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There are two main things that an archer has to do well to ensure the best likelihood of regularly hitting the target. The first is to hold the string steady at full draw until the archer is ready to shoot and secondly, letting go of the string in the correct manner every time. Most suggestions for beginners should help the beginner to accomplish these two states.

‘Creep’ is the first issue that a beginner should safeguard against. Creep is the phenomenon of the arrow, string and hand creeping forward as the archer takes aim. It is vital to keep the arrow at full draw for consistency. If the archer permits the hand to creep forward, the shot will not be consistent. Creep is caused by lack of concentration and strain.

The strain comes from attempting to shoot a bow that the archer is not yet physically powerful enough to control. People, especially men often attempt to shoot a bow that is too powerful for them. If an archer is experiencing creep, the bow is probably too powerful for him or her at the moment. The archer ought to use a weaker bow and exercise more until they are stronger.

The effects of creep on the shot are that the archer will not learn how to judge the fall of the arrow over distance and so will almost certainly undershoot, that is, the arrow will probably fall short. The only way to learn how to use the bow correctly is to always shoot at full draw.

Tiredness can also lead to creep, but the archer can regulate this by resting well before a competition, staying fit and not using a bow that takes so much strength that it cannot be shot for the period of the competition.

The novice archer has to learn how to let go of the arrow as well. It is much more difficult to hit the target if the release is not right. The novice should get an experienced archer to demonstrate the release so that he or she does not develop bad habits. The correct way to release the string is to relax the muscles in the tips of the fingers used to draw the string.

Novices often hurt their fingers after a couple of releases, so they try to release the string too rapidly which can lead to pulling the string to the side a little. This little shake can send the arrow off course.

The release should be clean and to the rear of the arrow, not to the side. If the release is to the rear, the arrow will fly true to where the archer pointed it. If the archer is having a lot of trouble hardening up the finger tips, it is possible to use a string release device, which will take the strain off the finger tips until they can be toughened up.

An archer could try the karate techniques of toughening the skin and the hand. One of these is to thrust the straight fingers into sand. An archer could also try a guitarists’ method, that of daubing the finger tips with methylated spirits on a regular basis.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several subjects, but is currently concerned with longbows for sale. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

If you are American and you are keen on archery, you will probably have heard of Three Rivers Archery products. In Europe and the remainder of the world, you probably have not heard of them. Three Rivers Archery products are some of the finest in the world. In their own words, they specialize in longbows and recurve bows.

Three Rivers Archery also offers arrows and other archery equipment such as the materials to make or repair your own arrows. These materials include carbon fibre, wooden and aluminium arrow shafts, arrow heads, feathers and nocks. They also provide quivers, arrow rests, bow strings and everything else to do with archery.

The cost of these superb quality products is reasonable and professional archers, hunters, hobbyists and sports people all use Three Rivers Archery products. There are types of archery equipment to suit every application and every pocket.

The equipment sold by Three Rivers Archery is of Olympic standard. That is to say that their recurve bows meet the requirements set by the Olympic committee. Their traditional selfbows are authentic replicas of original longbows.

The arrows are constructed of modern materials as well as timber. The modern composite arrows are usually better because modern carbon fibre and aluminium alloys are more durable for making arrow shafts than wood. That is difficult to confess for a traditionalist, but modern carbon fibre and aluminium alloy arrows do not splinter like a wooden arrow can if shot from a heavy-duty longbow.

The steel arrow tips that Three Rivers Archery has are far better than the old brass arrow tips as well. The old brass arrow tips would often buckle or dent, whereas these new steel points are almost unbreakable. They sell whistling steel tips too, although I am not certain why anyone would ask for a whistling arrow point. What is the point?

If you are not sure where you can get hold of Three Rivers Archery products, go online. They have an outstanding web site which is huge although still easy to travel around. If you are interested in archery, then I am in no doubt that you could easily spend an hour or more just looking around the web site.

