About The bowyer: Myron "TRENT" WENGERD
I was fascinated with archery ever since I was able to pull back the string on the small fiberglass bows my dad had bought for us kids to play with.
When I got a little older I started building my own bows out of the serviceberry bushes that were plentifull around our house in NW Montana. None of them would last more then a few days of course because I was building them green and as soon as they would dry out they would stiffen up. Even so I got some kind of satisfaction out of it. When I was around 11yrs old my grandpa gave me an old Bear Grizzly, a bow he had bought for my dad and uncle to use when they were teenagers. I shot that for awhile then bought an older Martin compound to use for my first year bowhunting. I hunted that season but never got a shot with a bow. The recurve bug had started to bite when a good friend gave me a copy of Traditional Bowhunter Magazine. I read it cover to cover multiple times. One day I was showing my dad a picture of someone building a bow. He looked at it and said "that looks like something you would do". After talking about it some more and a bit of planning, the materials were ordered. Even though I was only 12yrs old my dad had let me work in his wood working shop on a number of projects ranging from nightstands to turkey calls. My first bow however was definitely a notch harder than what I was used to. Even so I was able to finish it and believe it or not it still shoots even though it's the ugliest bow I have ever seen. When I started building bows I had no intention of hunting with them I just wanted to build and shoot recurves for fun but hunt with a compound. It didn't take long to change my mind. The idea of killing a deer or elk with a bow I had built was just too good to pass up. So that year I decided to hunt with my recurve. It took a few years but I finally started having success, and the more as time went on the more success I was having. Getting into bow building full time was something I had wanted to do ever since I was 12 but I guess I never quite had the guts to make the jump till now. Having a job I enjoyed didn't help either. I was working in the mountains all summer and building/carving furniture and doors in the winter. But when I moved my family back to NW Montana in the spring of 2017. We figured there was no better time then that to jump in full time.....So we did! M. Trent Wengerd |