By 1924 Art Young and Saxton Pope had already spent a decade answering every skeptic the hunting world could produce.
From Squirrels to Grizzlies — Every Skeptic Answered
It started with squirrels and rabbits, when doubters said a longbow could not even kill a deer cleanly. Once deer fell the bar moved to bear. Once bear fell they pushed on to grizzly. By the mid-1920s, working alongside their mentor Will Compton, Young and Pope had taken six grizzlies in Wyoming with yew longbows. Five with a single arrow. Only one needed a rifle to finish. Young himself had already spent two years in Alaska carrying nothing but an osage longbow, taking Dall sheep, mountain goat, moose, and an Alaskan brown bear on Kodiak Island.
North America Had No More Skeptics Worth Silencing
So when the conversation turned to Africa during a roving shoot in California in 1924, with novelist and fellow archer Stewart Edward White in the group, there was not much debate about whether they would go. The question left in traditional bowhunting had already been answered on this continent. Africa was simply the next frontier. And lion, specifically, was the animal everyone assumed a bow could never handle.
Three Men with Longbows and One Question Left
Young, Pope, and White sailed from New York for Mombasa on March 6, 1925. Arriving roughly a month later into a continent that had no idea what three men with longbows were about to attempt.
What followed was a full scale safari with one explicit goal. Test the longbow against the most dangerous game on earth and find out once and for all whether a broadhead placed in the right spot was enough regardless of what was standing behind it.
The answer came quickly. And it was not the one the skeptics expected.
Everything They Knew About Bear Did Not Apply
Almost immediately the three men discovered that everything they had learned hunting bear in Wyoming and Alaska did not fully translate to Africa. A grizzly, for all its danger, could often be approached and shot from reasonable cover with time to set up a careful shot. Lions were a different problem entirely. Fast. Low to the ground. Frequently active at night or in conditions that made an open stalk nearly impossible. The longbow, it turned out, was not the ideal tool for a close quarters split second encounter with an animal that could close ground faster than a man could think.
But they also learned something that validated the entire premise of the trip.
A broadhead placed correctly in the vitals was lethal enough regardless of the animal's size or reputation, if the archer could get it there. That was the discovery. Not that the bow was perfect for lion. That the bow was enough if the man behind it did his part.
Seven Lions and No Margin for Error
Over the course of the safari the group took seven lions total with the longbow as the primary weapon, with backup rifles on hand for follow-up when needed. Not seven clean one-arrow kills. Seven lions taken with bow and arrow by three men figuring out an entirely new application for their equipment in real time, in country that gave them no margin for error and no second chances if they got it wrong.
Twelve Yards. Total Darkness. A Lion.
The night that defined the entire expedition happened at an old rotting thorn boma.
A boma is a traditional enclosure built from thornbush, used to pen livestock or repurposed as a hunting blind. The team had baited the area to draw in a lion. On this particular night a large maned male came to the bait. Young and Pope were positioned inside, at close range. Twelve yards. Arrows nocked. Waiting in complete darkness for the cat to move into position.
Twelve yards from a lion in the dark with a longbow in your hand.
Both men drew and released together. Only Young's arrow found its mark.
The lion sprang up the instant the arrow hit and squared to face them, letting out a roar that Young later described as shaking everything around them. Looking for something to charge and finding nothing because the men held completely still, the lion broke into a run instead. Seventy-nine paces. Regained its feet once. Then pitched forward dead.
Young and Pope calculated the animal lived less than ten seconds after being hit.
Ten Seconds from Impact to Death
Think about what that scene actually contains. Total darkness. Twelve yards. Two men drawing simultaneously with only one arrow connecting. The roar of a wounded lion looking for something to charge. Seventy-nine paces of heart-stopping silence. And then nothing.
Ten seconds from impact to death.
This was not the result of luck or perfect conditions or any advantage the hunters had engineered for themselves. This was the result of a decade of work. Of two men who had started with squirrels and rabbits and refused to stop answering the next skeptic until there were no more skeptics left to answer. Of a philosophy about bowhunting that said the weapon was not the limitation. The man behind it was. And if the man behind it did his part the rest would follow.
The Man Who Never Stopped Answering the Next Question
The Africa trip was not the last challenge Art Young accepted. The following year he joined an expedition to Greenland and took both walrus and polar bear, hunting from a small wooden skiff while the animals were swimming. A walrus attacked the skiff mid-hunt, driving its tusks through the hull inches from Young's legs. He was still holding the bow.
Three weeks after hosting a lecture evening with fellow adventurer Sasha Siemel in February 1935, Young was admitted to hospital with a ruptured appendix. He died of complications on February 26th, 1935. He was 51 years old.
What Pope and Young proved in Africa was not just that a longbow could take a lion. It was that the entire arc of skepticism that had followed them for a decade, from deer to bear to grizzly to Africa, was always answerable the same way. By going out and doing it. By closing the distance. By trusting the bow and doing their part when the moment arrived.
That philosophy did not die with them.
It is still alive in every traditional bowhunter who picks up a stick bow, closes the distance, and does their part when the moment finally arrives.