Anyone here interested in primitive and/or traditional archery?

I enjoy archery, but never really gave it much thought beyond pull, aim, relax, hit target. I've never shot a compound bow, so my only experience has been with recurve. For me, it's more of a Zen thing...a way to get out of my own head for a moment.

Always wanted to try it out. I was a competitive archer in high school. Went to nationals and everything. But haven't drawn a bow since.

I grew up shooting a recurve and I have my dad's old long bow, but I haven't shot in years.

weather is finally getting nice up here. Should get out and do some woodsy things, me thinks

Pictures would make this thread better.

@Professor, did you first learn to make a bow and arrows when you were stranded on that island with your friend MaryAnn and that idiot that always wore a white bucket hat?

I got lost for a moment thinking about Mary Ann’s coconuts (I always had a thing for her). Anywho, I also wanted to give a shout out for spear throwers, those things are cool

Paging @Archer

I shoot a modern recurve, and have considered switching to barebow... But I think you're looking for something that gives new meaning to the concept of barebow archery.

I think many retailers seem to carry some 'traditional' bows (often Korean or Japanese in heritage), if you're looking for something very basic in design, but well-crafted.

FWIW: I enjoy the meditative nature of archery. But, I find that competition is also great fun. Shooting a standardized format (barebow, Olympic recurve, compound, etc), means that you can go compete at your local archery club. Specializing in a very niche bow style might make the archery experience a bit lonely. But then, I think shooting alone in the woods is part of what many enjoy about bow sports.

I used to shoot barebow - that was what I first learned back in the mid-70's. Back then I mostly shot field archery outdoors, with a little bit of target archery at provincial or national championships. This was before 3D caught on, so it was shooting at paper targets in the woods, uphill, downhill, etc. I recall at one national champs there was a target where we shot off sort of a cliff, shooting close to straight down, and the target butt was basically laying on it's back on the ground - had to use a rope to climb down to score and retrieve the arrows...

The distances varied from 6 to 60 m in the woods, and rounds were marked distances, and also unmarked in different rounds. It involved a lot of judgement of distances, and being able to spot optical illusions that made the distance seem off. No aids were allowed in judging distances. Indoors we shot either of the standard indoor FITA rounds at 18 or 25 m.

My bow of choice back then was a Wilson Bros model 1225 Black Widow takedown recurve, with a cast/machined riser, and wood/fiberglass limbs. It's in the basement still and I don't feel like digging it out, so here's a photo of one off the internets...



Back then aluminum arrows were the norm, and I shot Easton XX75's in orange originally, then in gold anodizing. Shot without sights, and the only items allowed on the bow at that time were a fixed arrow rest (no cushion plunger or "Berger button" as it was known back then), and one nocking point on the string. No clicker, stabilizers, or any of the things that "freestyle" archers used at the time (that is now Olympic style).

My second go around in archery was more focused, and after a break of about a dozen years, everything had changed. Olympic recurve was now the format of my choice, and everything was very much more expensive than it was previously. Arrows were no longer just aluminum, but aluminum carbon...with Mylar vanes and tungsten points (when they were available depending on what wars the US were fighting at the time).









Being good was suddenly very expensive...



My strangest "Robin Hood": story was at the US National Championships one year. On a target with Burch Johnson of the US (Olympic gold medalist) during the ranking rounds. At 90m he shot an arrow into the 5 ring, and another guy on the target (not me) shot one right into the back of his arrow. I told him that was punishment for shooting a 5! 😉

Machined aluminum risers were now king, here's the one I still have:



Hoyt Avalon Plus...loved shooting this, but many now would consider the feel of it too soft. I later switched to a Hoyt Matrix, but I was never as happy with that as I was this one...



I had 2 actually, because you had to have two complete and identical bows at every event you went to - no time for equipment failures is allowed, so you have to have a second bow set-up, sighted in, and ready to grab in the middle of a match (within your 40 seconds per arrow allotted time frame) if something went wrong with your primary bow. Limbs no longer had wood in them, but were carbon fiber and syntactic foam cores. String material had all changed, so I had to learn the quirks of making my own strings using the new stuff (I used BCY 8125 for most of the time I shot).

Very different mentality in pure target archery. The standard round at the time was shot at 4 distances, so 90, 70, 50, and 30 m. Now everything is shot pretty much all at 70 m. But I always loved 90, because at the other distances it felt like you were trying not to miss (at least if you wanted to be competitive at all), and 90 still offered the ability to think of trying to hit the middle each time. Seems like a slight difference, but it's huge difference in mindset.

Video...shooting at 90 m.


For fellow archers, note the open ring in my sight. Do any of you who shoot with a sight use this, or do you have a dot in yours? I always preferred aiming to be passive/subconscious, so for me an open ring worked best to allow me to focus on the process of executing the shot, rather than focusing on a dot and where that is on the target.

So barebow was as "traditional" as I ever got, so nothing where I shot the arrow off the shelf or anything like that. For those speaking of the "Zen" of archery, this is worth a read:



When I was training at the National Training Center in Montreal back in the late 90's, the national team coach was from France (Pascal Colmaire), and when we would arrive each morning we found out that if we made it there early enough, we could watch him practicing Kyudo. If you want a pure form of archery that is about clearing the mind, this is where I would suggest you look. Photo I found of Pascal:



BTW he was a phenomenal coach, in particular from the mental side of things. I'll never forget some key things he taught me, even if they were in somewhat unusual English. One was "in the now" so about staying focused in the moment and not on possible outcomes, and it applies to a lot of things in life actually. The other was "soft eyes" and this was a way of bringing the activation level down in a stressful situation - I used this one to good effect in a key match I won once...

Okay, enough rambling - we need more equipment photos in this thread, so you archers need to show what you have!

Cheers, Al

Thanks for the write-up! Sounds like you've had a lot of great adventures in the sport.

In answer to your question: I tried shooting without the dot for a bit, but never got used to it. I put the dot back in and it seemed to improve my performance.

My wife and I got into the sport late (I think when we were 28-29?), but really love it, and managed to put up some respectable scores at local indoor FITA competitions. But, then we had a baby and our work picked up, so we've only shot a few times in the last couple of years. I'm hoping that we will be able to get back to it soon as our little guy becomes more manageable. More than anything, I miss shooting outdoors. There was a period of time where we were able to go out and shoot alone in the woods once or twice a week. It was incredibly meditative and restorative.

I managed to find an old pic of my wife's setup. I'll have to drag my rig out tonight and take a pic to share.

Some snapshots of my rig. Not exactly primitive/traditional archery:



SF forged aluminum riser
Uukha carbon limbs
And a bunch of other doodads