Scurry Outdoors South Biographies
Left to Right Greg Hammett Age 5, Ken Scurry Age 3 and Jeff Scurry Age 5 sitting on grandfather Bill “Papaw“ Eubanks’ 1953 Ford Panel Truck after a long weekend of camping and hunting with our families in Sparta, Georgia, November 1964.
Brothers Ken and Jeff Scurry began hunting the deer woods of Georgia at a very early age. Their father Johnny Scurry had a bait and tackle store and gas station, ” Johnny’s One Stop”, that carried everything from potted meat to custom wooden arrows. Johnny carried lines of archery products that rivaled any sporting goods store of its day, and even some by today’s standards. He had an outdoor archery range behind the store that had 6 telephone poles with climbing spikes, and 15’ platforms, for which he charged hourly rates for practice and held weekly tournaments. Johnny’s archery range was the place that people came to show off their weekend harvests and gain bragging rights from Atlanta to central Georgia. Ken and Jeff both spent many days and nights there shooting bows and learning from some of the best archers in the state. Dan Quillian and Lamar Chestnut were frequent visitors, and also family friends.
When the highway department expanded the road, Johnny Scurry built a bigger store behind the old one and called it Johnny’s Indoor Archery Range. This was Georgia’s first indoor range. He dropped the dry goods and focused mainly on archery products and fishing gear. He continued to carry live bait and even started manufacturing his own fishing lures. His weekly tournaments grew large and there was even a women’s league. Ken and Jeff's mother Charlotte, and Grandmother Lilli Eubanks, shot in tournaments and went on to shoot in state tournaments at Lakewood Fairgrounds in Atlanta, where their mom took 2nd place in the overall women’s division. Ken and Jeff honed their skills at the range tying coke cartons on strings and swinging them across the range knowing that the first one to miss would have to clean the restrooms.
To be continued...
