Main Discussion Area > English Warbow
New Year Shooting at the Medieval Butts
Rod:
All archery is target archery in the sense that we usually shoot at a mark, even if it is a patch of hair on a game animal, but obviously not all archery is "Target Archery" in the commonly understood sense of shooting repeatedly at fixed distances for hits or points.
Ian, that is one of the versions I have seen.
I have long considered Simon to be perhaps the best at shooting in the heavy bow and have a great deal of respect for his ability.
I'm sure you are right about the shoot on the tenth, anyone who can keep that close will hit it sooner rather than later. I am also sure that Simon understands the place of luck in long shooting as distinct from close shooting.
Having worked for TV myself on more than one occasion I have a healthy degree of mistrust for the media.
In this case we can see that the shaft striking the target enters at a significantly lower angle than than those in the ground.
This is not a comment on Simon's shooting, but upon the practices of the media. It does not detract from the pleasure of seeing him shoot a heavy bow with this degree of control.
Rod.
Jaro:
To be finicky bastard - when he shows the bow in close up and speaks about heartwood and sapwood its as I strongly suspect Chris Boyton yew hickory backed bow. :D So much for television.
J.
Ian.:
--- Quote from: Jaro on December 30, 2009, 12:58:17 pm ---To be finicky bastard - when he shows the bow in close up and speaks about heartwood and sapwood its as I strongly suspect Chris Boyton yew hickory backed bow. :D So much for television.
J.
--- End quote ---
Haha i saw that on he close up
It should be the single growth ring hickory is good in tension and the heartwood in compression
Phil Rees:
I think you'll find that both those bows were made by the late Roy King
Yeomanbowman:
--- Quote from: Horace Ford on December 22, 2009, 05:15:40 am ---I wish this event every possible success, and hope that it grows and introduces many many more people to shooting bigger bows at longer, more challenging distances.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the sentiment :)
I agree that it would have been even more evocative if we had been able to shoot at historical butts but as Yewboy succinctly points out it does not affect the martial aspect. After all an arrow in the ‘gold’ now is just yellow ink but does that make the shot any worse? Let’s face it; you’re not really Horace Ford either!!! It is worth remembering that Bronze Age tumuli have been known to have been pressed into service as a shooting butt so I think the pragmatic nature of our construction is quite in keeping with the medieval mindset. Nowadays, rare surviving examples of mediaeval butts are scheduled ancient monuments and getting English Heritage/Cadw to agree to us deconstructing the outer surface to remove stones, ensuring no public right away, ensuring adequate infrastructure and many other logistical issues such as insurance would be, we feel nigh on impossible at worst and extremely difficult at best. If anyone knows different please PM me and I’d love to be able to do it.
Rod makes an interesting point about the angle of the blunts shown on the famous Luttrell Psalter illustration and the distance that such an angle indicates assuming it is accurately portrayed. I understand that many villages had only one butt and that there was no universal protocol for shooting and scoring, which seems to be a Victorian obsession.
Jeremy
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