By Rean Steenkamp

Few bowhunters are as dedicated and adept at longbow archery and hunting as Jaco Wessels, an icon in South African traditional archery.

Jaco was only 15 years old when he decided to start shooting the bow and arrow seriously. Since then he has become a well-known traditional archer and bowyer, and has won many archery competitions.

Jaco’s mother once told me that her son was a real little San Bushman as a small boy. He even ran around with a little San bushman bow and quiver, wearing a “stertriem” (G-string). He was always in the veldt, mock-hunting and shooting his bow, she says. Later his father gave him a fibreglass recurve, which he really enjoyed playing with. It was only after reading Howard Hill’s book “Hunting the hard way” that the bowhunting fire was kindled and he decided to take up traditional archery in earnest.

Jaco says that although he enjoyed shooting the light-pounded fibreglass recurve, it was really a longbow he longed for. Unfortunately, none of the archery shops he contacted at the time had longbows for sale. Not to be deterred, Jaco bought a compound bow in 1987, with which he practised hard and used to make his first bow kill. Although it wasn’t a longbow, it was at least a step in the right direction. Two years later, early in 1991, he went on a hunt in Zimbabwe. Included in the group was Derek Nourse, well-known bowyer from Amanzimtoti. Jaco immediately ordered a longbow from him.

He was thrilled when the bow arrived, but continued to hunt with the compound. Six months later he successfully bagged a warthog with his longbow. Jaco says the hunt gave him the confidence to continue hunting with his longbow and he never again touched a compound. Nowadays he often jokingly refers to traditional bowhunters taking up the compound as “turning to the Dark Side”.

Since taking up the longbow, Jaco has hunted many African game, including eland, kudu, blue wildebeest, zebra, impala, warthog, blesbok, springbok and baboon. He has also won many traditional, SANIFAA and broadhead competitions, mostly with all-wood bows he made himself.

Jaco started to build his own bows in 1998 with his good friend Henk du Plessis. Since then he has made more than 100 all-wood and fibreglass laminated bows. At first he only built all-wood bows, but decided to also try his hand at the fibreglass variety. Although he still prefers the all-wood bow, he wanted to draw more people to traditional archery by building affordable yet dependable laminated bows. All-wood bows are time-consuming to build and must be handled with care and shot only by the owner. Fibreglass bows last much longer, but are usually expensive. Jaco wants to make it possible for everyone to own one of his Timberpoint longbows.

For the last eight years he has also been involved in arranging traditional archery shoots and is currently host to two annual competitions held in De Wagendrift, near Pretoria.

Jaco is married to Rebecca, also an archery enthusiast. They met at the Great Lakes Longbow competition in the US where Jaco competed against no fewer than 500 longbow archers, ending second. The couple lives on a farm in the De Wagendrift area, where Jaco manufactures furniture and longbows.

Jaco is always ready to help archers and bowhunters interested in shooting the longbow and recurve and he, Derek Nourse and Henk du Plessis are probably the three archers who have done the most to develop traditional archery over the last ten years.