ARCH - IntraAnsteorra Archery Competition standings

Sylvrfalcn at aol.com Sylvrfalcn at aol.com
Thu Sep 28 16:10:37 PDT 2000


Greetings Archers All,
  I've been following this repartee' about bows closely and have the 
proverbial "two cents" to add.  I own simple wooden bows ( a hickory long bow 
& osage orange flat bow), that I love to shoot and wouldn't trade for 
anything.  For me, nothing can match the charm of drawing my all wood, 
non-laminated, longbow, and seeing the arrow whistle through the air to the 
target (if I'd had it with me the day I shot my period score it would have 
been my weapon of choice).  And that's great, we need to encourage knowledge 
and appreciation of how bows were made and used in period.
However, because the supply does not meet the demand, true period style bows 
can be pretty pricey*.  Should we bar fledgling archers, who may only be able 
to afford a thirty dollar 'glass bow, from shooting period?  Should garments 
be banned from A&S competitions if they were sewn on "non-period" sewing 
machines?  I think you see where I'm going.  If anybody thinks my little 
30lb. fiberglass bow, with the handcarved leather wrapped grip, and the hand 
twisted Flemish bowstring, gave me some sort of unfair advantage, then please 
say so and I will cheerfully retract my score.  In my humble opinion, the 
essence of what we're trying to capture is the "spirit" of medieval archery.  
Few, if any of us, could draw a 120 lb., 15th century, English war bow, much 
less hit anything with it. And you can bet your beer mug it was made of all 
wood!

  Yours in Service,
Lord Robert of Yorkshire

* I did find a reasonably priced source for period style wooden bows, check 
out
www.woodbow.com  they've got an English style long bow in the 40 lb. range 
for around eighty bucks
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.



More information about the Ansteorra-archery mailing list