Archery featured in "The Trees that Made Britain"

BrianD3

A new series called The Trees that Made Britain has started on BBC2, in the first week they covered the Yew tree. There was a piece about archery and bowmaking using Yew wood.

A bowmaker and a longbow champion were interviewd and they and the shows presenters (a tree surgeon and an arborist) were shown shooting at a target with a longbow. The target looked to be about 100 yards away and the longbow champion was hitting it with ease. He said the bow they were using had about a 140 pound draw weight. The two presenters also had a go at it but didn't hit the target at all but were able to draw the bow which surprised me as I didn't think a non archer would have a hope of drawing such a heavy bow. Maybe they were using a lighter but similar looking bow. The longbow champion guy looked like a bit of an animal anyway, not particulalry big but very strong and hardy looking.

Anyone see the programme?

oscarBravo

I didn't see the show, but was there a notable difference in technique between longbow shooting and the normal target archery technique? Specifically, I'd expect the longbow archer not to hold the draw for any length of time, if at all: draw then immediately release.

It's not that hard to draw 140# - what's difficult is holding it.

BrianD3

Yes, it did look like they were drawing and releasing almost immediately.

It was an interesting prgramme anyway - both in terms of the trees and the archery. I am not an archer myself but thinking of getting into it.

Programme website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/wk37/feature_trees.shtml

AceCarey

Another thing is that a longbow has a diffrent distrobution of weight so it will be easyer to draw and even hold