(upbeat music) Hey there, I wanna talk to you about our show sponsors. First, let's highlight polite but dangerous tools. I've personally purchased three knives from Sam Curtis at polite but dangerous tools and later had 'em on the podcast. I use one of their super sharp nest mucks to skin out a bear just a few weeks back with ease. Use the discount code ALLCAPSBOYER. That's B-O-W-Y-E-R in ALLCAPS to save 10% on your orders from polite but dangerous tools. If you wanna learn more about Sam and his creative process, check out polite but dangerous tools anywhere on the interwebs. Next up, we have VUNI gear. We've officially partnered with the great folks at VUNI. A few months ago, I purchased the vertical T from VUNI for a pig hunt in Florida. After the hunt I wrote Brian, the founder of VUNI, had to provide some positive feedback and later, that led to a three hour long phone conversation. Then I tested the altitude pant and Helios hoodie during my Manitoba bear hunt. I wore the Helios hoodie for three days straight and was super impressed by the way the fabric maintained its form and lacked the tail tail odor of most synthetic materials. I'll be using the altitude pant and the Helios hoodie for all of my early season hunts here in North Carolina and I'm very excited to try out the insulation and rain gear during my Kodiak hunt in late October. Use the discount code BOYER15 at checkout to save 15% off all VUNI gear. Check them out at vunigear.com. That's V-U-N-I-G-E-A-R.com. (upbeat music) - Hey everybody, welcome to the BOYER podcast. Thanks for joining us today. This episode is gonna be a little bit different than normal in part because of the setting and just the general lineup. So this episode took place at ETAAR. So at the 2024 Eastern traditional archirondezvous and I met up with my buddy Dave Darling of Kalamazoo Bow Works and instead of having a conversation during the day when there's a kazillion people running through the vendor tent we decided to open a bottle of bourbon sitting around the campfire and just generally shoot the breeze and talk about bows and fatherhood and a little bit about Dave's origin story with Kalamazoo Bow Works. Like all fireside chats, there are a lot of interruptions. We've got our kids running around, there's people walking by, we have internet interruptions. If it could have happened, it did happen. So I asked for your patience, but I also asked for you to just kind of embrace the organic nature of the conversation of two guys with similar values, similar interests but definitely different walks of life sitting around a campfire and shooting the breeze. This episode is brought to you by our show partners to keep this here podcast on the radio waves. First let's highlight polite but dangerous tools. I've personally purchased three knives from Sam Curtis at polite but dangerous and later had him on the podcast. If you wanna learn more about Sam and his creative process, check out polite but dangerous tools anywhere on the interwebs. Vuni Gear, we've officially partnered with the great folks at Vuni. A few months ago, I purchased the vertical tee from Vuni for a pig hunt that I had in Florida. After the hunt, I wrote Brian the founder of Vuni and provided a little bit of positive feedback and that later led to a three hour long foam conversation in which I got to know Brian a little bit better and he the same. I then tested the altitude pant and helios hoodie during my manateau with Bear Hunt. I wore the helios hoodie for three days straight and was super impressed in the way the fabric maintained its form. Didn't get that pesky saggy neck that a lot of clothes or tops do over a couple of days of wear and it lacked the telltale odor of most synthetic materials. I actually coided it a lot to like a nice soft merino wool when it came to odor control. So I'm really happy about it. I'm gonna be using the altitude pant and the helios hoodie for all my early season haunts here in North Carolina and I'm also excited about trying out the insulation and rain gear during my Kodiak Hunt in late October. Check 'em out vunigear at vunigear.com and use the promo code bowyer to stop 10% off your purchase. All right, good evening everybody. Welcome to the Bow Your Podcast. We're out here on day two, three. Dave tells me three of ETAAR. And this is only my second ETAAR. Still a bit of a green horn, but I found that the family here is very welcoming. My kids are off running around with somebody else's kids, shooting arrows, slingshots, probably starting fires or taking over the next village. It's all awesome, but I am joined here tonight. My good buddy, Dave Darling. So Dave, how are you, man? Doing great, man? Doing great. So to set stage, guys, we finished the full day of ETAAR. We've shot arrows, we've done the vendor thing. Dave has done his due diligence at the vendor tent selling thousands of Kalamazoo bows. And now we're sitting around a campfire, our offspring are off running at the ether someplace on the side of the ski resort, here a sawmill ski resort, which is a super, super beautiful setting. And you couldn't really ask for anything better. So that's where we are. You should be jealous if you're not here. And if you're not here, you should make sure you come here in the following years. But yeah, I want to talk to Dave. We met last year at ETAAR, and it was a really good conversation. I was checking out his bows and he was so genuine and just giving me 30 plus minutes of his time to talk about our past lives in the military, talk about bow making. I was carrying around one of my first self bows at the time, and this was just a genuine human, and which is why we're sitting here, having bourbon and beer around the campfire tonight, and then having a conversation. So this is a little bit of an informal field cast style. This seems off a normal script, that's because it is and it's intentional and by design. And I hope you listen to, enjoy listening to two guys just shoot the breeze and talk about life. All right, Dave, tell us the origin stories of Kalamazoo Bow Works. - I don't know, man. It's origin story goes probably before I was born. My dad picked up a stick bow when he was preteens, fell in love with archery and balloning. And then they had me, you know, he and my mom got married and that passion was passed down. He put a bow in my hand at about three years old, two or three years old, he got the first bow in my hand. And my dad was always super involved, not always, but as long as I've been alive, he's been through the '80s and '90s and 2000s. He was super involved in state national organizations, be it Michigan traditional bow hunters, which he was passed by a son of a freshman ball in her society, he's a council member on, always involved with Compton. We've been doing the shoots and that night, he's never served on the board there, but dad's always been super involved with that stuff. And he put a stick bow in my hand and he had always been a stick bow guy. And through all of that, I created a lot of connections. You meet guys that, to a lot of people, they look at those people as heroes or celebrities. And I got to know them from the time I was a kid and they're just normal guys. - They're talking about traditional archers and the actual traditional archers, ball hunters, the boyers, the likes of Dick Robertson, Jerry Brum, the wensels. I got the wensels at like 10 or 11 years old, you know. They used to give me, I'd see them in high school and they're like, "Still wrestling day?" When they asked me about how my wrestling season was going and everything else. And to me, it was always like Dean Uncle Barry and I bought, my first custom bow was from Dick Robertson. And again, I actually bought his personal bow that he hunted with the year before at Kevin's traditional interactive bow in 2000. And he killed an elk with it and a bear and I fell in love with this bow. He's there and it's really hard from saying no to a kid to sell his own. - Sure, yeah. - He was a personal bow and my dad worked out a deal and I was able to walk home with that bow, '67, '28. It was massively heavy for-- - But how old were you then? - '15, '16. - And you're probably drawing pulling at 25 inches. - Yeah, 25, 26. - Heavy bow would be pulling at the teenagers. - Yeah, I was a 120 pound wrestler at the time and I had plenty of body strength. So I get to meet Dick and then my dad and Dick started to form a friendship and I started to develop a friendship with Dick and that's one of those things. And that was the big thing, getting those relationships and those friendships, especially with the boys. And after my senior year of high school in 2002, I was getting ready. I was gonna be shipping off to boot camp in early 2003 and we're a lot of guys, they're like fresh graduates. They're looking for money or like graduation gifts to go into their dorm room. I just asked everybody for money because I wanted to take a road trip out west and spend some time with Dick and Bob Burton from Whispering Wind Arrows and Larry Fisher from Trisha Ballroom Magazine, co-founder and everybody, I got my wish. Everybody gave me cash and I had a couple grand in my pocket and I got a block and we loaded up my Chevy Halfton, the four or three liter and a five speed. - You still miss that truck? - I do, I really do. Long bed, single cab, you know, 89. - I miss every square, it should be a common grade. - Why would I ever get rid of this? - Because this is so simple, but we loaded it up and we pointed it west and we hit the badlands, we hit all the major sightseeing stuff on the way out there and put on the way on the trip out after we got through North Dakota, 'cause we came through North Dakota on the way out and Dick Robertson's ranch was our first stop and I got to spend a few days in the shop with him. - That's really cool. - And so for me at 18 years old and my buddy who was, I think 16 at the time, 'cause he was a couple years behind me in school, he was a scout friend and then of course friends. Anyway, long story short, we had to spend a couple days on Dick's ranch, hung out with Yana and Yvonne, his daughters and a yoke wasn't there, but everybody made us feel right at home and then getting to go in to Dick's shop and watch him work and him explaining the whole process of how he built the bow and seeing it all go on, really just stealing Flynn onto a little bit of Tinder. - You never knew that little spark was gonna grow in a business. - Exactly, I had no idea. It was just really cool to be there and do that. And so when we finished up the trip, I spent a couple days at the Bob and Marilyn Burton's Bob and Marilyn's gift for me for graduation was I built a dozen footed shafts with Bob in a shop. So like we took some raw, he did the hex pine and I know you're a former compound guy, but like these hex pine shaft, they were laminated pine. So they would, it's six pieces of pine they laminated together but not. Anyway, we went to the bandsaw, cut the notches, cut all the whole nine yards and just built these footage shafts so I could take it home and build my, I said it doesn't footed arrows from Bob. And then from there, we did Yellowstone, went to Boise, spent two or four