Blogs

The LongBow

Here's a little insight into my archery addiction. The longbow is a stick and string - nothing more, nothing less. It's the simplest of structures, but in my experience, it's the most difficult to master. I learned to shoot on an old 45# Bear Grizzly recurve and this built the foundation for future longow shooting. I took to the longbow without too much difficulty, but it was not easy by any means. It takes more physically to shoot a longbow than any other bow. The string will leave blisters on blisters on your fingers even with a thick leather glove. If you hold the bow too close to your holding arm, the string will catch behind the thick leather arm guard and leave a nice welt (if it doesn't cut the skin open). After a few dozen arrows, your shoulders and back will start to ache and your arms will start to feel like jello. Even now, I have to stop shooting after around 250 arrows (I shoot at least 20 rounds of 12 arrows whenever I'm shooting). The longbow takes a lot of work to master, let alone get good enough to consistently break the bullseye. It takes alot of focus and discipline. As you nock the arrow, and begin to lift the bow and start your draw, you have to have already picked your target and the pinpoint on the target at which you will aim. You have to do all of this while remembering to keep the bow at the proper angle in relation to your arm, remembering to keep your bow wrist strong and solid, remembering to reach full anchor and remembering to keep your fingers tight against your jaw after release. All of that aside, with hard practice, you'll start grouping tight rounds. The tighter the rounds get, the more likely you'll be to cut into arrows. There's no better feeling than watching an arrow cut into one that's already in the target (even though it pains me to destroy arrows). When those things happen, you tend to forget the pain and even start to ignore it so you can shoot more. The whole point is that, even though the longbow is only a stick and string, it is not easy and it takes dedication to pursue it. I've tried to shoot a compound, but I just don't like it. To me after all these years, it feels like cheating. I just cannot adjust to a compound and keep reverting back to my traditional style, I can't use sights and the let-off throws me off. I take my hat off to people who have mastered the compound bow, but I don't even want to try. Others can keep all of the gadgets and new technology. For me, there's something so satisfying about making my own bowstrings, making my own cedar arrows and shooting groups tight enough to break them with a longbow. I am certainly a traditionalist and I love every bit of it.