It’s a long shot, but for this Oregon archer breaking an ‘unbeatable’ record has an irresistible draw

Alan Case eased himself onto his back on top of a dusty blanket and lifted his legs into the air.

His shaking bare feet strained to support a strange contraption he’d built. Known as a “footbow,” it was a DIY crossbow of sorts — an aluminum shaft bolted together with two curving wooden bow arms, and a tiny arrow that he had made in his garage from carbon fiber and razor blades.

As Case pushed the stirrups of the footbow upwards with his feet, he pulled a wooden handle with both hands, drawing the bowstring back, straining against the incredible tension.

As a mechanical engineer, Case knew that each fraction of an inch pulled back was “stacking” the potential force of the bow. The strands of the bow string groaned with the intense strain; the wood of the bow arms creaked, as if on verge of splintering into a thousand shards.

There was no countdown, just the throbbing of Case’s heartbeat that he could hear in his ears. He tried to remind himself to take a breath. He had done this hundreds of times over the decades. He tried not to think about the time in 2021 when his bow misfired, sending an arrow into a bone in his right foot.

He watched the string, hoping the strands wouldn’t begin to snap. He watched the tip of the arrow, a smooth polished steel tip that looked like a bullet.

The arrow flew off the bow at about 550 miles an hour — too fast to see with the naked eye — and landed somewhere out on the cracked earth of the sprawling Alvord Desert in Southeast Oregon.

As hard as it was to shoot the arrow, it would be even harder to find it to see if he’s reached his goal: to shoot an arrow with a bow farther than any human in history.

Last summer, I joined Case as he returned to the remote Alvord Desert with two of his daughters on an annual family camping trip to test out his bow and arrows, which he’d made in his garage in Beaverton.

Case was testing these new arrows, and his newly rebuilt bow. By testing, his intent was to push them right up to, and possibly beyond, their breaking point — when bow limbs snap and arrows shatter.

Case had no other choice. If he was going to beat the standing world record, he had to keep pushing. And breaking. Redesigning, rebuilding. And testing again.

This quest was more than a project, more than a hobby. It could justifiably be called an obsession. A lifetime obsession.

The long quest of flight archery

The visible record of the arrow’s flight was a tiny puncture, about the size of a .22 bullet hole, in a piece of paper clipped at the end of Case’s bow.

Case noted that the hole was more oval than round, indicating that the arrow shot out sideways.

“Maybe I didn’t have it really lined up as well as I thought,” he muttered to himself.

Perhaps the sideways launching arrow would result in a short distance for the shot … or not. Case had no idea. There was only one way to find out: He hopped on his bicycle and pedaled out across the flat desert playa, holding an umbrella in one hand for shade in the blazing overhead sun.

Case had picked Oregon’s Alvord Desert as his testing grounds because the vast dry lakebed offers an unobstructed range 7 miles wide and 12 miles long. He could safely launch his projectiles, and, in theory, spot the ends of his black arrows jutting from the white, cracked earth.

He pedaled at least a mile away from his camp, scanning the dusty playa.

Target archery is about accuracy, while the “flight archery” that Case pursues is solely about distance.

The Ottoman Empire is said to have taken flight archery to its height. Several large stone columns stand in Turkey, commemorating the spots where record-setting arrows had landed, inscribed with the names of the archers and distances of the shots. The farthest documented distance in Ottoman times was recorded as 924.65 yards, just over half a mile. Those records stood unbroken until modern interest in flight archery revived the challenge in the 20th century.

After more than an hour of zigzagging across the playa, Case spotted the arrow sticking out of the cracked earth. He recorded the GPS location with his phone. This arrow flew 1,200 yards, or about .68 miles.

“So that one did not do anything like I expected,” Case said as he tugged it out of the earth. “That’s waaaaay short!”

Solving the mystery of Harry Drake

Only three people have ever shot an arrow past a mile, Case said. “But I’m number two. And then there’s Harry Drake.”

Case first encountered Drake when he was just 10 years old, flipping through the pages of the Guinness World Records.

A few lines of text stated simply that on October 24, 1971, Drake set a world record with a shot from his footbow that flew 2,028 yards.

That captivated the imagination of the young Case. Over the following decades, Case looked to Drake not simply as a competitor to beat, but a hero to emulate.

When it comes to the pantheon of all-stars in flight archery, Drake is a singular, fascinating solo character. He was the first to break the ancient Ottoman record and the first to shoot an arrow longer than a mile. Then, he topped his own record, setting a world record that has stood for more than half a century.