days in Boise, did some fun stuff there hanging out with the Fisher Kids, Blake, Jake, and Becky, we just had a ball. We had a lot of fun with Blake and Jake but I knew he came home and everything went back to normal. And I just continued to bow on and keep up relationships and friendships and talk to those folks whenever I could. And I just got in value, I had to cross train in the Air Force in 2009. I went from being a weapons loader on eight tens, our unit. - The war hog? - Yep, on the war hog. We got, our unit got bracked and we lost our aircraft and my options were get out scap-free, transfer units or find any job. Well, I'm not a sitting-in-office kind of guy and the only job that looked interesting to me was fire. Next, I really didn't want to switch units and I still felt like I had stopped them, yeah. - And I was still in Michigan for the Air Guard? - Yeah, so you could stay relatively close to home. - Yeah, I mean, in our unit, honestly, my unit was 10 minutes from where I grew up. And so I cross-trained into a fire department and went out to Fire Academy, came back from Fire Academy and anybody that's been a firefighter or knows somebody that's a firefighter knows, like, especially when you first get out of the Academy, it's a huge drive. You're really high on everything. You're like, man, I want to do this full-time as a career if you're going from volunteer or whatever, getting on a big city department where you're going to be running fires and you're going to be jobbing. - Most guys I know that are firefighters or even like a paramedic in a firefighting unit, swear it's like the best job on the planet. So it's got to be super passionate about it. - Yeah, and so that's where I was at the time. And so I got done with the Fire Academy in September, I got home from Texas and of course, go to Expo in January. And I developed a friendship with Bob Morrison for Morrison Archer, I had him, I had him do a couple of snakeskin jobs on boats that I had, that I wanted to, you know, any and I develop a friendship. - Had you been making some boats? - I had not made anything. - Wow. - But, 'cause I went through, I was going through life kind of job to job. Like most early 20s, I got kicked out of college 'cause while I went TDY, I'm in college in your air guard and we went TDY for two weeks and it was just after spring break and so it ended up being three weeks off of class and I'm like, then things got busy and I'm just stopped going and so it ended up failing out of college. Never had a Western Michigan University. And then you didn't float in, you didn't act floating from job to job and holding jobs for a year or two or whatever. - I hang that hard, when I did some reserve time, it was like, can I find some with activated reserve orders or do I go out and get my grownup job and do that but I don't want to get ready to get deployed again and it's in our generation, probably pretty close to the same age and so we are in the same generation of military people where even if you went into the reserves, it's a 75% job but not a 25% job. - And in a lot of that time, I was spending doing AGR Reserve orders or doing AT days, which are, and so we're training, we just had a ton of AT days, a ton of AGR orders. - You can't plan six months out much less a year, right? - And at that time, the A10 was going through a huge weapon and avionics system upgrade to the C model. And so there was a ton of availability, like I end up going out to Vegas, to Nellis for two months and two six TDY as part of that whole precision engagement, C model upgrade, doing testing there and then I worked in their back shop for the first month I did the loading portion and I worked in their back shop for the second month. There's always stuff. I was on temporary technician orders, sort of the way I was working as a civilian and a guard role. But anyway, long story short, after all that, going to fire and come home and I was unemployed. - 'Cause it'd be, I've been gone for four months for their academy and anyway, I show up to Expo and I'm talking to Bob and he's asking me, he's like, "Dave, you're pretty good with your hands, aren't you?" And I'm like, "Yeah, not bad." I'm done a little bit of, I worked with my uncle who was a glazer, and I did windows and we did a huge window restoration, or a restoration job at University of Michigan where we'd replaced all the leaded stone glass, or stained glass windows and one of the buildings there and new frame, new sashes, the whole nine yards in. - I'm pretty good with my hands. I'm like, "Yeah, I'm pretty good with my hands." And he says, "I'm looking for some help in the shop." And I'm like, job my lifetime. This would be awesome. - Bob Morrison at the time was one of the most well-respected lawyers, and even to this day, he's one of my favorite most well-respected lawyers. In my opinion, I don't think anybody can snake skin a bow better than Bob Morrison, at least a fiberglass bow. And my wife had just been accepted to, she'd just been accepted, she just started PA school. My wife's a physician assistant. - I also married up, so I get it. - Yeah, I punch way above my wife's glass. - It's my chart, charming disposition. - We get a lot more encounters. - There's a reason I do a podcast and not anything, not a YouTube channel, but I say, "Yeah, I got face for you." - But yeah, so she was stuck where we were, and it would have required me to move to Southern Indiana, or Southern Ohio. And... - It's a hard move when you're a Michigander. - I'm in Michigan, Ohio, that doesn't bother me. But the six-hour drive between us was, I didn't want to do that. - Yeah. - And... - Were you guys hit you at the time? - Yeah, yeah. - We started dating in 2002 when I was a senior in high school. We got married in '06, so we've been together for 22 years now, married for 18. - Man, that's beautiful. I was just listening to Monty browning down there talking. I think he and Andy have been married for 54, 55 years. And he's like, "First girl friend I ever had, "first woman I ever kissed." The one with my wife, been married for 54 years, and like, "Man, that is awesome." - Yeah, yeah. - Being a husband and a father is my favorite thing in the world, like, hands down. So, like, anytime somebody has a good success story of me. - Yeah. - I think it's beautiful. - And I don't deserve her. She could have been chill left me a lot of times. - Look, then, before we started recording, we were talking about imposter syndrome, and we were like, "Oh, how do we even get here? "Like, how are we around all these amazing people?" And I'd feel that way even with my wife sometimes. And I'm just like, "How on earth did I deserve?" I don't know, it's not a deserve. It's, I don't know how do I get graced with this blessing. - Yes, exactly. - It's hard to... A man is blessed with a good woman. I'm glad she's silly enough to still stay with me. So, it looks like, yeah, you've convinced yours to... So, she's like really boo from art, but she did want to come to selection for her partner. - He says so. - I guess I'm a lot like her dad. I don't like it. (laughing) I was like, no, I just made sure that after we got married, she got, she popped out a couple of kids and time to where she was like, "Ah, I might as well stay." - It's on her. - Like, you're good. - So, yeah, I'm just going to PA school. And so, I can't take this opportunity. It's, to me, it's the opportunity of the lecture. - But, so then I start going on down this road of wanting to be a career firefighter. And we don't have any good crew, and I can say no good career fire departments in Michigan, but there's not a lot in hiring is very infrequent. - The difficulty, too. - That's being, any of the civil service, the first responders that really got to live so many minutes away. And so, it's okay to get on one of these big departments. You've also got to live in the city for the most part, too, right? - For the most part, too, right? - You do. - And that can be tough. - And I actually, I tested in Devonport, Iowa, and I actually came down to the last seven candidates, final chiefs interviews, the whole many yards, for five positions. They wanted EMTs. I was just starting an EMT school, because I was starting to try and put others in my cap, because for every one of the things to do, it makes it a little bit easier to get that career department, career job, even on a non-transport, or non ALS department. And we did that, I started testing, I tested in St. Paul, and I actually did really well there. Then I got my paramedic license, and it was, so I started that kind of career progression where I was trying to, yeah. - It's very arduous. - Yeah, it is. Luckily, because of the college that I had previously, like I kicked out of college my second semester, but my first semester I did before I left for basic, I did really well in calculus with applications, I got to be in physics and all that stuff. I did really well. And so when I went to the community college, start the EMT training, they transfer all your records and your credits over. And so I didn't have to do a mad math, or any of that kind of stuff. So a lot of the prerequisites got away with not having to do, I had to do AMP, one by an enemy of physiology, but that was a breeze. And yeah, if you had to do all the prereqs, then EMT school, which is a semester, and then I rolled right into medics school, which was three semesters, it's the fall, winter, and then both summer semesters. So it's two full years. It's a lot of time, a lot of time away from your wife. - 'Cause you're doing shift hours, you're doing clinicals and all these things, even during the academic rigor, right? - Yeah, it's classes four days a week. I think it was like nine to four, 30, or something like that. And then you're doing a lot of overnight shifts, or like on the weekends, you're doing shifts, working clinical hours, whether it's in the ER or working in another rig. And then like the further you get in, we did ICU hours. We did a psych ward hours, like overnight's in a psych ward. That's fun. Like it's interesting, I shouldn't say it's fun. - I was like, man, that's not something. - You're freaking, you're doing 12 hour shifts and an opportunity ward, labor and delivery, because they want you to be able to vote. - You may have to do this on your own, which is cool because after going through all that, long story short, the wife, we started having a week, when I was graduating from medics school, we had our first daughter. And she's 12 now, she's beautiful. - She's six feet tall already. - Yes, she's almost tall, she's taller than her ma, her feeder, I had to buy her new wrestling shoes. - She wrestles too. - Yeah, my, oh, what is a wrestler? - What about ass, that's awesome. - And I had to buy her new wrestling shoes this summer before wrestling camp. And I'm back to coaching wrestling now. I used to coach youth wrestling in the early 2000s. And anyway, I bought myself a new pair of shoes last year when I started coaching again. And I was like, try these on, 'cause we don't have to buy a new pair of deer feet, my girl again. And she was just too small to fit into my wrestling shoes. So I had to buy her half size