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Warbow speed shooting
JW_Halverson:
ChrisM, you guys are heroes to me! If ever I get over to your little island, I'm going to have to come see you guys shoot!
mullet:
Aww, Ken. let's stay with the topic. It took two pages to get back ::)
ChrisM:
--- Quote from: JW_Halverson on November 14, 2010, 03:04:22 pm ---ChrisM, you guys are heroes to me! If ever I get over to your little island, I'm going to have to come see you guys shoot!
--- End quote ---
JW, sorry it's taken a while to get back to you. If you are ever over her visiting our "little island" you would be very welcome to shoot with our little band!
Time to fess up I think - the truth is, for most folks who attempt this, it really isn't so hard. The guy "Deadly Dave" who can ping out 18 or so in a minute nocks by feel, and he's practised but not a whole lot. For the rest of us it's just another challenge we do throughout the year. I can only do 10 or 11 because I nock by sight and as an old git, my sight isn't brilliant. Imagine beginning this aspect of military shooting as a ten year old, rather than 30, 40 or even 50 like myself, and you can easily see how 12 well-aimed shots in a minute would have been a breeze. Then ask yourself - how long would your arrows last? This had to be a technique which they would have trained for, not to achieve 12 arrows a "minute" (well-aimed of course) - because it's easy, but to know when to use it.
Cheers
ChrisM
JW_Halverson:
How true! If every archer went for the "spray and pray" philosophy it might become uncomfortable when they are out of ammo and the French chevaliers are pointing their lances their way. Guess that's why us commoner clots depend on our "betters" to order us in battle.
bow-toxo:
--- Quote from: ChrisM on November 14, 2010, 03:00:56 pm ---There are half a dozen folks in our longbow club (Companions of the Longbow, Swindon, UK) shooting 100#-plus bows. All of us can achieve 10-12 aimed shots per minute from arrows chucked into the ground. One of the lads can shoot 18+ surprisingly well aimed shots from his 90#, next summer it will be 100#. This isn't guesswork, it's one of the recorded challenges we perform from time to time throughout the year.
--- End quote ---
Your group seems to be above par. In “Secrets of the English Warbow”, Mark Stretton says that with a heavy warbow [like 150 pounds] under stressed conditions, he could manage an aimed shot every seven seconds, not more. The quote concerning the Duke of York and the dismissal of four of his 300 archers that couldn’t manage 10 arrows a minute sounds like the truth to me. That would be a shot every six seconds. While Mark Stretton seems as close to a mediaeval war archer as possible, I can imagine that some archers trained from childhood could manage one second less, but Mark’s record might be the one to aim for.
adb; Thanks for your input toward my correction about helical [or not] MR fletching.
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