from kustom king and I went there to pick them up and I showed tim That bow and he immediately called a local collector who was literally at my mom and dads house the next morning at 7am to buy that bow from me. He offered me $500 for that bow and I thought I had hit the jackpot. He then later had that bow signed by charlie kroll and sold it for 1500 bucks on eBay lol. What that old Kodiak did was rekindle my passion for the sport and I was all in again. I had that money from that Kodiak so I went shopping. I was able to win a robertson longbow on eBay and I saw the guy selling it was from homewood Illinois so I contacted him and asked if I could pick it up instead of having to ship it and he said that would work out great. I get to this guys house and he answers the door and this guy looked like santa clause on steroids. i shook his hand and you can tell by this dudes bearpaws and grip that he was strong as an ox. The man was leo markert. I would have never known that this bow purchase would lead me to one of the best human beings imaginable. Leo took a liking to me and took me under his wing. despite our age difference we became the closest of friends. Leo put a lot of trust in me and had me selling all his used bows for his archery business as well as selling new bows for jack Harrison after he launched the HSS line of bows. I was able to meet a ton of great people by selling used and new bows. We shipped hundreds of bows out every year and it was such a good time. We shot 3d tournaments with our group of archers just about every weekend and sometimes 2-3 different shoots a day. We had the archery bug bad. with all my dealings with harrison bows, I have a soft spot for them but there was always one model that was able to elude me....until recently. My Buddy Dan breen was able to hook me up with one of my dream bows and that bow is a 66” 53@27 Jack Harrison American wolf. There were more of these One piece Harrison’s out there than any of his other models but they shoot So good that no one wants to ever sell them. This one is no exception. I’m a hill style guy to the bone but this bow is one I’ve always wanted and I’m having a blast shooting it. It brings back so many memories shooting with leo and our crew. Leo has been gone almost 6 years and I miss him every day. Our shooting crew is depleted as well with bad health issues and I can’t help but to relive all those good times from the past every time I shoot this Harrison. It brings me back and I thank Danny for sharing this bow with me. Sorry for the long post and random capitalization of words...don’t know why this iPhone does that but enjoy the pics!!