Henk du Plessis

By Rean Steenkamp

The name Henk du Plessis is synonymous with traditional archery in South Africa. Not only is Henk an excellent, if not the best longbow archer in the country, he also makes exceptionally fine and fast-shooting all-wooden bows. Henk is an excellent hunter and has hunted more than a hundred animals with longbows.

Henk’s interest in bows began in 1984 when a good friend gave him an article about a US bowhunter who had hunted Cape buffalo in Africa. Henk says the article certainly caught his attention. After having hunted extensively with a rifle, shotgun and handgun, he was looking for a new challenge and decided to try bowhunting.

He went to Jack’s Archery in Pretoria to buy himself a compound bow. At the shop well-known Oom Hennie asked him what poundage he required. Not knowing anything about archery, Henk looked a little puzzled at the question. Oom Hennie tried a different approach.

“What weight must the bow be?” Henk replied, “Well, just as long as it’s not too heavy to carry in the veldt.” After a little more explaining on the part of Oom Hennie, Henk said the bow had to be strong enough to kill a kudu. When Oom Hennie enquired about the draw length, Henk gave him another perplexed look.

By now Oom Hennie had realised that Henk knew very little about archery and offered him a book on the basics of the sport, advising him to first read it and then make a decision about a bow. He was trying to help Henk make the best decision, which is very commendable, and today Henk knows he should have followed the advice.

The problem was he misunderstood Oom Hennie’s intentions and believed he wasn’t eager to do proper business, so he decided to go to another shop.

He went to an archery shop in Gauteng and the retailer there had no problem making a quick bow sale to the rookie.

Henk left the shop with a bow, some arrows and a broad smile, not knowing that he would regret his impatience. The bow was a combination of a riser and another model’s limbs. He was also given a few fibreglass arrows that weren’t correctly spined for the bow.

Henk encountered many problems trying to tune the bow, but not being someone who gives up easily he fiddled around until he got the arrows flying as straight as they could. That same week, on the Friday, he hunted with the bow at his uncle’s farm on the banks of the Limpopo. He thought he was ready, his sights were tuned in and he had a broadhead screwed onto the arrows.

He hid in the bushes until a big impala ram appeared. He placed his pin on the kill zone and pulled the string back with his hand. The arrow charged down on the impala, which gave a jump and walked away. Although Henk could not see where the arrow had struck, he was sure he had bagged his first animal.

“Watch, he’s going to fall soon now,” he said to his friend, who was hiding next to him. Nothing happened. The impala did not fall. He walked farther and farther away until he was out of sight. When Henk checked carefully he noticed his arrow sticking in the mud. He had missed the impala completely. He was perplexed. A little later he took a shot at a vervet monkey. He took careful note of the arrow flight and identified his problem. The arrow flew very haphazardly and had little chance of hitting anything. Henk struggled with his bow for several months with little success, until he met Dave Beard who, while hunting on Henk’s farm, showed him how to tune his bow properly and which arrows to use.

With a bow that was correctly set up Henk had much more confidence and began hunting seriously. He stalked his prey, as he knew nothing about blinds and tree stands.

A warthog was the first to die from one of his arrows, while standing on its knees and foraging under a marula tree. Henk stalked until he was within range and had a broadside shot. Then he let the arrow loose. It was covered in blood when he found it. When the pig was found later he was amazed to see that the arrow had entered the animal just under the tail and exited at the belly. The warthog had jumped the string. He was lucky to get his animal.

Henk soon grew very efficient with his compound. He read in US magazines how to climb trees and wait for game. From then on it became easy and he bagged many animals. “Unfortunately, the fun stopped as well,” says Henk. “There wasn’t much to talk about after a kill, only how you shot it and where the arrow had hit.”

He also did exceptionally well in competitions, winning the SA indoor and field championships several times and the freestyle unlimited section in the B category at the world championships.

His wife, Gerda, also became very proficient with the compound and won the bowhunter limited at the SA championships. About four years after he took up the compound Henk met Derek Nourse at an archery competition held on Henk’s farm. After the competition a competency test was held and Derek and a few friends shot their longbows. Henk was fascinated. Although they did not shoot anywhere near as well with their longbows as the compound shooters, he liked the simplicity of the longbow and the style of shooting. It looked as if the longbow men were playing and having fun.

A few years later he ordered a longbow from Derek. Soon afterwards, however, he gut-shot a warthog on a stalk with his compound when the animal string-jumped. It took a long time to find it and he was pretty distraught about what happened. If an animal can string-jump a compound, he wondered, what would it do with a longbow that shoots much slower? He phoned Derek and cancelled his order.

Another couple of years passed before Henk decided to give the longbow another chance. He ordered another bow from Derek. He was getting tired of the compound. Just as with his rifle, it was becoming too easy to hunt with the compound.

Derek had a backlog of orders and it was a long while before he was able to finish Henk’s bow. While visiting a friend in Henk’s area, however, he lent Henk his own 80-pound bow.

Henk took to it like a duck to water and soon shot a warthog and a pheasant. Derek eventually finished a 47-pound bow and sent it off to Henk. Soon afterwards a cow on Henk’s farm was seriously injured. Henk decided to kill the animal with his longbow, but at the last minute decided instead to cull it with his compound as he did not have confidence in the longbow’s penetration power. He used an 80-pound Jennings Speedstar, AFC 2400 arrow, tipped with a 125-grain Thunderhead. Henk cannot remember the total weight of the arrow, but it probably weighed between 450 and 480 grains.

The arrow penetrated behind the scapula between two ribs and exited between two ribs on the other side without breaking the skin. He then took a shot with his 47-pound longbow, using a 680-grain wooden arrow tipped with a Zwickey two-blader. The arrow entered the animal through the thick shoulder muscles, split a rib in half and exited between two ribs on the other side, the broadhead and part of the shaft showing.

“When I saw this, I sold my compound,” Henk relates. “Since then I have been struggling with a longbow.” Henk has hosted eight traditional archery competitions since then (1996), and has won most of them. He has also won many other competitions and has hunted extensively and very successfully with the longbow, many of which he has made himself. I visited Henk a while ago. He was helping me build a bamboo- backed Osage orange bow. I asked what made him decide to become involved in building bows. He answered: “When I took up the longbow, one thing led to another. I read about Americans building bows and thought I should try my hand at it. Jaco Wessels and I started building bows together. The first successful bow I had a hand in building was a sinew-backed bow I helped Jaco sinew.

“Jaco finished the bow. It was ugly and slow, but Jaco soon hunted a blue wildebeest cow and a kudu cow with it. We were fired up. I then started building bows with more passion.” Henk then built his own sinew-backed bow. He still has it and proudly showed it to me. It isn’t nearly as beautiful as the bows he builds nowadays, but it still works and Henk still tries to bag one animal with it every year – in honour of the fine tradition this bow spearheaded.