smaller. I'm like, good Lord. But anywho, we had her and the support network of having my in-laws, my wife was very adamant that she needed to have that. She didn't want us to move eight, 10 hours away and not have a support network with young children and daycare in the whole nine yards. - Brother, I get that. By the time we had our firstborn, who's 10, Whelan, who you've met now, and he's running around with your daughters somewhere. We were living in Italy at times working for the government. And so we had no support network for that. And it was very difficult. And then when Finley, my youngest, who's eight, now arrived, we were still, we were living down in Florida at the time 'cause work took us down there. And my folks here in Missouri, my in-laws are in Delaware. There was, God bless my mother-in-law, for being able to come down and hang out with us for a few weeks. But like, I still very much am in my kid, or eight, 10, but I'm in the eyes of not having family close eye 'cause having to move every two or three years for 20 years, finding a sitter, finding, doing all of these things is very difficult until you find some of it's, you trust enough to watch your kids. - Exactly. - Or even your dogs for kind of a lot of like them, especially your kids, or if there's a childcare option or whatever else like that. Yeah, if there's one thing, like a change, like going back in time with some of the upbringing stuff is to have found a way to be closer to one of our families and have that support network. Whether that's with the kids, whether that's a post-partum support, whether that's any of those, all of it. - We all need help. - And no man, there's an island. - It tells us that we should be always hustling and be on our own, be right. - Or there's a hustle and you got your side hustle and you got your third hustle and you're just, yeah. - You got your family and then you've got your family that's made along the way. - Yeah. - And it's very true. And my wife was very concerned about meeting that family along the way. - It's hard. - It's progressing in a career department. So I let that dream slide and just settled in to being a street medic, which was nothing that I ever wanted to do. It wasn't a career choice for me. - What is that, what's the day in the life? - 12 hour shift, private ambulance service, a lot of transfers, you get hit with the transfers out of a nursing home to a dialysis clinic and maybe back transfer from interfacility transfers from one hospital to another based on availability of beds or you know. - It doesn't necessarily feel like emergency medicine that you wanted to do. - No. And honestly, like we go down a whole another rabbit hole in my opinion on medicine today, not even medicine, but the abuse of the emergency medicine system. And it got to the point, I did works as a year as a basic and then nine as a medic. So I had 10 years on the truck and toward the end there, I felt like I was lucky if I got to like, feel like I really did something, like I got to use my skills and actually help somebody like once every other week and it gets very draining. - Nobody goes into medicine to do something that you don't feel like you're flourishing and making a difference, right? - There's a lot of, we always give people calling 911 at first up until and that's a big extreme, but there's a lot. - It's probably happened though before. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - They're literally, that's legit by one of my partners after he, I don't think he was still a basic anyway, he ended up going to medics school and he became a medic, but he ended up having to transfer out of our service I worked for was a hospital based service. And but it was a very small hospital. It was we had an emergency room and a long-term intensive, long-term acute care unit and a radiology unit. That's what we had in the hospital. My partner ended up having to take the transfer out 'cause a kid was jerking around around a campfire with a hot dog, like sick, ecstatic in the ground and stabbed himself through the foot with it. Like they did imaging, there's no impingements on anything. You didn't go through any bone, it's a soft tissue injury and the doctor refused to remove the hot dog poker. They brought the kid into the ER with it. Mom and dad drove them into the ER with it. He was like, I can't remove that here. So they transferred them down to a level two trauma center to have them remove. It's like, why are we doing this? You're wasting resources. And a lot of it comes down to money. Like the abuse of it to where people no longer have primary care providers, they use the emergency rooms or primary care and they don't want to waste their gas to drive to the emergency room. So they'll call 911 to get a ride to the emergency room because then Medicare Medicaid pays for it, sure that. Anyway, we can go down there. Yeah, we could have some offline beers and go on down there. But my laws are both for world physicians and I'm just like, we have these conversations all the time and I get to be, I'm pretty holistic about medicine and my top processes and stuff like that. They're training physicians once in ASDC, all this one is a neural distance. So you have to sometimes we have different reviews but the frustration in general is shared. - Yes, yeah. - And it's-- - Let's stick to our true stuff though. - Like the frustration you hear in my voice that it was one of those things that like, I need to get out of this stuff. - You would have had that frustration if you weren't passionate about what you were doing. - Right. - Like, there's a reason why we're here and I like, we're having to call me a tool aid for a lunge at calls because we're on a BS call and that's not like-- - Yep. - Plus it creates burnout. - It's like an assembly line too, right? - And it takes shit at our 45 minutes to write the report for a BS call that you never should have had to go on anyway. - And long story short, it wasn't the path that I really wanted and I needed, I wanted an exit. - And yours is a long time. - Right, so I'm looking for an exit strategy and I knew it wasn't something I wanted to do for a long time. Like, I didn't want to retire from it after about five years. So like, I need to start working on an exit strategy. And I'm like, what do I love? - How many kids do you have at this time around that 10 year mark? - Oh, 10 years, when I got off the rig, we had all six kids. - Wow. - So Wipe is a full time PA? - Yeah, oh, it's full time here about it. - Yep. - And what I started the company, Galaxy Bow Works in February 2019, is one night from right now, I'll see what's this. - I don't think, I think, I think. - How many, how? - And at that point we had, how much before that did you start dabbling into making bows and things that nature? - I hadn't made a bow before 2018, December. - No kidding, yep. - Wow. - I've been around it. - I'm surprised, I'm like, oh, you're so new. It's more because I see your bows and I feel like there's decades worth of labor and love into that. So that's why I'm like so impressed. - I don't want to be like, what it is, decades of being around the right people, having the right inspiration and it's an art, right? And some people have an eye for it and some people know. And I don't want, I'm not trying to come off pompous or anything like that. - No, there's no hubris. I get it, oh, you're very genuine about it. But it's, I like sexy lines in smooth transitions. And this one, they like Robertson's bows, classic big horns, big horn takedowns. - Yeah. - Like I said, Dick's bows, the Great Northerns, the Morrison's, the tall kind. - As far as like modern, yeah, some modern bow years, I would say like Great Northerns and yours are really, I'm not gonna say similar, but they foster a traditional aesthetic, like it's traditionalized in something you could have seen in the 70s and 80s with modern lines. And I mean, we would, I think I mentioned something just like this one at the beginning of the day, 'cause I was like, man, I was looking at the one with the green one, it was like, so you've got, what was that bow? - The whole stage in the Mabenga? - Yeah. - Just like that long bow. - Yeah, the long bow. - And I was like, man, this is my favorite long bow in this whole tent, like it's, Wailen, Wailen Ziger walked around. He was he pointed at us. I think it's my favorite bow to that. Here's, they make kids bows, I was like, I have no idea, but we're also not getting you a bow today. So, you've got a bow there. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - But yeah, I was looking for an extra strategy. I decided this was with the career path that I wanted to go on. And I was, and I'm looking at some of my mentors and some of my favorite people and the guys I looked up to, like Dick Roberts is starting to get up there in age. Jerry Brom at the time was in his mid 70s and I'm like, Jerry's gonna have to retire at some point. And I would hate to see Great Northern go by the way of the Dodo bird. And so I reached out to Jerry. And I don't know if you're looking to sell, but I'd love to talk to you about possibly buying you. They're buying the company. If you're, they've something you're ever interested in. And he invited me out to the shop. We spent a full day in the shop. We went off to lunch together, talked. Jerry was shopping at the time, but he felt with my young family that it just wasn't a good food bit. Jerry, I've known Jerry since I was behind a grasshopper, right? And I looked up the man, that man, and respected him like to the moon. And it occurred because I knew that he liked me and respected me too, but he looked at what I, and maybe he looked at me and said, but there's me selling you my company is not the right move for you. - So I think this was just going into a Lucha. It takes a, it takes a lot of wisdom to look, maybe you're better on your own path, right? And there was a, it's like twofold, right? It could have been a business decision on his part that wasn't personal, but you knowing him intimately, right? Like there's a personal feeling to it, right? But also the other part is like, sweet, it's been around as long as him is part of it. I think you have a different spark in you where you can bring something in from the foundation instead of taking this on, like grabbing an existing legacy and bringing it to something new, right? - Exactly. And so while I was a little heartbroken, I got it. I was like, okay. And through the years, they started trying to like save up some money for bands, save up money for this. And then of course, the new tires or something should happen and that little sightings would go-- - Life as a dad and a husband happens and that money goes away. And just happened in 2018, we'd refied our house and small home equity line and credit or whatever. And we were getting ready to finish our basement. And I'm at work, I'm at the station, digging around on Facebook, scrolling through the boy's corner. And post comes up, pew to medical issues, getting rid of all my stuff. I can't build bows anymore, half dozen forms, bandsaw, drum sander, edge sander, all this wood, all fit a glass, all nine yards, message for details. And I'm