Archery requires flawless hand-eye coordination and a steady hand. In this situation, 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 while taking aim.
Rapid fire archery necessitates fast reflexes You could say that these qualities are desired for other objectives in general life and that may be a fact, but archery is the one sport that requires them all.
Shooting a gun accurately takes some of these skills too, but it does not require great strength and rapid fire is just a question of pulling the trigger or even holding it back. It is the case that when guns were invented, archers looked down on riflemen, because they did not require the same level of training to become decent shots.
This is one of the main factors why guns took over from bows. It took 10-15 years to train a long bowman, but only a couple of weeks to train a rifleman. It was compulsory in England and Wales for all men and boys to train with their longbows at the village butts on a Sunday where they were watched over and instructed by the local sheriff?s militia.
The long bowman was a respected figure, because everybody knew the dedication and ability it took to be an accurate archer. This was not only a fact in Great Britain, but in every country in the world (except Australia) as far as we know.
Proof of archery, but not the longbow, has been found 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, particularly when a fractured bow would often 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 hurl a one-metre long dart at almost 100 mph. There is evidence that the atlatl was being used by Homo heidelbergensis 400,000 years ago in modern day Germany.
The longbow and the flat bow were most commonly used in northern Europe where most soldiers walked into battle as only knights (nobility) had horses. However, in most other countries, where much of the fighting was carried out from horseback or from chariots, a shorter bow was used as it was less unwieldy and easier to move over the horse?s neck to fire left and right.
The longbow and the flat bow were around six feet in length and had a characteristic draw weight of over 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 substantial amount of ability to hit a target whilst travelling at speed on the back of a horse or bouncing 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 making an allowance for distance, wind, movement etc, but in intuitive shooting, the archer only 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 subjects, 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.
Source: http://sendaphotocard.ca/hobbies/the-intelligent-sport-of-archery
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