One Arrow to Rule Them All

By TBG Staff

There are hunting stories, and then there are the kinds of stories that make you set down your coffee and say, "Wait — say that again." Jerry Russell's story is firmly in the second category.

Jerry is a Traditional Bowhunters of Georgia member who has done something that most traditional archers would write off as flat-out impossible: he harvested Georgia's Big 5 game animals — hog, bear, deer, alligator, and turkey — plus a big coyote thrown in for good measure, all with the same single arrow. One Gold Tip Traditional 400-spine shaft. One broadhead (give or take a rebuild or two). One arrow that somehow, improbably, kept coming back for more. And it all started, like so many great stories, with a friend doing a favor.

Fellow TBG member Al Chapman is something of an arrow whisperer. Al had a habit of rebuilding arrows — resharpening heads, replacing worn components, keeping shafts in the game long past their expected retirement. He handed Jerry one such rebuilt arrow, fletched up with white feathers, and didn't think much more about it. Jerry started sticking hogs with it.

"I don't know how many pigs I killed with it — I think it was seven or eight," Jerry said. "I rarely get two pigs with one arrow, so I knew something was odd about this one surviving the hogs. We started joking about it." Anybody who has shot hogs knows what kind of abuse an arrow takes. Bone, gristle, thick hide — it's a tough environment for any stick of carbon. But this arrow kept bouncing back. The jokes got a little more serious. Then Jerry lost it.

On a bear hunt, the arrow went missing — truly gone. Most of us would write it off and move on. Not Jerry. A month later, GPS in hand, he went back and found it. The arrow had survived that too. "That's a miracle that arrow survived," Al said. "At one point the broadhead and insert were bent, and the front end of the carbon arrow was splintered up. I cut off about ¾" of it and put another insert in it. I don't know how many times I fletched it."

Eventually the white fletching gave out — even legends show their age — and Al put a set of blue feathers on it. Then things got serious in a hurry. In the span of a single week, Jerry knocked down a big 10-point buck, a bear, and a coyote. All on video. The buck came in grunted from over 100 yards. The bear was shot at five yards — close enough to hear it breathe. The coyote was the biggest Jerry had ever killed, pushing over 50 pounds. "Now the arrow was starting to get a little recognition," Jerry said with a grin. Al was along for the buck and several of the hogs, watching this thing unfold in real time.

With the deer, bear, hog, and coyote in the books, Jerry turned his attention to the animal that worried him most: the alligator. "I knew the gator would be the hardest for the arrow to survive," he said. "Shooting a carbon arrow at a gator — that's a different kind of problem." He thought it through and came up with a solution, putting a 300-grain field point up front and rigging the setup so the point would release on impact and the arrow would trail free, keeping the shaft out of the worst of it. Al was with him on the gator hunt, and when it all came together, that arrow had cleared another hurdle nobody expected it to clear. "When we realized we got the arrow back without any issues we were out there hooting and a hollering," Al said. "It was just me and Jerry alone on the water in the middle of the night celebrating the accomplishment. It really was a miracle the arrow survived the gator."

Four down. One to go — and it turned out to be the hardest one of all.

If you'd asked Jerry which animal would give him the most trouble, you might have guessed the gator or the bear. But it was the turkey that nearly ended the streak, and nearly broke Jerry's spirit in the process. "They're really in decline," he said quietly. "I genuinely felt bad going after one. It went from seeming straightforward to being the hardest thing I've ever tried to do with a bow." Two years. That's how long the turkey held out.

The first serious attempt fell apart when a dog wandered into the field, caught Jerry's scent, and barked the whole setup to pieces. The tom vanished. More attempts followed — a tom that would strut for an hour or two at 30 yards and never commit to the decoy, jakes and bearded hens causing chaos, close calls that never turned into shots. "I usually won't shoot a turkey unless he's fighting the decoy," Jerry said. "That's my standard." This spring, he found a new place to hunt. Gobbles were scarce — maybe two in a whole month of scouting. But he kept at it, watching patterns, learning the birds. He noticed one tom had a habit of leaving the field and passing through a particular pinch point, and he set up there.

A hen walked by him close enough to touch. Then the tom materialized behind her — 24 yards, partially screened by brush, with only his head and neck visible above the bushes. Jerry made a decision. Head shot or nothing. Either he'd miss clean, or he'd put the bird down on the spot. "I hit him right in the ear hole," Jerry said. "Floored him on the spot."

The arrow had done it. Georgia's Big 5 — hog, bear, deer, alligator, and turkey — plus one giant coyote, all on one shaft.

There's no official governing body for something like this. No record book with a category for "most species taken with a single arrow." It's just a thing that happened, between a man, a bow, and a carbon shaft that refused to quit. Jerry will tell you it started as a running joke. But somewhere along the way, it became something worth paying attention to — a reminder of what this style of hunting is really about. Patience. Persistence. Getting close. And the kind of relationship between a hunter and his gear that you only get when you're shooting traditional. Al Chapman rebuilt that arrow more times than he probably cares to count, and every time he handed it back, it went back to work. Not bad for a stick with some feathers on it.

Jerry Russell is a member of the Traditional Bowhunters of Georgia. The arrow — Gold Tip Traditional, 400 spine — is reportedly still in one piece.