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| The Intelligent Person's Sport of Archery |
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| Written by Owen Jones |
| Wednesday, 01 February 2012 09:06 |
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Archery necessitates flawless hand-eye coordination and a steady hand. In this instance, 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 when taking aim.
Archery necessitates flawless hand-eye coordination and a steady hand. In this instance, 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 when taking aim. Rapid fire archery necessitates fast reflexes You could say that these qualities are required for other reasons in general life and that may be a fact, but archery is the one sport that necessitates them all. Shooting a gun accurately takes some of these skills too, but it does not need great strength and rapid fire is just a question of pulling the trigger or even holding it back. It is a fact that when guns were developed, archers looked down on riflemen, because they did not require the same degree of training to become good shots. This is one of the foremost factors why guns took over from bows. It took 10-15 years to train a long bowman, but only a few weeks to train a rifleman. It was obligatory in England and Wales for all men and boys to train with their longbows at the village butts on a Sunday where they were overseen and taught by the local sheriff's militia. The long bowman was a respected figure, because everybody knew the commitment and ability it took to become an accurate archer. This was not only the case in Great Britain, but in each country in the world (except Australia) as far as we know. Proof 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, especially when a fractured bow would frequently have been a household item which could be burned on the fire as fuel. Before the invention of the bow, huntsmen and warriors used the atlatl (or woomera, in Aborigine Australian), which is a long, grooved stick used to launch 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 around six feet in length and had a typical draw weight of more than 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 writer of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, 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. |