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.