To fully appreciate the art and ingenuity of Bob Lee Bows, you’ll need to go back, oh, about 70,000 years, to the Paleolithic era, when humans began using some form of the bow and arrow. Until the modern-day reliance on firearms, archery was one of the main methods of hunting—and warfare—for millennia. Not much changed in terms of design until the twentieth century. In 1963 a Texan named Bob Lee invented the first three-piece detachable-limb bow, a precursor to the modern takedown bow, which can be easily disassembled for transport. Bowhunting hasn’t been the same since.
When Lee created this landmark bow, known as the Presentation II, he owned a company called Wing Archery, in Jacksonville, a small town about thirty miles south of Tyler, in East Texas. He sold the business in 1968 and began working in other industries. He returned to his craft in 1989 and founded Bob Lee Archery (now Bob Lee Bows), which today turns out about three bows a week—a far cry from the more than three hundred bows a day Wing manufactured in its heyday.
In 1959 Lee helped lobby the state to designate October as anarchery-only hunting season, and he was later inducted into the National Bowhunters Hall of Fame and the Archery Hall of Fame. “He did a lot for the sport,” says his son, Rob Lee. Bob died in 2021 at age 92. Rob still operates Bob Lee Bows from a small workshop in Jacksonville. He learned the craft at his father’s side and continues that tradition with his stepson, J J Jackson.
Today Lee and Jackson make mostly stock bows—that is, you buy them as they are. But others are customized for length and materials. Handles are typically crafted from Micarta, a linen laminate. The limbs are made from carbon.
One thing the company doesn’t make: a compound bow, invented a few years after the Presentation II. Bob Lee never accepted the style, which employs cables and pulleys that make it far easier to shoot with accuracy and power. Rob believes such bows take some of the art out of the pursuit, but he says, “It brings a lot of people into the sport of archery that would never give it a chance.”
Customers might also be introduced to archery through the movie The Marvels or the Hawkeye miniseries, in which the Kate Bishop character played by Hailee Steinfeld uses a Bob Lee BlackHawk. The product placement happened after a Disney producer reached out. “That kind of swelled our chest,” Rob says. “For them to pick a small little company from Jacksonville, Texas—that didn’t hurt.”
Rob Lee with a bolt-up longbow in the Bob Lee Bows workshop, in Jacksonville, on September 30, 2024.
Photograph by Jeff Wilson
A close-up of a handle being carved in a CNC machine. Handles start here and then are finished and assembled by hand.
Photograph by Jeff Wilson
Rob Lee finishing sanding a handle.
Photograph by Jeff Wilson
The foyer/showroom of Bob Lee Bows.
Photograph by Jeff Wilson
J J firing his bow on the workshop range.
Photograph by Jeff Wilson
Inside the workshop.
Photograph by Jeff Wilson
Carbon fiber limbs ready for sanding.
Photograph by Jeff Wilson
J J testing the draw weight on a finished bow.
Photograph by Jeff Wilson
Follow Your ArrowThree popular Bob Lee bows.The Hardcore Diamondback Longbow
The longbow is the oldest, most traditional type of bow, but this one is updated with Bob Lee’s trademarked Stabi-Lock design, which allows the user to assemble the bow without tools, a nifty bit of craftsmanship that’s especially helpful if you’re flying or backpacking while hunting.The Hardcore series incorporates a bit of wood—in this case, laurel burl and walnut, though other bows use exotic woods such as bocote, bubinga, and shedua—into the Micarta handle for a more traditional look.
The Hardcore Cobra Recurve
At rest, the limbs on recurve bows bend away from the archer. That means they pack more power when they are strung. One trade-off: Recurves can be harder on the bow itself. This version and its eye-catching pattern alludes to its serpentine namesake.
The P3 Long Riser Recurve
This model nods to Bob Lee’s original Presentation II from 1963. It updates that three-piece design with more modern materials, including Micarta, for a bow that is tailored for competitive archers. Several members of the USA Archery team use Bob Lee bows.
This article originally appeared in the December 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the title “The Go-To Bows for Hunters, Archers—and Disney.” Subscribe today.
Read Next