like, this is out in Utah. - Did you know the maker at the time? - Or was it just that I didn't? - His name was Mark Smelzer. His bows were a bow maker or his company was a bow maker. He's very like regionally known, but he was a huge. Anyway, like I see it and I'm like, this is exactly what I'm looking for, right? And did the Mrs. Know you like started to have this inkling to go into, oh, she knew that I wanted, like she'd known for a long time. And she was my dream. And so I showed my partner, I was like, what do you think? How much do you think he wants for this? Like, on the one way to find out, bro, just ask it. So I messaged my dad and I messaged him or I call him and I text the wife, but it adds, but probably wants 10 or 15 grand for all. It's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing when I messaged him. - Well, it's still an investment. - And I call the wife and she's got the money in the bank. It's your dream, Dave. - God bless her. - And about that time I messaged him already to find out what he wanted for it. He wanted, I think it was 3,000, 3,500 bucks. It was almost the point where I didn't need to ask my wife. It's a big price, but I almost didn't need to ask her. And I was like, sold, I'll take it all. And he's the one, do you want to come pick it up? And I was like, let me find out when I can get a flight. And I booked a flight, that was on a Monday. I booked a flight for that Friday, Thursday or Friday, that night, I thought it might be there. I think we booked a flight for Thursday. We got there on Friday and then we drove back on suits. We got going through a short as long weekend. I rented a Penske truck online, got that reserved. And then I was like, I'd love to have somebody to be able to drive this all back with me. 'Cause I don't want to have to drive cross country with all the shit. I don't know if I don't have to, plus loading and everything. And of course I asked my partners first 'cause whether it's Para Madison or fire. - It's a close word. - It's a close word, right? - It's a close word, right? And I guess those are the people you're closest because you're living with. I was working 24 hour shifts in time. And of course, everybody's gonna work. And it's short notice and of course that's my off weekend. And I just threw it out there on Facebook land. And one of us probably is my brother, Tubby. He hits me up his dude. And this is November, mind you. He says, I've got the week off next week. Starting on the day you're looking to go. - Is this PBS, Tubby? - Or Compton Tubby? - Yeah, Compton Tubby, yeah. Okay. - I have a name, but he's one of the board members of the day. - No, different Tubby. - Oh, I got that part out so I don't sound so dumb. - So he calls me, he's dude. I'm taking, I've already taken this week off for a vacation. But I've gotta be a part of this. - That's cool, man. - That's great. - So he's like, I can't not be there for you. And so he booked his flight and he drove up night before we flew out. Got everything and drove home. And then I started moving it all into my garage. And that was in middle of November. I started building my first bow in early December of 2018. And so I felt it fitting that the first bow that I ever made was for my father. - That's beautiful. - Yeah. - Because my father gave me my first bow. And one of the things I always remember as a kid, my dad, he's always been a rock fan. And in the '80s and '90s, he loved Genesis. So I named that bow Abacab after Genesis first album. And so he got the very first bow I ever built. And then Tubby got the third bow I built. My buddy, John Doyle, who is TJ Conrad's son-in-law of Quorum Treasurable Honor magazine. - Man, so I'm super-- - He got the second one. So he's got deuces. My second bow is deuces. How does this, I'm a self bow, your guy. Look, man, you've seen Waylands bow, these came around here, is the third bow I ever made. And to me, I look at it, I'm like, oh, this sucks. But he loves it. He won't accept an upgrade. Finley, on the other hand, as he would take one every month, like an upgrade. 'Cause there's a personality. Waylands is like, and it's a board bow, actually. So I made out of an old ash bow, rough saw on ash. And it's got like a faux snake skin on it or whatever. And for some reason, he wanted it to be blue. So like the snakes can see what he was doing. It's like, whatever, like, at least somebody here steals it. Like, we know it's gonna know it. But, like, what you're doing, like the art of it, the aesthetics of it are much more serious to me than a lot of self bows. And there's some exceptions with self bow years, but I'm not one of them. And you've got layers and you've got glass. And like, how did you get into making your first bow and knowing that it can shoot and do all that? - So when I bought everything from Mark, there was a handful of forms. There was what is now the Arcadia form, the Manistee form and the Boardman form. Those are the three big ones. - Which one's the Boardman? - It's a 50-style reaker. - Okay. - And he gave me some stack height measurements. These are his formulas. This was okay. He was like, it wasn't even formulas. It's like, he just had, it was a stack of paper. - He had something like a notebook that he had. - No, no, no, it was like six or seven sheets of paper that just had some stack heights on it. And it had, but these are like, they had like a 2,000 stapler, parallel 2,000 stapler, whatever. Can you explain like the stack height and some of these things that you're talking about? - So stack height is the thickness of your stack, right? And one thing that I do different than most other boys, most mobile lawyers, when you're talking one piece bow, they'll measure the lamination thickness at the butt end of the 36 inch lamb before they, because you either bought joint or scarf joint, your lamination is together. - What's the difference between a butt joint and a scarf joint? - A butt joint is, think of a butt joint is like taking your fists and putting them together. And a scarf joint would be taking your open hands and laying one on top of the other. So one's a tapered joint that glues together that you can't tell a difference. And the other, you're just gluing ends together. - Okay, you can see that. - And anytime, if you're familiar with woodwork, and anytime you do, try and do an end joint, they're not stable. So I scarf joint, everything. - A butt joint that helps with the longevity of... - Yes, and it's a cleaner look, because if you don't put a grip on it, butt joints, they have a tendency to slide. - Well, right, 'cause you're covering it up with the grip, right? So you don't see that very distinct line. - Right. - But then if it does separate it all, then you get glue in there, and it's an ugly look. - I can see that. - I'm very particular on my scarf joints. One point of pride that I have is that very rarely, can you actually find joint in my butt? - No, no, it's very fluid, seamless lines. They're beautiful. - Yeah, but so he gave me these... Oh, what I was saying is everybody measured. Most people measure the butt end of that lamination, and I measure it 18, because the Arcadia has what's called a power laminate. So it's actually tapered from the front and the back, and it gets narrowest at the middle. And that's measured at 18 inches. So just as a consistency thing, I measure everything at 18 inches. So Marc had these, like 50 pounds is 225,000s. And this is your glass on the belly, your glass on the back, and all your wood stacked together, right? But what I didn't have was any of his taper rates, like for his limb tapers, and not like the 2000s taper on the thickness, but the actual pay from the fade out, we start the taper at this wide, and it goes to this narrow at the tip. So I just started playing around. And I've always been a very, I like a narrow bow, and so that's what I started with. And actually the first one, Avocab. - Most of your bows are still narrow. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I was like, being my little ones on the rack today. - Avocab was actually probably one of the widest long bows I ever made. I think I did, that was like an inch and a half or an inch. I think it was an inch and a quarter at the fade, and it went to five eights at the tip. It was a straight taper when I first started making it. I just didn't like how it performed. It performed all right. But I knew I could get more out of it. And one of my biggest inspirations in my long bows are Rocky Miller heritage long bows. And Rocky made a reflex deflex long bow called the Bridger Mountain long bow. - Are they still being made? - No, Rocky stopped making them in the early 90s. He was an 80s boy. - I wish I was a better historian than I knew that, but-- - It's one of those, I've been around for so long. - If you've been brought up into, yeah. - And I don't know a couple of them. My dad's owned a bunch of them. And they were my favorite. Between those and their opposite, I couldn't ever actually pick a favorite, right? And I loved that doing what Rocky called the deep core. It was a very thick core, thick lamination, or thick limb, but narrow. And I always felt that was gonna be like a really good performer. And one thing that Rocky always did is all his bows, whether it was long bow, or all his long bows had a strip of fiberglass throne. And to the limb, in the core. And so I started running mean left in that. A, it spreads a little bit of torsional stability, especially with the narrow as my limb is. And then B, I thought I feel like it gives it a little bit more snappings. So I started from there, I started narrowing things down, but marks formulations on a stackites compared to mine, way off. Like that first bow I made for, it was supposed to be a 62 inch RKDI, I think. And it initially scaled in at like 35 pounds or something like that. So I think that one's down to 56 inches to get the weight, took it down to 56 inches and I narrowed the limbs up. So it's been modified to look more like some of the newer ones, but it's still very rough. And like John's bow, my second bow deuce is, that was the first boardman that I laid up. And if you look at that boardman compared to today, like you'd be like, these are not the same bow. They're not even close. It looked very much like a 50 style recurve. Like it didn't have the smooth lines. And like, it was smooth. Like everything was the corners around it, but it still had, there was flats and that and stuff, which my eye is always, like I said, I look for the sexy, like flowing lines by like curves and it's so starting to learning how to roll those edges. Like when I look at a long bow and it's got to be like, the off side of the shelf is flat. I'm like, take a little bit of time and just round that out and round it out. And you put that to my eye and then so you pick up my bow and it's not, it doesn't look like a cylinder, but it's got these nice smooth rounded edges. - It's very fluid for lack of better words. I think all of your bows are very fluid. There's not, there are not any object. You with the trained eye could probably pick up breaks in the lines, perhaps. But for me, who, I'm used to a single piece of wood, I don't pick