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Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Fred Bear

Gainesville, FL  --  During a blizzard on March 5th 1902, Fred Bear was born in a farmhouse in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania in the heart of the fertile Cumberland Valley. Now, a century later, on the 100th anniversary of Fred’s birth, The North American Archery Group, LLC will celebrate that quiet, but momentous event. Fred was not born an archery legend. He left home a few days after his 21st birthday and headed for Detroit where he found work as a patternmaker for the Packard Motor Car Company and attended night school at the Detroit Institute of Technology. Five years later, he saw Art Young’s film "Alaskan Adventures" and that outing changed his life … and ours.

In 1929, Fred went bowhunting for the first time, but like many of us even today, it took him six years to harvest his first deer by bow. Nevertheless, in 1933, he and a partner founded Bear Products Company to produce silk-screened advertising materials. "Off in a corner of the small building," Charles Kroll and Dick Lattimer wrote in Fred Bear: The Biography of an Outdoorsman, "Fred made archery equipment." That hobby soon became Fred’s full-time business.

Fred Bear was an energetic archery pioneer and inventor. This self-made man registered archery patents as early as 1937. He experimented with and found practical applications for materials like fiberglass and machined aluminum that have become the building blocks of modern archery.

With a deeply engaging personality, Fred promoted his business and the sport of archery around the world. Part of his success was due to his ability to surround himself with lifelong, supportive friends and bowhunters like Dick Mauch and Bob Munger.

A major part of Fred’s success however was entirely due to his own promotional genius. He produced the first of many archery and adventure films in 1942 and later published feature articles in major national magazines such as Life and True. He took his bows to state and national archery tournaments winning several. Fred taught himself to write and published a widely acclaimed book, Fred Bear’s Field Notes. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, he appeared frequently on television and became a widely sought-after speaker. National sports personalities such as Curt Gowdy sought out the Lincolnesque Pennsylvania farm boy to cut records and tapes. Fred and his company hosted international events and he led parties of intrepid bowhunters on one adventure after another around the world with equipment that he designed and built in his Michigan manufacturing facility: Africa, India, South America, British Columbia and Alaska. For a man of small beginnings, his list of accomplishments is nothing short of phenomenal.

Fred Bear positively influenced national conservation policy and the way we do business today by supporting and promoting the extension of the Federal Excise Tax to certain types of archery equipment. His efforts are a part of his broad conservation legacy and they will benefit many generations of hunters beyond our own.

In 1968, Fred sold his company, Bear Archery, to Victor Comptometer. The world had changed around the entrepreneur. Bigger was now better and deep pockets were required to fund research and development and archery sales on a worldwide basis. The sale gave Fred ten more years to serve as president. So, he founded the Fred Bear Sports Club and passionately promoted his company and all of archery. His philosophy was that if he could turn a dozen people on to archery, they may not all purchase Bear equipment, but he would get a share. It was that spirit, perhaps even more than his hunting exploits, his movies or his patents, that has made Fred an honored legend among outdoorsmen everywhere.

Fred Bear passed away in April 1988. Arlyne Rhode of The U.S. Archer Magazine imagined his life like the long flight of an arrow that had at last come to rest. The image is memorable and we believe that Fred would have liked it.