Featured Artist Series: Makers Edition - South Cox

WHM: Please give a bit of info about you – where you grew up, where you live now, how you got started with your work.

South: 

I was born and raised in northern California and started shooting a bow in 1974 when I was five years old after I found an old wood recurve under a neighbor’s house. I grew up in a hippie family of artists of various mediums. My mother was a vegetarian, but I’d acquired a taste for meat early on, and this only fanned the flames of my interest in hunting I’d somehow discovered my love for woodworking and building things started out about the same time. As I grew up, I spent a lot of time in my father’s woodshop. My family homesteaded several times throughout my early life, giving me ample opportunities to increase my woodworking skills. As my passion for woodworking grew, so did my interest in hunting. I shot my first deer with a compound bow in 1985; if I wasn’t addicted by then, my love for bowhunting had taken over my life. As I launched into adulthood, I got a job doing hardwood floors, stairs, and handrails. At the same time, I started backpack hunting for black-tailed deer–later finding my true passion, bowhunting mule deer. In 2007, I was able to buy Stalker Stickbows from a friend. It’d been dormant for a decade. I spent the next five years honing my skills as a bowyer and rebuilding the company as I wound down my construction business. 

WHM: How has hunting influenced your work?

South: 

Prior to the bow business acquisition, I’d been happily hunting with a compound bow. I’m not going to lie, I knew how much more challenging hunting with a traditional bow was going to be. My biggest concern was I was going to have to go back to eating tofu. I’d been fortunate in my former woodworking career, getting to work on a lot of high-end houses and having an outlet to express my creativity through my work. Building bows became a new canvas for me to express my creativity in both design and utilizing a wide range of woods from most continents on the planet. The longer I’ve been a bowyer, the deeper my passion for it has grown. The opportunity to blend my two greatest passions has been one of the biggest gifts I’ve been blessed with.

WHM: What makes your work unique?

South:

It took me years before I began to acknowledge myself as an “artist” instead of just a woodworker. To me, cutting and gluing pieces of wood together just didn’t qualify. As time has passed and I’ve developed many different bow models and designs and I’ve watched many of my fellow bowyers do the same, I’ve come to understand that we are all artists of varying degrees.

I’ve carved out a bit of a niche, becoming known for having some of the most unique and highly-figured woods that God has created. One of my favorite parts of building bows is sourcing the woods from around the world and then individually selecting the pieces for each customer’s build. Though the canvas is somewhat limited, I think one would have a hard time not acknowledging that they are not functional art pieces.

WHM: What is your favorite hunting memory?

South: 

I love the struggle one experiences on a backcountry hunt. The longer and more challenging the hunt is, the greater it ranks in memories. When you limit yourself to a more primitive weapon, it provides ample opportunities to create lots of those types of experiences. In 2016, I was hunting with four friends; a couple of buddies who were carrying compounds, a friend who was along to video the hunt, and a photographer.

Over the course of 10 days, first one, then the other buddy had both tagged out and left, along with the photographer. What had once been a lively camp had slowly dwindled to myself and my cameraman. As camp got quieter, so did the hunting opportunities, as we’d pushed most of the deer within a large radius of camp. As the hunt neared its close, I was facing the likely reality of eating my tag. The exodus of the rest of the party only exacerbated the feelings of loneliness and desperation.

Late in the day on the next to the last day of the hunt, I found a group of bucks bedded in a willow patch on the far ridge. I was able to worm my way through the willows and got to the edge of the group. I had tension on the string as I waited for one of the largest bucks of the group to clear a small jackpine. He was slowly feeding closer to me when I noticed an old, regressed buck below me.

We’d been watching him through the week–massive-bodied with heavy, stunted antlers–carrying seven points on each side. Though he was smaller in antler and wouldn’t score as well, I did something I never do, I shifted from the more certain opportunity to one that I hoped would come together. The gamble paid off when I was able to take the buck with a 15-yard shot. As the shadows lengthened, I got to absorb all the feelings one experiences when you hit that last-minute buzzer shot and share it with Wes Smith, my cameraman. You can watch the hunt “Blessed” on the Stalker Stickbows YouTube channel.

WHM: What is your favorite piece you've done?

South: 

[Laughs] Almost every month I build my new favorite piece. I have built so many bows that I have struggled to ship out, wanting instead to add them to my own collection. I love it when I find a new wood species to work with or stumble into an exceptional piece of figured wood. I love wood with character. It takes me the same amount of effort to make a bow from a 2x4 as it does from beautiful materials. I love building bows with stories behind them, whether a customer comes to my shop and personally selects the wood or provides it to me.

I’ve had many customers provide wood that has some nostalgic attachment. I had one customer from Kansas who dug up an old, weathered, 100-year-old Osage fence post from his grandfather’s farm and shipped it to me for his bow handle. That is where a large part of the artistic work takes place, selecting and pairing woods together.

I would urge anyone interested in the process to watch Stalker Stickbows Bow Build on my YouTube channel to get an idea of how my bows are built. It is an older video and many of my processes have changed since then, but it will give you a solid idea of what goes into my work.

Check out South's website stalkerstickbows.com