them up. I'm sure that most people that just want a beautiful bow that can shoot well, don't pick them up. But fellow artisans may be perhaps that of any of you, whether you're looking at Bear or Black Widow or Kalamazoo or Great Northern or any of them, you guys could each critique each other's bows. But like for most people like myself, we would never notice that. And what you've got is everything is, it looks like it was liquid poured in layers. It's very smooth, it's poured throughout. It's just, the symmetry is really beautiful. I, yeah. So I ran a conversation because I was drawn, not only to the man that you are, but like to the craft that you have really mastered and they're just, not what it means. - Yeah, no, I'm going honestly. - No, yeah, you humbled me. Like we were talking about impostor syndrome. And that's one of the things like for me, like I've been building bows for less than six years. Like in December, it will be six years since I started, I built my first bow. And I've received a lot of accolades from people. And my business hasn't taken off like a rocket ship or anything like that. I'm pretty steady, I've built close to 150 bows now. - That's awesome. But there's no work like Greg Coffey does that in a year. And what do you do that within its first five years, right? - Exactly, and I don't know. And this one thing I'm not asked Greg, but because Greg from drama man and I are friends and he's somebody that if I have a question. - And he makes beautiful bows and he does. And he's one of those guys. That's one of the beautiful things about this community is that if I have questions, like if I'm doing something, I just can't get through it. I can call or if I'm stumped or whatever. I can call Mike Robert's sock trail. I call Greg Coffey, I used to be able to call Jerry Brahm until he passed away in April. And hey, this is what's going on. Can you help me with any of that? - I think there's two fold to that. Like one, I don't think the traditional community is saturated as far as like being over commercialized and all of these things like the compound community. This is not to disparage a compound community, but they are businesses, they're corporations. And while some of these, there's people here that have really great, successful bow businesses. But even those guys are like pre-genuine to talk to and everything else. Like in self-bulliers, like I can call, I'll call up Corey Hawke, that poor guy. He's the one that I sat through a seminar with him and that's what kicked me off. Like I still talked probably on that poor guy on like every other week. Hey man, like this is sticky point for me. Can you hear me? Cubby Hoover, Whelan Olive with the swift foot bows. I'll miss Tim on like Facebook or Instagram. I'm like, dude, like I'm really stuck on this thing. Can you help me out? There's not a single minute of hesitation for help. - No, not at all. - And I don't, I can't qualify or quantify it. What it is, it's different. But people are generally just like there, I want to do this. - And I want to see each other succeeding. Bow hunting in itself is a subset within hunting. - Yes. - And then you throw traditional in front of that word and it breaks it down even more. - It weren't even smaller subset. And while we're sitting here at ETAAR. And for those of you who listen that it's Eastern traditional art year on debut. - And you and I are used to it. - Yeah, it actually made out. - Oh, so many people might not be in. We've got, we're surrounded by 8,000 other people in what's a small city at this point. It's a drop in the bucket of archers and bowl hunters. - Yeah. - So you would like, as this community, the artisans in the community, like for life or better work or our makers, the lawyers, if we don't pass on our knowledge, it will die. - It will die. - If you think about it. - That's why I was so concerned like that. I didn't want to see great northern gold. - And it's an endangered species, like when you think about it. And I can't remember who I was talking to within the last couple of months. And I was like, I feel like sometimes being an artist, actually it was a young man who's out of the Czech Republic right now. We're on, we just talked to each other on social media. He's a young bow year. And he's like, oh, I'd love to come on the podcast. Yeah, yeah. And he was like, do communism and things of that nature, right? Like people are pigeonholed into their crafts. - Yeah. - So even though we're not a communist or is it country anymore, there's this old culture. And if you're not told to do this path, you don't do a new path. - Right. - Whether it's being a carpenter, a plumber, a bow maker, a bow year, right? Or a basket weaver or whatever. He was like, so it's hard to find mentors and then from a cultural standpoint. But I do feel like here, like we, like there are, we have big gyms. We've got bear and we've got a black widow and we've got the goliath. So they're here, but they don't look at everybody else's. Oh, they're like the little guys and their competition. I think everybody genuinely wants to see everybody succeed. - It's funny. - Rising tides raise all ships, right? - Exactly. This morning before, just after, or when everything was open enough, it was born in the vendor tent. Charlie before eight or red round there anyway. Toby was down on my booth. Toby, as a black widow. And we had some stuff to talk about, about Kalamazoo Expo. But he's looking at my new three piece takedown and the first prototype that I made. - You don't have that down there? - Yeah, it's down there. - Oh man, I didn't even look at that. - And that's cocobolo through the center with a wavy flare with Osage on the inside and outside of it. And I did green white accents, stripes between layers. - I know what you're talking about now. - Yeah, and Toby's like, man, Sage and cocobolo was green and white. I never thought that would have worked, but man, that's beautiful. - That's sexy. - And honestly, that's high praise to me. - Now that longbow you had down there that was green and white with Osage and cocobolo. That was, you have a single piece down there, right? - So there's one piece that's actually Bobinga and Osage. - Oh, it's Bobinga. - And it's green, white and red. - Okay. - So it's an Italian flagbow. - Hey, look, my wife's like third generation Italian. So she appreciates it. - There you go. - So that was the bow. I really had my eyes on her. - Yeah. - Okay. - So that's, and that's only got the half a wavy flare. I just like, I had one piece. I was like, ah, that's that. I think this will look nice. - It looks great. - That's like my favorite longbow in the binder. - And I think that's got, I'm pretty sure it's got the Frog Skin Marine Core Raider camel on the back. - It does on the back. - Yeah. - Okay, back to the three piece. Sorry. - No, no, but yeah. No, getting that kind of praise, I feel like my, like that when you get that kind of praise from like the Goliath's that they're not, they're not trying to put me out of business and at the same time, Toby's like, man, that's it. I like the way that looks. You might see that in a black widow and then down the road tarte on that. No one, if it happens, imitation is the best form of flattery. But there are no enemies here. Like I, I want to see everybody succeed. - There's nothing that's adversarial walking around here at all. - Of course you have differences of opinion or personality conflicts. We are going to get that regardless. There's no stalking with Andy Cole offer from Cellway. Last night and he was talking to a customer about a quiver and he said, I think that your better bet is to go down and talk to Great Northern. Great Northern Quivers. - One would think that they're competing. - Sure. - But they bounce ideas off each other all the time. It's awesome. You've got two completely different quiver types being like a solid piece strap on only versus the, but so wait, is it, but- - What is good for the good? - Just not necessarily good for the gander. Everybody has a thing, right? Like I, one, pitched for the Cellway guys 'cause they're like really genuine human beings. Like one of my buddies is like, when he transitioned to the traditional stuff a few years ago, he was like, man, like if it was a protruding team of Cellway, like I would have just been so overwhelmed and lost. But two is just saying that, oh, hey, for your both set up and what you're trying to accomplish, you should go talk to these guys. - Yeah. - That's, like, even Cellposts in the ground, I'm not a competition for anybody. But like, somebody was like, oh, I really love your doing. You gotta, I really like the smooth finish. And I was like, look, man, there's three guys out there that are like the finishing champs. Like they, as far as that smooth aesthetic high gloss, like whatever, I was like, I will call them right away. And they're all good men. They're like good humans. Like, 'cause that's not me. That's not my niche. That's not the thing that I like to do. Like, if I've got to put tin coats of teak oil and sand it down and spend four additional hours of sanding everything and you want that, that's not me, man. And I'm okay with that because this is what it is. But you've got folks like Corey Hock and Weyland Olive and they're like the finished Kings, right? As in, you will never see a tool mark on their bows. - Right. - And they use unique backings. I love that, like, this community fosters like growth for everyone. It's universal and it's not meant to go to each other. Like, I've had a ball like we were talking before we started recording like that. - It's like a super lucrative event. - Yeah, I've sold 10 t-shirts. - I got four of them. - I haven't taken an order. I haven't made a sale this weekend. And it went over to us talking to him 'cause Greg Coffey was packing up and he's gonna take off first thing in the morning from his Airbnb. And I was like, do you have a good weekend? I was like, no, man, I haven't done anything. He's like, dude, I'm so sorry. And he's like, I want you to, he wants me to succeed. Dean Vanderhorse and Johnny Karch over three of his archery, they want me to succeed. There isn't a guy out there that doesn't want to see. - Everybody's a good cheerleader, right? - Exactly. - Everybody's running for everybody. - And we're talking about the, if you have a question to call, when I was working on this new three piece take down the heritage take down, I needed to learn how to make wedges for limb wedges because you're not just doing a fade hour in a riser, right? That's easy. - I just go over my edge sander and I throw the table on it and I just smooth it out until I get the thickness that I want on my tapers on my fade outs. Now we're going to make a wedge. How the hell do I do that? And so I went and asked Mike Roberts for a sock trail. Dude, can you explain to me how to make wedges? And he like drew out a picture and tried to explain it. And he's like, if you need help, call me. I'll come up to your shop Sunday with you. - Oh man. - And that's exactly what it did. He drove up from Illinois, four and a half hours, came up to my shop, taught me how to do it, built the first taper sled more. Do you have to build a kind of a platform? He like perfected this first one for me on this how we do it. And name another industry. - I have this, before he said to me, I was thinking like, what other place will people do that? - Yeah. - I can't name one. I have no idea. - So that was for the 58 inch limb for the short limb. And so I needed to make another one for the medium and the long limb. And so I called and I was like, "Hey, I'm getting ready to do this for the medium and long limb. "I just want to verify that we're doing this, right?" 