With a gun if you can see an animal, you can kill it. With a bow and arrow, you have to get really close and personal, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt teaches you to really hunt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Roberts, who owns Garrick\u2019s Primitive Archery in Mancos, estimates he has made over 500 custom bows since he started 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
He was attracted to archery initially because of the 28-day season that starts at the end of August and because you can buy a tag over the counter.<\/p>\n
But once he started making bows and arrows, he was intrigued by arrows that flew straight even though they shouldn\u2019t have, and the unique feel of a handmade bow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I saw I bow I sold, I could tell if I made it. They are like my kids,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Roberts travels the country as a mechanic for Union Pacific Railroad. Along the way he harvests all kinds of logs for his hobby business.<\/p>\n
He has experimented with all kinds of wood including eucalyptus for bows and river cane for arrows. Osage orange and hickory work best because a hardwood bow can handle \u201cstretching its back and crushing its belly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Many modern bows are laminated with fiberglass, which has almost eliminated the art of making wood bows. But Roberts prefers traditional wood bows, in part because of their instrumental part in human history.<\/p>\n
As a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Roberts has helped re-enact medieval life, carving bows on a bowyer\u2019s bench at renaissance fairs. His bow strings are hand-braided and coated with wax.<\/p>\n
He can also back a bow with sinew, as Native Americans did.<\/p>\n
His arrows are also handmade. Although each wooden dowel rod is the same length and diameter, they must be sorted for stiffness to match a bow and archer. Some archers prefer real feathers, and if this is the case, all the feathers on a single arrow must come from either the right side or the left side of a birds wing for it to fly correctly.<\/p>\n
\u201cArrows are made for the bow and the shooter that shoots it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
John Chagnovich, a faithful customer and friend of Roberts, has been shooting for about 50 years and shoots about 100 arrows a day.<\/p>\n
A compound bow takes less time to master, and can be more efficient, but Chagnovich owns only traditional bows.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce traditional shooting is in your blood, you don\u2019t lose it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Roberts replaced Wildcat Canyon Traditional Achery supplies as the only bowyer in the area a few years ago, and Chagnovich appreciates his work.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a master at making the bows,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
a gun if you can see an animal, you can kill it. With a bow and arrow, you have to get really close and personal, he said. \u201cIt teaches you to really hunt,\u201d he said. Roberts, who owns Garrick\u2019s Primitive Archery in Mancos, estimates he has made over 500 custom bows since he started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2299,431,245,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-59694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-archery","tag-business-general","tag-customs-and-tradition","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59694"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=59694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}