Archery requires flawless hand-eye coordination and a steady hand. In this situation, a steady hand does not come from not drinking alcohol, but by being so strong that the archer is not straining to draw the string and hold it while taking aim.
Rapid fire archery necessitates fast reflexes You could say that these qualities are desired for other objectives in general life and that may be a fact, but archery is the one sport that requires them all.
Shooting a gun accurately takes some of these skills too, but it does not need great strength and rapid fire is only a question of pulling the trigger or even holding it back. It is the case that when guns were developed, archers looked down on riflemen, because they did not require the same level of training to be good shots.
This is one of the main factors why guns took over from bows. It took 10-15 years to train a long bowman, but just a couple of weeks to train a rifleman. It was compulsory in England and Wales for all men and boys to practice with their longbows at the village butts on a Sunday where they were watched over and instructed by the local sheriff’s militia.
The long bowman was a respected figure, because everybody knew the commitment and skill it took to be an accurate archer. This was not merely a fact in Great Britain, but in each country in the world (except Australia) as far as we know.
Evidence of archery, but not the longbow, has been discovered everywhere from Europe to Asia and some of it goes back 12,000 years, which is a long time for a bit of timber to last, particularly when a broken bow would often have been a household item which could be used on the fire as fuel.
Prior to the proliferation of the bow, huntsmen and warriors used the atlatl (or woomera, in Aborigine Australian), which is a long, grooved stick used to hurl a one-metre long dart at almost 100 mph. There is proof that the atlatl was being used by Homo heidelbergensis 400,000 years ago in contemporary Germany.
The longbow and the flat bow were most frequently used in northern Europe where most soldiers walked into battle as only knights (nobility) had horses. On the other hand, in most other countries, where much of the fighting was done from horseback or from chariots, a shorter bow was used as it was less unwieldy and easier to move across the horse’s neck to shoot left and right.
The longbow and the flat bow were about six feet in length and had a typical draw weight of over 60 lbs but up to 100 lbs, which would fire a three-foot arrow up to 1,000 yards.
The shorter bows were recurve bows and although lighter to draw, it took a significant amount of ability to hit a target whilst travelling at speed on the back of a horse or bouncy chariot.
There are two ways of aiming any bow: by sight and by intuition. In sight shooting, the archer aims down the arrow and lines it up with the target allowing for distance, wind, movement etc, but in intuitive shooting, the archer just concentrates on the target. Intuitive shooting might come after lots of sight shooting practice.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now involved with the Nerf n-Strike Stampede Blaster. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Smart Toys for Kids.