'Cause I'm doing the same thing. And I'm trying to make kids don't skimp on your math. Okay, do you want to be a boy or like, at least laminate a boy or like math is important, trigonometry and everything else? Like I'm dealing with thousands of an inch. You need to know how to add. - Yeah, pretty much that happens at a time. So I'm good. (laughing) - Sometimes that might be a finger wet. - Right. So you're dealing with the trigonometry on this whole thing to make sure that that taper is just right so you get that taper and then you've got the flats and everything else. And I was like, "I just want to verify "that everything's going in. "We freaking FaceTime from my shop." I'm like, "Is this what I got going on?" 'Cause yeah, you're doing everything great. So it's stuff like it makes this community. Like I don't know of another community in the, I always say we're one of a kind community. This is my only hobby. I shouldn't say my only hobby. I used to ice fish from now that I've met. - I'm slow. I'm a boy right now. - And I'm slowly letting other hobbies and even things that were really important. I love fishing, but I find myself being way more hunting than fishing. And I think my younger me and I'm like, "What are you doing, man?" But then again, like I'm also making and it brings me great joy. - Absolutely. The thing that brings me the most joy, like I'm doing it wrong, I love finished product and man, that's a, you look at it (indistinct) and I get those texts and emails and messages from (indistinct) or the text that says, "Man, I got my boy on the mail today." And I just put the first person out of my hand. - I love that man. I did the thing like this last year. A lady, she's probably my mom's age, but she bought her husband a Christmas gift to a long, a hickory long boat I made. And I mean, I never say you wanted to like it. And she just, I want to buy that food. And I was like, "No, no, no, like I'm better than you." And said she wanted to pay (indistinct) a couple of folks to church or whatever else. I've given their kids, made some boats for their kids. The guy recently just like, I would work in the aerospace industry and the guy's like a, he owns a company. He was like, "I've got an awesome employee. "I won't give her this, then I'll watch or I can." But that's way more rewarding and heartfelt. And it's the emotional. It is in this type of feedback. - Yeah, it is, and it's... If you're one of my customers and you listen to this and it seems awkward when I respond, it's because I feel really awkward. I'm not supposed to feel it in this or how it relates. I can get the furthest it is. And the guy's come to me asking for advice. And I didn't put the long story short, 'cause they're asking me 'cause they were back to me. - And you're comfortable, yeah. - And the whole genuine thing. Before we go on, anybody talk about it, I think that there's a facade on everything. - There is, everybody wears a mask. And being able to just pull that mask off and just be your genuine self is difficult for a lot of people. You can be whoever you want to be behind the keyboard, whether it's in front of your laptop or your iPad or your iPhone. - I'm sure for some people it's liberating, but for society, I've got the saying, it's a society, but this community is greater than society, 'cause I think society sucks community. It's like what should be maintained. But when you're in a community from the family and just beyond that level, there's no room for a facade. And the crazy thing, and when you start to think about it, everybody sees a different version of it. You're never the same person to everybody. - Look, we were talking about it before the podcast. I was like, look, I don't say the F word on social media or podcasts, but after a couple of beverages, the Marine Corps vocabulary comes out sometimes, right? It's being transparent, like, guys, I really try not to ever swear on this stuff, but sometimes behind, when we're away from the ladies, it happens. So yeah, we all have different, some different things, but we still try to maintain our transparency. - Yeah, I read this book, I don't know, 15 years ago now. Actually, I can't remember the name of the book, but it was a real thin book, it was from the '70s by some psychologist or something like that. And I talked about like the masks people wear, and it really resonated with me. So I try to be as transparent as possible again, and just to be that genuine person, and try to be approachable. I asked when my buddies, he came in at the booth earlier today, he was like, having a good show, and I'm like, man, I still haven't sold anything. He's like, damn, I was like, do I look? Do I look unapproachable? Do I look like I'm being a dick? Or am I mad or something? And no, you look great. I don't know as far as all that goes. I feel like I'm an approachable dude. And look, man, I've got tens of followers. We're going to sell so many boas. - Sweet. - Tens of followers. - Tens of followers. - No, I think people want to hear a story. I think it was, I read an article through, especially, it honed in on, it's an e-commerce site called Huckberry. - Yeah. - And they've got great men's stuff, but what they do that is different is they tell a story with anything they sell. - Okay. - And I think that's important to me. Like I, for one, like I was talking to somebody down the winter today. And, great guy. I think there's a great camo pattern out there. A lot of negative space that I like. But everything's that made in China. I'm like, let's not get stories. I resonate to stories. And I, being a veteran, like I really like a veteran-owned company, right? Like organizations give veteran discounts. Call me a tight ass, but like, I, or feel, maybe I feel entitled, but whatever it is, is they will have my business for a long time. - And I don't feel entitled about the veteran discount. - Sure. Take advantage of it. - If I have it, yeah. - You know, the worst thing to do the thing of it is, like, I'm not gonna ask you if you have one, but if you say you've got it, sure. - Yeah, absolutely. I'll take it myself. - And so like, people love a story. And I think that resonates. And that breaks the mold of the Amazon.com. Like you, there's a faceless product. And like here, in this kind of what we're gonna do, right? There's a reason why it's called the Bow Your Podcast, but it's not just Bow Yours, but it's makers of sorts or masters of their craft and something. And there's a, you don't wake up and find yourself there. There's a story to it, which is, we joke, 'cause like, what's the origin story? Which, whatever, it sounds very marvel, but I wanna hear it. Maybe I'm the, maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I'm the only one to hear it, but that's special, right? - The crazy thing is like, you can ask somebody the origin story and so often we're an origin story. Where most people are gonna start your origin story is far from the actual origin, which I don't know, I guess that's the first time I've ever given my origin story in a way - It's self-awareness though, right? Like you started a decade before your origin story or more, but before Kalamazoo, rather. - But you were raised, you had such a blessing of having these really amazing, like plank holders in your life. - If it wasn't for my father, I don't know that I'd be where I'm at today. - That's awesome. - And I gotta give as far as my mother as well. And I aren't on good terms and I haven't talked to her in years, but while my mother and father were together until my 20s, she was very involved in a lot of that stuff too. Like she allowed my dad to be as involved as she was. - And then obviously now like your bride is super supportive of these ventures. - 100%. - Hey guys, here's a true campfire interruption. Our kids were running around and somebody needed us. So we had to take a break for about 10 minutes here. So apologize for the not so seamless transition, but let's get back to the conversation. - And true campfire recording fashion, we were in the middle of a story and internet died. We're talking about the different models. You're talking about the main two is your pet project. - That was my, that was my personal project. - Yeah, the three piece take down, which you released in what month this year. - The first stock one was actually available here. - Yeah. - It's production ready. I'm still working on getting data points as far as a study for different weights and the different lengths. - Mm-hmm. - You're gonna be in tomorrow, right? - Yeah, I'm gonna take it out and shoot it tomorrow. - We're gonna shoot it in the practice range. So I can claim I was one of the first people to go shoot the R&D model. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's awesome. - Look forward to that. So the first production model that's here for sale today or this weekend is, it's actually 62 inch, 52 pounder. I've been like, I've been asking everybody, like, go shoot this, I just want feedback, positive, negative. Like, I'm like, I learned or don't, like, I need, I cannot grow if you're not honest with me. - No, you have to collect data, right? - Right. - And what feels really good to you as the maker might not feel really good as recipients, right? - 100% - As the end users. - And the big thing for me right now is trying to find that happy medium for a stock bow model grip. Where, you know, like, I want every grip to feel like this. So if, I wanna know, that's the big one for me, like that medium, like, some guys say it's a little low, some guys say it's a little high, whatever it may be. Sure. I've had a couple of guys that are like, and I can't get a good repeatable location on it. And I've had other guys make this thing just, it sits right where it shouldn't be one or one guy or something. - And I think it's different for those guys that build thousands of bows a year because they can come out with four different handle riser types. And it's gonna be, it's not going to be cost prohibitive. - And the big thing is, there's some of the other boys they're doing a lot of that on CNC. Especially with the VP stake downs. And you just throw a chunk of wood in there and CNC carves it out. You get the exact repeatable grip every time. I'm not knocking that by any means, but I do everything by hand. I use power tools, don't get me wrong, but I do everything by hand. So I've gotta find that, like, where do I need to be? Because I can't just punch it into a program and let it do it. - Right. - And those lines, there's differences between the big boys and some of those smaller guys. - Mm-hmm. - They're some of the smaller guys that are running the CNC too. Maybe