Kobus at approximately 6 years old.

Jaco (above) at an ABO competition at Groenkloof and George (below) at the same ABO competition.

Kobus with Henk du Plessis and Johan van der Merwe.

The bows that Kobus now uses (left to right): Bateleur, Norseman and Scythian.

Over the last 13 years I have come to know quite a few traditional archers and have become friends with many of them, writes Rean Steenkamp. One of these fine fellows is Kobus Kleynhans.

Often, at archery competitions, I have heard people asking Kobus: “How long have you been shooting a bow and arrow?”, and his standard response is: “I have a photo of me shooting a bow at round about the age of eleven!”
However, when I decided to do a little research, I saw a photo of a little guy with no front teeth – and not living in the Western Cape. That made me realise that Kobus had already been shooting a bamboo flatbow – albeit with suction cups – at the tender age of round about six. So I decided to try and follow Kobus’s “archery career”. This is what he told me:
“I have owned bows for almost as long as I can remember. Some were quite good, and some less so, but all could shoot an arrow. A lot of them were in kit form, as was the one in the first photos. In those days it was a bamboo bow with suction cups on the arrow tips. The target was smooth, but the arrows never stuck to the target – though they stuck nicely to glass sliding doors!
“Some of the bows I had were made by my father, or me, from trees growing in our yard in Pretoria – privet, quince, hawthorn, white stinkwood – to name a few. I even accidentally shot my little sister “in the heart” with one of them – luckily about 20 pounds and with a blunt!
“Later on, as my allowance increased around the age of sixteen or so, I started on Fred Bear and Ben Pearson fibreglass kits. Some of the first ones were around 25 or 30 pounds and I still have two Ben Pearsons of 45 and 50 pounds. The others I gave away to friends and relatives over the years.
Over the years I have also introduced a lot of people to archery by teaching adventure sports at youth camps. One day, a few years ago – I think in 2000 – the Olifants River Club had a traditional shoot on my farm. Rean Steenkamp brought along a friend who didn’t have a bow at that time. I lent him one of my Ben Pearsons and a few arrows, and he didn’t lose one. Afterwards he was hooked – a lot of readers know him as Jan Wahl, who later became a South African SANIFAA longbow champion!
“I also started my three sons on archery at a very tender age. The eldest tragically passed away in 2002, but the other two still attend competitions with me from time to time.
“As you can see from the photos, I have always been a traditional guy. I had a little lapse from about 1991 to 1993 when I owned first a Hoyt and then a Jennings compound bow, but fortunately I was soon cured!
“During the early to middle 1990s I, a few friends and some family members, together with Christoph Grey, started the Olifantsrivier Boogskietklub, but eventually it became more and more a “compound” club and we couldn’t keep up with them with our traditional tackle.
“The bows I use now are a Wilderness Archery take-down recurve made by Cleve Cheney; a Norseman take-down reflex-deflex longbow – which no-one wants to believe is a longbow and shoots better than any recurve – made by Derek Nourse, and a Scythian bow by Johnny Snyman.
“I also have three Ragim take-down recurves that I use for adventure camps and I got my principal to buy eight light take-down recurves to introduce archery to the kids at our school.
“My one attempt at making a proper round English longbow didn’t come out too well. It is made from an ashwood gymnastics bridge that I have worked down to round about 40 pounds. It doesn’t shoot too badly up to 30 yards, but at longer distances its performance drops radically. It also started splitting along the back and after repairing it with Dacron, I now only use it occasionally for shooting at aerial targets.
“So, as you can see, archery is a passion of mine. I am one of the only two people that have missed only one of Henk du Plessis’s Sterk River shoots – the other is Derek Nourse! Only Henk himself has been there more often than the two of us!”
As Kobus only turns 54 this year I think and hope we will still see him for years to come on the traditional circuit. Whenever I think of traditional archery in South Africa, Kobus is one of the first people that come to mind.