Taking Up Traditional Archery

[rhondabrwn]

Trying to take up a bit of archery. Ordered a traditional American Longbow. Sadly, it arrived a bit banged up in the mail. Fortunately, within three minutes of notifying the bowyer, I was advised that a replacement would be in the mail to me by Thursday! Wow! Talk about service. Can't say enough about woodbows.com! [&o]

[rhondabrwn]

Any archers here in the forum?

[junk2drive]

My best friend and I did in high school in the 70s. Our intent was to go deer hunting since the season was longer. I never hunted anything with a bow or gun.

[Jevhaddah]

I used to take part in Field Archery when I was younger. Field Archery is where yoo have a set of targets ranging from 15 yards to over 80 yards. The targets are set up in a wood or forest with clearly marked out safe areas and you have a pleasant walk through the woods to the next target. The target is about a foot in height and width with the bullseye of 2 inch diameter.

Our range was set up on a farm in Balerno just outside Edinburgh and the club was called Balerno Archers which was affiliated to the Scottish Field Archery association of which I was a member.

My bow was a Covenantor Border bow with (if I rember correctly) an 80lb draw, had an R10 sight and a stabilizer for lateral erm stabilization, although I prefered to use it barebow without the site.

Cheers

Jev

[Shawkhan]

I spent years shooting a compound bow. Found I had less and less interest in it. Bought a recurve bow and my love of archery was renewed. Now I make my own arrows, bowstrings and even bow quivers. Don't have the confidence or expertise to build my own bow. I don't shoot year round here in Alaska as the weather just isn't good for old wooden bows in the winter. I find that I need to shoot a lighter bow, 35-40 pounds in the spring when I first start shooting again, then gradually build up to my normal weight of 50-55 pounds. Naturally, you need at least 2-3 bows to achieve this.
Many people who first take up archery, particularly men, get too much bow to start with (a macho thing?) then make excuses for why they don't want to shoot.
I find archery extremely relaxing when I shoot every evening, much like a good session of bowling or shooting. Sort of a zen experience.
Naturally I find my wargaming trending more to the medieval era matching my interest in archery.
I find myself quite excited that History Medieval Battles is now available.

[Jeffrey H.]

Took an archery class in college, bagged 1st place in a university tournament. The instructor didn't like that I beat her highly trained experts with their high spec equipment. Haven't done anything with it since. There is an archery range at Balboa park and it's caught my interest a few times.

[rhondabrwn]

ORIGINAL: Shawkhan

I spent years shooting a compound bow. Found I had less and less interest in it. Bought a recurve bow and my love of archery was renewed. Now I make my own arrows, bowstrings and even bow quivers. Don't have the confidence or expertise to build my own bow. I don't shoot year round here in Alaska as the weather just isn't good for old wooden bows in the winter. I find that I need to shoot a lighter bow, 35-40 pounds in the spring when I first start shooting again, then gradually build up to my normal weight of 50-55 pounds. Naturally, you need at least 2-3 bows to achieve this.
Many people who first take up archery, particularly men, get too much bow to start with (a macho thing?) then make excuses for why they don't want to shoot.
I find archery extremely relaxing when I shoot every evening, much like a good session of bowling or shooting. Sort of a zen experience.
Naturally I find my wargaming trending more to the medieval era matching my interest in archery.
I find myself quite excited that History Medieval Battles is now available.

My longbow is a 35# draw at 30 inches. I definitely didn't want to overtax my shoulder. At this point it is an experiment in how far gone my aging body is! I've gotten pretty comfortable swinging my Bokken practice sword though so that has loosened me up a bit.

[Fallschirmjager]

That looks really cool
You will be ready for Agincourt in no time! I once watched a program on longbowmen and their skeletal remains and it was cool that they found bone spurs in the shoulders and fingers and one arm was enlarged.

[ilovestrategy]

Legolas look out!

[Jevhaddah]

When I started back in the 1970's at the tender age of 15 we started on lower draw weight bows, horrible green plasticy things then built up our drawing arm gradualy.

We used to practice in a looong room in the Meadowbank Sports Stadium in Edinburgh, I lost count of how many times I shot the roof instead of the target [X(]

When out on the coarse one Sunday I was paired with a young lass, we had just shot the 80 metre target known us the 'Cathedral' and were lining up on the 15 metre target called the 'Bunny' if memory serves...

Well she let loose her arrow and it flew way up into the air, way passed the target and into the rump of a cow in the field opposite.


Charlie Cope the farmer and owner of the coarse screached.. and ran off shouting like a mad man .. 'Ma coo! Ma Coo!....[:D]


Fortunatly the cow was fine....

My partner had forgeten to reset her site after the shooting the cathedral [:D]

By this time I was on the ground helpless with laughter as her father gave her 'one of those looks' and shook his head.

Cheers

Jev

[rhondabrwn]

ORIGINAL: ilovestrategy

Legolas look out!

They actually have a Legolas bow!

http://woodbows.com/lor.html

Check out their product list... some interesting fantasy bows as well as utilitarian traditional bows. Prices are very, very affordable as well.

[Hartford688]

ORIGINAL: Jevhaddah

We used to practice in a looong room in the Meadowbank Sports Stadium in Edinburgh, I lost count of how many times I shot the roof instead of the target [X(]

Small world...I practised archery at the same place for a while in the early 80s.

[Jevhaddah]

I was there between 1975 and 1977, Ben Douthwaite was the coach at the time but he had a heart attack and I can't rember who took over from him. The main groups at the time were Melville Castle Bowmen and Balerno Archers but it was a looong time ago and they have both, probably gone the way of the dodo[:(]


Cheers

Jev