one day I'll throw my-- - Right, just into a CNC, who knows? It's cheap labor. - Yeah, it's the upfront cost, right? - Yeah, that's really neat, man. Yeah, I think you've got a great selection. I've been doing this, what, six, would you say six years? - Yeah, just under, and you've got six models, five models, five models, five models. - Yeah. - Which, you know, and honestly, I'm done with this one. I'm probably starting with something new in the next. - My next big thing right now, the current tape with the heritage tape down has a 15-inch riser. I wanna make a 17-inch riser, so I can bump those off the short, medium and long limbs to 60, 60 to 160-inch, I've got demand for 64-inch, for 64-inch, recurve. And for the taller, longer draw guys, I could see it. Like for me, I've never, I got like a 27, 27 and a half inch draw. 58 to 60 is perfect for me, you know? - But there is a time and a place for 60 to 160-inch, 64-inch. - And recurve, so. - Yeah, especially the more wide open space. Like I hunt really thick, brushy stuff in East North Carolina. - Yep. - Not about a bow last year from Ryan Sullivan. - Okay. - And it's like a little 52 or 54-inch reaker. It's very compact, and it's only 44 pounds or something like that. But when I'm in the thick briars and stuff, it's actually really handy. But for the most part, like having something that's, that 60 plus is, is really nice. - Yeah. - And I'm always-- - And my 28, 28 and a half inch draw guy. - And I'm a firm believer that I want you to go into the shortest boat, not shortest boat possible, like 52-inch, but like short. We're getting the most out of the land. When I see guys with a 26-inch, 26 to 27-inch draw, shooting a 66 to 68-inch long bow, I'm like, why are you doing that? - There's positives to negatives to it, but if you're from a performance aspect, you're getting the least work out of those limbs. But if you short draw a quarter-inch, you're not as affected by a second effect, you're tuning as much. Since I started shooting a clicker six years ago, six plus years ago now, my draw link's consistent, so I never have to worry about that. But that was one thing, long conversation with Steve Trere from Northern Mist about that. He's big into the hillside of Bowes, and he likes that long bow, because if you, like I said, a few short draw, a little bit, or you hold a little bit. - You're still getting plenty of power out of it. - You're getting energy transfer. - But Steve's got like a 29-inch draw. So he gets plenty of power out of that. But for me, if I got a 60-inch, I can't shoot a 66-inch long bow. I can shoot one, but they're dogs for me, because I just don't get into the power of the limb. You're not bending into that. So for me, that sweet spot is that 62-inch, like 64 I shot for years and years, and I'm very happy with it when I was very happy with it. But I've gone now tomorrow, I shoot 62-inch, because I just get a little bit more performance, and 10 feet per second, but yeah, I don't know, I'd say. - I see ya. - Okay, and here's the next interruption. Basically, all the kids came back to the campfire, and what I didn't know is that my eldest son, and all of the darling kiddos, had somehow found my wife, and my youngest kiddo, in the middle of the dark, and I don't really know what the story is behind it, but they came and found us because we were hidden, I think. And then we have a whole full-blown conversation with the kids, and the wives, and everything else. And I honestly thought about deleting it, and editing it out because it's not very professional. But honestly, it's just funny every time I listen to it, and maybe you guys would get a kick out of it, maybe you'll think it's dumb. That's okay, too. But in true nature, this is part of the okay, it's podcast network after all. So we don't have to be perfect. We just have to be okay, and hopefully provide some entertainment along the way. Now back to the show. - Oh, I think our offspring are coming. - Hey, look at that, I think they got the text. - Hey, guy, you doing okay? - Yeah. - Is that your phone, or somebody else's? - Moms. - Oh, it's mom's phone? - Yeah. - Wait, you came here with mom's phone? - Mom's right here. - Oh, wow, okay, did you go to camp? - No. - How'd you find mommy and Finley? - They're just here, they just walked through us. - Okay. - Found us. - Okay. All right, we'll catch up with you in just a second, okay? You guys can sit in the cooler and a chair, or the chairs around, we'll get it. - I'm gonna put your phone here. - Are you sure? - I hear that. - I'm gonna put your phone here. - Okay. - We're still recording, but I thought this was all, the kids coming up, but not you guys. - You know, it's fine, I just was gonna, I told Waylon, he said he should tell you before he just comes back to the tent and leaves, 'cause I didn't want you to think he was just gone. - He didn't come to the tent, though, really? - No, but I was like, we can head back to the tent. - Okay. - And then I was like, do you think you should tell that? - Oh, yes, because he was with all the other kids, right? - Yes. - Yeah. - I drew you to your right, didn't I? - Yeah. - Okay, I don't have to beat anybody. You had fun, you sure? - Yeah. - Okay. - They were playing like tag and this game, when someone's a frog and they stick their tongue out and then put them from the house to lay down to pretend they're dead and they put their teeth into it. - That's awesome. - Figure out who's the frog person. - Sorry. - This is David. - I'm not gonna go right now. - Yeah, I know you're right, I like it. - Steve Darling. - Steve Darling. - Come on, you're about to just go back back. - This is how we do podcast, David. We're just, it's always random. - Are you Waylon? - I love that, Beth. - Love you guys. - Love you too. - Hey, Waylon, come over here and sit down next to the fire on there. - Okay. - Hey. - Hey. - Steve and I, I'll be done just 10 minutes. - 10 minutes. - 10 minutes. - Hey guys, two, seven, 15. - We can go as long as you want. - Yeah. - Keep myself out of the doghouse. - Yeah. - I just gotta take it up. - Hey guys, you guys want to join in on the podcast? - Okay. - Okay, so we're talking about the bow models. (laughing) All the offspring showed up and, or is those sitting around the campfire? And so what's next? What is next for Kalamazoo Bow works? - Oh, tell me about the Expo. - Okay. So a couple of years ago, it should have been, I guess, three years ago now. - The Expo. - Expo, was it, I guess it was the fall of '21 Bob Brum, Jerry Brum's son who had actually bought great Northern Bowes and Quivers. Had taken over the Expo, probably 10 years before. Jerry Brum was the founder of the Expo. - And we say the Expo we're talking about, the traditional bow on our Expo, which is in Kalamazoo. So it's affectionately known as KZU to most people, or KZU Expo. - That's very boy band soundish. - It is, hey, we're gonna, you guys listening to the KZU tonight? - Yeah, it's almost in sync-ish, but we're gonna stay with frosted tips and the focus on that process. Anyway, Bob was trying to, he just kind of had enough. And he was divesting himself with everything. He sold great Northern Bowes to Eric Great's month, sold the Quiver business to Eric McKee. And he was looking to get rid of the Expo as well. 'Cause it's a lot of work. There's a lot of headache there. It's not bad, but it's more work than, I think Bob undersold the work part of it to me. Anyway, just looking for somebody to take that over and he'd reached out to McKee and Eric's book where he reached out to me and neither one of them were really interested in taking that over. And he's, I think Dave would be a good fit for it. And Bob had become one of those confidants to me or confidants, not confidant, mentor type guys that if I had questions, I could always call Bob and he would happen. And so I was his logical next call and talked it over the wife and I said, "Yeah, let's do it." We took over the Expo, our first year running it was 2023. And so we've done two years now, we're working on the third. It's a few hiccups along the way from when I took it over from Bob and having a catastrophic hard drive failure and losing the ultimate contact and fender layouts and to just learning or growing pains. So many people that went this year, so I didn't get to go this year, but like so many people that went this year had such great things to say about it. So obviously all the hiccups are behind the curtain. Yes, it's those hidden hiccups that, I think any production goes through. If I start up, when your prototype in a model, how many bows get seven and a half and thrown in the trash heap or the fire bin before you get that public seat? I call that with the MVP, the minimal viable product right there. Yeah, standing by real quick. Yep, standing by. Commercial break. Commercial break. Whaling, you're filling in for David right now. Yeah. How was your first ETAR? Second ETAR. Yeah, second. How was our second ETAR? So far, it's amazing. Super fun. What's your favorite thing about ETAR? Practicing shooting bows and arrows every day. There's a hundred different 3D targets to shoot at, right? Yeah. And we are gonna stay till tomorrow where they're gonna have an auction of the used 3D targets so we can get some more targets because the hurricane last fall washed away our targets, didn't they? Oh yeah. Yeah, so we need to get some used targets. We'll do that tomorrow. Yes, honey. But you're meeting new friends, right? There's a hundred kids here. They're also shooting trad bows. And you did the competition today too, right? Yeah. Which is pretty neat, right? We were shooting, look, meet you and two other grownups for shooting at the floating ping pong ball today, right? And who's the only one that hit it? Me. Yep, you? I'm 10 and a half year old. With your bow? What kind of bow do you got? A self bow? Self bow, right? Self bow. Do you remember what kind of wood it's made out of? Ash. Ash. And what's the back of it look like? Snake skin. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's back to the expo. Sorry about that. I'm guessing most of your listeners have heard of like shot show or the ATA. Yeah. And this is the traditional only version of shot show and ATA. Only we're not just open to industry experts. And we're open to the public. So there's vendors. There you are. There's there. A lot of vendors will unveil new models. Is that all bow years? Or are there other makers? No, we've got other makers like expo. I think we're going on the 20th or 29th year now. That's where I met Dick Robertson. That's where I met Bob Burton from Whisper in Wind Arrows. Bob is in his 80s now. He's not making arrows anymore. But we've got Aerosmiths. We've got Boyers. We've got Azbelle Wool is there. I love him. Look, Azbelle Wool, I don't want to cool you or a Sitka or whatever sponsorship in the future, right? But for my dozens of listeners, I somehow want to build a case that Azbelle Wool would be a sponsor for this podcast. Because that's what I want. That's what I love. And Tress is a great gal. Yeah, this is such good service. And in fact, I think when I got my bear last year, I was wearing like an Azbelle Wool top. And then last night, because it was really cold here last night, like this morning, the first thing I did was go to the vendor tent and get an Azbelle top. Because their stuff is so amazing. If it doesn't say traditional, I don't know what does. All right, Teresa, we're going to have a call. So when you want me to send you tens of listeners to Azbelle Wool, realize that it's worth your while. We'll talk about his sponsorship. So he waits back to the expo. We got nice broad heads, aboyer-- He's awesome, by the way. I just bought a set of three broad heads you're going to attend from Aboyer. And they just took that over. It's funny because my dad actually used to sell tooling to the original owner of it. Oh, wow. And these two guys that took over Aboyer-- It's very Ashby, right? Yes. So I was home today and was like, yeah. So I just bought, like I said, three of the 200s, a screw ends, because I'm shooting carbons right now. I know, like shooting carbons. I know. It splats me. Shooting carbons through. Look, Foster Kane, if you start getting off your rear end, I know you just moved from Georgia to Oregon. But if you could please hurry up and get your shot back in order and make me some more woods, I'd be more inclined to be shooting wood arrows right now. But Gary Hall is making me some awesome carbons right now on aluminums, although he doesn't make plenty of woods. But Gary has been making me some really beautiful arrows. And I just don't break so easily, right? I break plenty of wood arrows. So I'm heading to Manitoba next month. And I'll be running the Aboyer Broadheads. And I'll be running a carbon arrow. And here we go. We had another internet interruption. And it was probably a good timing anyways, because Dave Darling and I were going on quite the tangent. So we decided to get back to talking about the Kalamazoo Expo. But so this year coming up, big change, as last year we did the traditional classic Archer trade show, which is trading blankets of sorts. Is that up in Kalamazoo as well, or is that-- Yeah, so we did that for Friday morning before we actually opened the Expo. And it had great reception. We had just shy of 300 people showed up for it as attendees. And I think Kevin Bishop is actually the one that runs the T-Cats version. I think he had 40 or 50 guys with the bar tables. And it's such a great reception. And the only negative that I heard from anybody this last year was I just wish the T-Cats could have gone later, it could have been on Saturday or whatever. And my biggest concern has always been for the vendors, as the owner of the Expo. And I want to make sure that my vendors are taken care of and that their sales are going to be good. Because if I don't have vendors, I don't have attendees. And if I don't have attendees, I don't have vendors. There's a balance. And I don't want to feel like my vendors are being undercut. But the more I thought about it and the more people I talk to, the collector community, which is a lot of what the T-Cats show is. It's classic bows, be it bare stake roots, wings, classic Damon Howitz, piercings. I'm sure I'm forgetting to hear her. Most of them, now they've graduated into wall hangers. These guys have amassed these collections of bows over years. They're looking to move them. A lot of the guys who are looking to buy that stuff aren't there in my expo to buy a new bow from somebody. But if they pick up a wing presentation or a bare super Kodiak and they want to hunt with it that year, there's a very good chance they're going to walk over to Great Northern or they're going to go to sell way and they're going to buy a quiver to go on. And then, hey, I got into this new bow with its 45 pounds. And I need a new dozen arrows. They're going to go talk to Chopper Chad or Wood Arrows or they're going to go talk to Joe Callahan from True North or Gary Hall from D&M and say, hey, man, I need a dozen arrows. And they're going to buy a dozen arrows from them. And the string looks a little worn, so they're going to go over to JP Enterprises or Emerald Arch whoever and buy a new string. And it benefits everybody. Yeah, there's definitely a domino effect there, right? We've decided that we're going to go ahead and T-Cats is going to run in conjunction for the entire weekend with us. Oh, wow. I think that's a great idea. Yeah, that's really good. And I think there's just like a domino effect of each one of those decisions they make for whether they're getting a collector bow or a new bow, but they're going to add the appropriate accessory to you that whether it's a quiver or a new string or a set of arrows or broad heads or a tab or a glove. Exactly, and the other benefit is like a guy that bought a table at T-Cats for, I don't know, we haven't, Kevin hasn't decided on the table price yet as far as I know, let's say they buy a table and they sell two or three bows. Now they get thousand bucks in their pocket, depending on the bows. Perhaps the greater currency is not just the bows that they sell, it's the ripple effect of that. Like three, say three or four guys were gals about buy bows and they tell all their friends they bought this great bow. Like I think there's a value in that where if you believe in your product or your service, if you get one or two out of the door, the ripple effect of that end user, the currency that end user has is they're going to tell everybody how much they loved it. Right. Or how, it's not just the product, it's the customer experience where, I think it mentions the very beginning of this little recording is that we, man, I'm that you were the first people to talk to when I came to Utah last year. And we spent 30 minutes talking. And that's why we're here today, because like I had a genuine conversation and I did not, like full of sugar, I did not walk away buying a bow. And it's not because I didn't want a bow, it's just the nature of it. And it, but it ended up being like really special, which is why we, what I want to talk to again today and this week and why our kids are playing together because there's a product and service and there's like also knowing that there's a belief in whatever movement or delivery this is, right? Like we're delivering exceptional, traditional bows from good humans. The good humans are going to be here for years and years. You should walk away from there with like what you need, whether it's qualitative or quantitative, like whether it's a bow or a tab or a string or information and fellowship. And that's one of the big things that we haven't even touched on is like the seminars. Saturday, we do three, typically we do three seminars on Saturday. I've started adding the seminar on Friday afternoon. Like this year, I currently, my speaker lineup is Barry Wancil, My Browning, Henry Bodnick and Jim Macau. - 24 of this year? - Yeah, no, that's for this coming year. - Oh man, that's so cool. So I, and here's the thing. - I lived in Europe for eight years. So Bodnick is actually not as well known in the stage, but he's got really exceptional bows. - They're really great bows. - And he's Europe's version of Fred, Barry. - I agree. So I said that today, somebody else, a young lady was out here and she was held, my first to bow was a Bodnick bow. And I said, living a year for so long like, Bodnick is like a Fred, Barry of Europe. - He's a big, he's a salesman. - He's a larger than life personality, but he's not a boyer, but he knows how to, he shoots well and he can, he puts a bows in a lot of hands of people. - He does, and like I said, it's, and it's not a knock on Fred. It's not a knock on Henry, but he's got his niche and he's serving it very well. - So he's gonna do a talk on, - And what month is that gonna be next year, January 2025? - Yep, January 2025, it'll be the 24th, 25th and 26th this year, which will fall on my wife's and my 23rd of being together anniversary. We actually, we became official while I was at Expo. I'm my senior here at high school. - So you're gonna celebrate the anniversary of the weekend prior or something, right? - We'll do something. - Better, I said it on the worldwide web. - Yeah, you should have, it's gonna be there, yeah. - So I believe that you like, I know the hell or am I not? - Yeah, she's, we were supposed to be in a hotel by two hours ago. - So where can people find you? - I'll put it in the show notes, but we'll. - KZuboWorks.com, Kalamazoo BoWorks on Facebook and KZuboWorks on Instagram, on the old Instagrams, right? And the next Expo is in what, January of 2025, right? - January of 2025, like I said, 24, 25, 26, January 2025. - We've got a tremendous lineup of vendors, of speakers. - Yep. - Storytellers looking to be an absolute baller of the show. - If you're an 80s kid, we would say be there, be square. - Yeah, it's gonna be rad. - It's gonna be rad. - Yes. - I don't know what the kids say nowadays. It's probably an abbreviated version of rad. But no, it's, and honestly, with Barry, I've got to call Gene, but I want to get Gene there too. I'd love to have them do a Ramblin' Redneck's thing. Monty Browning, we don't know how long these guys are gonna be around anymore. - Monty's gonna live to be 145, probably. - The guy is still cutting 30-foot tops out of trees at whatever old Monty is, right? - The man's amazing. He spent his youth hunting dinosaurs. - Yeah, yeah. - The man's amazing from the job that I went in, happens today. - Uh-huh. - And that gal is gonna be there speaking too, right? - Jim's gonna be Jim's a great storyteller. - You get, well, and Jim's gonna be talking about his Utah Lion Hunt, which was awesome. - Yeah. - That story, if you haven't heard it, is freaking amazing. It's, yeah, no. And, yeah, I've got Jim lined up to try to talk about some of the law-spoke campaign stuff. - Actually, yeah. - I'm working on getting a couple of speakers as well, so we should have one heck of a speaker line up. - My wife's sitting here around the campfire, but January is far enough away. I might be able to get a kitchen pass to break away. - Yeah, there you go. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
Better late than never! Dave Darling and I sit around the campfire at the Eastern Traditional Archery Rendezvous (ETAR) and generally BS for a while. Our discussion is very organic, with a few interruptions from our feral kiddos. We discuss Dave’s origin story, Kalamazoo Bow Works, and the upcoming Kalamazoo Traditional Bowhunters Expo. Dave Darling is a husband and father of 6. He served 12 years in the MI Air National Guard, spent another 10 years as a first responder. Dave received his first longbow at age 3, and grew up among legends in the traditional archery domain, to include his father Greg Darling. David is the founder and owner of Kalamazoo Bow works, where he makes beautifully crafted and fast shooting longbows and recurves. Dave is also the owner of the Kalamazoo Traditional Bowhunters Expo, which hosts a variety of bowyers, traditional archers,makers and vendors each year in Kalamazoo Michigan.
Find Dave at:
Kalamazoo Bow Works: https://kzoobowworks.com/wp/
Kalamazoo Traditional Bowhunters Expo: https://kzoobowworks.com/wp/expo/
Instagram: @kalamazoobowworks
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