When I opened my shop in the late 1980s, I had been importing bows for friends from my hunting trips to the USA for several years. I had a fair amount of knowledge of bow making from around the world and realized that the bow that mattered most to most of my clients, wasn’t there …
I wanted a bow to offer to those who approached Instinctive Shooting, a Take Down recurve, with satisfactory performance, affordable price, technical settings suitable for Instinctive Shooting, beautiful and natural materials, a pleasant and original design … Maybe too much to ask but I put a lot of effort into producing it.
It was not easy at all: At the time, only very large companies had the machinery for this kind of production. The materials I liked were expensive, hard to find and had to be carefully selected by me each time from different timber merchants throughout Italy. To stay in the prices it was necessary to have several hundred pieces produced at a time.
It was necessary to have risers and limbs produced by two different companies and assembled in the shop. I also wanted it to have a really original design that wasn’t easy for such an object.
I turned to a professional designer, Nicola Novelletto, who designed the shape that has made my Picchio unmistakable.
The success of the Picchio has far exceeded my expectations going beyond its purpose of being a good beginner bow. Several thousand of them have been sold all over the world and the happy owners have been put on the podiums of competitions of all levels as well as bowhunting.
1994 I designed what was called the TD CACCIA DONADONI, a bit copied from the Bighorn I had been importing for several years.
1995 the JARLING prototype from Nicola’s first projects, published in my catalog but never produced due to difficulties of various kinds
1997 the actual PICCHIO is born in its first version with 10mm screws (to stabilize it a little)
2004 complete restyling, new materials and best manufacturer we are at the peak of the project
2007 I open a company in Australia to personally produce superior quality limbs to be installed on an ELITE version of the Picchio with even more precious woods in the riser and inlaid logo.
2013 Restyling of the riser with slightly raised grip and aesthetic improvements, new manufacturer and new woods.
2020 The turning point, the PICCHIO TESTAROSSA is born.
At the end of the 2010’s i wanted a change. For all these years I had visited the best artisan workshops and companies producing the best known bows, I had acted as a buffer between producers and customers looking for the best compromises but thousands of times I had asked myself “BUT WHY DON’T YOU TRY DOING THIS…? !?!? “
The time had come for me to produce a bow entirely by myself that summarized all the experiences made in these 52 years of shooting arrows and 35 of distributing and designing bows. Without compromise this time. The best production techniques, the best materials and all my innovative ideas.
After five years devoted to the production line, the experiments, the testing, the machinery, the projects, and everything required here it is… the PICCHIO TESTAROSSA.