Their web site is very well laid out with distinct sections for every aspect of archery including ready-made items such as bows, arrows, paraphernalia and apparel; there are additional web pages on targets, quivers, accessories, books, DVD’s and adolescent archery. There are further web pages on medieval archery, hunting and bow making. There are even special offers only available to their web site visitors.

If that is not enough, then there is a forum, an email service and an off-line catalogue. Three Rivers Archery will of course send your order to your door. You can order by post, by telephone or over the Internet.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on various subjects, but is currently involved with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Archery is now a very widespread sport and hobby all over the world, but once, long ago, it was even more popular. Every army had bowmen and men hunted with bows for food. Every country or every territory developed its own particular design of bow and therefore, even nowadays, there are many different styles of archery bows. Modern technology has meant that new varieties of archery bows are still being invented.

Some bows were invented by people who rode horses a lot. These bows were shorter, other bows were intended for long range shooting and these bows were longer. I will list some of the main varieties of archery bows below with a short explanation of each

The traditional Welsh or English longbow was made from a single piece of yew (or other wood) at least the length of the bowman, but up to about six feet six inches (two metres). It was ‘D’ shaped in profile with the flat, bark side, facing away from the string. The rounded inner side followed the natural growth rings of the limb. The timber itself was left to dry for two years.

The draw weight of a longbow was roughly 160-180 pounds, which is hard to accomplish by contemporary man. In the days of the longbow, in the Middle Ages, men and boys were obliged by law to do target practice with longbows at the village butts every Sunday. The target range for a man was to be no less than 220 yards by command of king Henry VIII.

The longbow was used to devastating effect as long range (400 yards) artillery by the British army at Crecy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415, raining deadly three ounce, three foot long arrows down on the enemy. As the armies drew closer the longbow could be used accurately to aim at individual targets. Not long after these great victories, which can be attributed to the archers and their longbows, bows were superseded as military weapons by guns.

Flat bows, just as the longbow, can be over six feet long, are not recurved and can be made out of a single piece of wood. However, they are rectangular in outline, not ‘D’ shaped.

Short bows are similar to longbows or flat bows in every detail except size and because they are shorter, they do not have the potential or the distance of the other bows. Sort bows are easy to carry and easier to use in confined situations like woods or a forest, so they were used mostly for hunting small animals.

Recurve bows are more powerful that any other bow inch for inch of length. The tips of a recurve point forward when the bow is unstrung and look odd to the inexperienced. The recurve was very popular from the Mediterranean to the Far East from about 2000 BC until 1700 AD. Nowadays, the recurve is the only type of bow allowed to be used in the Olympic Games.

Compound bows use quite rigid materials in their assembly so have pulleys or cams to help bend or draw the bow. This mechanical assistance to drawing the bow to the best distance means less physical force on behalf of the archer, which means that the archer con focus on the target more.

Crossbows have the limbs mounted crossways on a length of timber and the draw string is held by mechanical means until it is released with a trigger. The arrow, or bolt, is much shorter. They are practically half-way houses to firearms.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several topics, but is currently involved with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Bow hunting or bowhunting is one of those sports that you either love or you hate – a little like fox hunting in the United Kingdom. Town people abhor it and anybody involved with it and country people see it essential to cull wild animals that could otherwise become a nuisance.

Despite its macho image, which was encouraged by the film the Deer Hunter, there are growing numbers of women who go bowhunting. The big difference between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow is distance. A hunting rifle with telescopic sights can deliver enough punch at 600 yards to take down a deer with a single shot virtually wherever it is hit in the chest.

On the other hand, a hunter using a bow with a fifty pound draw weight will have to be within about forty yards to be able to deliver the same sort of lethal punch, if the shot is accurate to the heart.

This means that if you severely wound an animal from 600 yards, it will most likely be dead by the time you get there, climbing over fallen trees and rocks, but if you severely wound a deer from forty yards you see its anguish.

This has a salutacious effect on most bow hunters. The vast majority of bow hunters do not want to see this and they do not want the creature to suffer either, so they wait for the right shot. If it is not there, they do not shoot.

