Traditional Archery Longbows

Longbows are legendary weapons dating from before the time of Joan of Arc and the European Hundred Years' War. Traditional archery longbows, capable of firing between 10 and 12 arrows a minute, are described as the "medieval machine gun," by Robert E. Kaiser, author of "The Medieval English Longbow." Today's traditional archers use these bows for hunting and target shooting.

  1. Definitions

    • "Traditional archery is the sport/martial art of archery carried out with equipment made using materials and methods which were in use before (essentially) the industrial revolution," according to no1archery.com. Archery clubs vary in the way they define this category. Some even include the use of modern longbows and aluminum arrows, if the archer shoots without any technological devices like release aids and optical sights. Other associations and individuals aim to keep their longbows as close in specifications as possible to the models used in medieval times. This stripped-down style of shooting is referred to as 'barebow' archery.

    Materials

    • Makers of the most traditional types of longbows use natural materials such as wood or bamboo with fittings and decorations of rubber, hide, feathers, bone or horn. A one-piece longbow, called a self-bow, is usually made from wood of the yew tree. Composite longbows are created from sandwiched layers glued together to form the bow's body and give this type of longbow extra strength. In medieval times, this glue came from boiled horse sinews. Today's longbows use hide, fish or epoxy glues. Glass or carbon fiber, as well as wood, are used to make composite bows which may or may not fulfill any given archery club's criteria for a traditional longbow.

    Methods

    • Shooting with a traditional archery longbow requires physical strength, since mechanical release aids are absent from this type of bow. It also requires above-average eye and hand coordination because the sights are removed from a barebow. Instinctive shooting, a technique involving a Zen-like focus of the mind in combination with eye and hand skills, is the preferred method of shooting traditional longbows. Traditional longbow archery is also described as a martial art because of the intense mental and physical disciplines involved.

    Types

    • According to the Traditional Bowhunter's Handbook by T.J. Conrads, a longbow is defined as, "generally, any straight or nearly straight bow of five feet or longer where the bowstring does not touch the limb when braced." U.S. traditional archers also refer to flatbows as longbows, but U.K. archers place flatbows in a separate category. Longbows have D-shaped cross-sections, while flatbows have rectangular cross-sections due to their flat limbs. Flatbow models are influenced by Plains Indian bow designs. Many traditional archery associations accept members with modern bows, including recurves and flatbows, as long as all modern aids to shooting are removed.