Drake was a professional bow maker who designed bows and arrows. He spent long sabbaticals in the desert testing his designs.

Drake died in 1997 in Nevada, at the age of 83, from an accident on a motor bike while returning from a flight archery competition. With him died his secrets. And Case was left to decode and unlock how Drake set the record at a distance that even modern materials like carbon fiber and computer modeling have not been able to top.

“Is it breaking his record or is it just kind of trying to rediscover what he did?” Case asked. “There’s a lot of mysteries I still haven’t figured out.”

A family of flight archers

Over the years, Case collected as much as he could on Drake, including some of Drake’s personal letters.

In one letter to a friend, Drake boasted that no “family man” would ever break his record because, as a single man, Drake could make trips to the desert for weeks at a time for the sole purpose of honing his competitive edge.

Case, in contrast, is married with five daughters.

He realized that the only way to follow his quest to shoot as far as Drake — and remain a family man — was to bring his family along.

Trips to the Alvord became a family tradition. On our trip last summer, he was joined by Jordan Case, his eldest daughter, and Joslin Lorimor, his youngest. Both daughters have taken up competitive flight archery.

When shooting, they took turns spotting and encouraging each other, pointing out how to correct their form after each shot.

“The whole family dynamic is a little bit interesting because he’s kind of my dad and he’s kind of also my coach,” Lorimor said. “I think he’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. He’s one of the craziest people I’ve ever met. And I feel like I’m starting to understand his crazy a little bit.”

Lorimor had set her sights on a goal similar to her dad; she was training to break the women’s footbow world record. It had been had been in place since 1978, set by Arlyne Rhode at a distance of 1,114 yards. Like Drake’s record, it was often considered unbreakable, Case said.

In the 2023 official competition at Smith Creek near Austin, Nev., Lorimor’s arrows fell just short of the women’s footbow record. When she tried again this year, she crept closer to her goal with each round of shooting, and on her very last round, her arrow set the new world record for women’s foot bow at 1,129 yards.

“She pulled off a heck of a shot,” Case said.

An arrow lost and found

While Case was searching for arrows on our Alvord trip, I asked how close he had come to Drake’s record. He demonstrated by driving a hammer into the dirt of the playa, then walking 45 yards away.

“This is the furthest I’ve put an arrow in recorded competition,” he said.

From the world record point to where Case stood was easily talking distance. On the horizon, more than a mile away, his camp appeared as a tiny dot, shimmering in the desert air.

With this perspective, it was clear that Case was very close to catching up to Drake, and that any one of his arrows might, in fact, easily land past the legendary 2,028-yard record. Lorimor said she believed her dad has actually shot arrows farther than the record — many times over.

“He just needs to figure out a better way to find his arrows,” she said with a chuckle.

For an arrow to count as a record, however, it has to be shot and measured during an official competition.

Last fall, at the competition at Smith Creek Dry Lake Bed near Austin, Nev., Case had just finished his last shot when a sudden violent storm and flash flood turned the entire basin from a dry playa to mucky, muddy gumbo. He was unable to find and measure any of his arrows.

One more year that he didn’t get to beat Drake’s record.

He returned this fall to try again.

This time, the weather stayed dry, and the surface of the lakebed was much smoother than it had been in years past, making it somewhat easier to spot the tiny tails of arrows sticking out of the earth.

Case wanted to see if any of his lost arrows from last year might have survived the mud. At a point where he thought he’d gone too far out and was ready to turn back, he found the tail of an arrow jutting about an inch out of the ground.

As he inspected it, he soon realized it wasn’t an arrow from last year’s competition. The razor blades were completely corroded and the finish had been worn away by exposure to the elements. It seemed the arrow had been lost for several years.

Each of Case’s homemade arrows is inscribed with a serial number. He looked up his records. It was, in fact, one of his arrows, shot in 2020 and never retrieved.

What stunned Case was the distance. He had spent decades of his life trying to cross Drake’s record of 2,028 yards — a number etched into his brain. By his measurement, his 2020 arrow had stabbed itself into the earth just over 70 yards farther at 2,100 yards.

“I returned home feeling frustrated but also encouraged,” he said. “Yes, Drake’s record is still safe, but I am also feeling encouraged because contrary to popular opinion it is not an impossible task to break it.”

Case has, at last, closed, and now crossed the distance of his hero. The lifelong mystery is solved.

Now he has to make it official.