A hunting bow has to have a draw weight of at least fifty pounds to hunt large game and that used to mean quite a hefty recurve or longbow, but the compound bow was developed in 1966.

A compound bow uses pulleys to help with the draw, which allows less strong people to achieve a draw weight of fifty pounds, which has opened up bowhunting to women and adolescents.

Large wild animals are dangerous and some will attack without warning if they feel in danger. This creates a danger zone around wild animals. Every sort of animal has a danger zone, for a lion, that could be pretty large and for a stag less so. This danger zone is an locale outside of which you are fairly safe.

If you are hunting with a gun, you can stay outside that danger zone easily, but with a bow and arrow, well, you often have to get inside it. This increased danger provides a superior rush for bow hunters – a bigger thrill. Especially if they are hunting bears or mountain lions.

In contrast to the Deer Hunter, most bow hunters go on organized trips these days. The hunting trip is organized with the aid of a specialized firm which will present guided excursions into areas known to have large numbers of the animals you want to hunt.

These professional guides know how to bait areas to attract your prey; they can advise on safety aspects and they take a big gun in case a hunter is too stupid to take their advice. Regrettably, the gun is for use on the animal, not the idiot.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on various subjects, but is currently involved with compound hunting bows. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

People have been involved with archery for at least four thousand years, but almost certainly for a lot longer than that. Parts of composite recurve bows have been found dating back to the second millennium BC, but the parts that were found were the non-wooden, composite parts, usually of horn.

The wooden sections ordinarily rotted away thousands of years previously, but a wooden longbow from the same period was found in Somerset. Most probably, people had been using all wooden, single piece bows long before they started constructing complex composite recurve bows.

The skill of archery has always fascinated mankind and, in spite of the fact that guns have made archery obsolete, it still fascinates people today, although nowadays archery is almost reserved used for sporting purposes. It is a thriving sport and hobby and is the national sport of the Kingdom of Bhutan.

If you are interested in taking up archery, you will first have to make your mind up which kind of bow you prefer. Among other varieties, there are the longbow, recurve bow, reflex and decurve bows, deflex bow, pyramid bow and crossbow.

To a certain degree, the arrows are not intercompatible either. For example, a longbow can shoot a three foot, heavy-gauge arrow, whereas a crossbow shoots a six inch bolt. The bows also had different uses although there was a certain amount of common ground.

For example, longbows were the heavy, rapid-firing artillery of their day, being able to lob a heavy, armour-piercing arrow hundreds of yards; whereas a short recurve bow was perfect for attack from horseback. Crossbows took less ability to operate but were slower than a bow.

There are different types of arrow as well. Historically, arrows were made of wood with a sharp metal tip, but these days arrows can be made of aluminium or carbon fibre. The arrowheads are distinctive for different applications as well. A simple brass tip is adequate for everyday shooting whereas a vicious, slashing broadhead is used for killing.

The majority of people who take archery seriously use carbon fibre arrows these days which is the typical arrow shaft in use at the Olympic games. The flights are usually of bird feathers and are used to stabilize the arrow in flight to reduce wobble. Plastic flights are also available as they are less susceptible to damage.

The Welsh (and English) longbow was perhaps the most powerful hand bow widely used. These longbows were typically six feet or more in length and made of one section of seasoned yew (or other woods). The draw weight of a Welsh longbow at the time of Henry VIII was between 160 -180 lbf and that would shoot a heavy three ounce arrow up to about 280 yards.

An explanation of the damage that one of these arrows could wreak was given by Gerald of Wales in the 12th century:

“… in the war against the Welsh, one of the men of arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected inside and outside the leg by his iron cuirasses, and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated that part of the saddle which is called the alva or seat; and finally it lodged in his horse, driving so deep that it killed the animal”.

It took years of practice to draw and shoot one of these longbows bows accurately.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on various topics, but is currently concerned with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.