Main Discussion Area > English Warbow
Did English archers shoot over the knuckle or over the thumb?
toomanyknots:
--- Quote from: WillS on November 13, 2013, 06:43:50 pm --- You're a freak. Get out.
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Oh I know it, ;D.
--- Quote from: WillS on November 13, 2013, 06:43:50 pm ---Do you lean the bow over a fair bit to counter the clockwise pull of the release, or just shoot straight?
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I cant the bow to the side, but not so the arrow rests on my thumb, actually the other way. I might turn my thumb up a bit to hold the arrow though like a shelf, I would have to check. I don't think I do much differently when the arrow is on one side or the other, but it is kinda second nature so I might.
Goose Fletch:
--- Quote from: WillS on November 13, 2013, 04:15:18 pm ---We'll never know, will we? None of us were there ;)
Firstly - a huge amount of illustrations show the arrow on the "wrong" side of the bow from the 100 Years War period, so that's either artistic license, ill-informed scribes/artists or an accurate representation of a style we've either forgotten about or didn't realise was in use. If you believe the "every man was to shoot a bow" rule, it's unlikely that the artists were completely etely foreign to the basics of archery, so would be odd for them to get it wrong so often. Still, could easily be a simple mistake copied by other artists later on.
Secondly - shooting on the right side of the bow over the thumb affects the tension and release of the string. The reason it works for the Japanese archers is because they use a thumb-ring to release, which doesn't cause the string to pull inwards and disrupt the flight of the arrow.
If you try and shoot with a Mediterranean / 3 finger under release AND over the thumb, the fingers will drag the string backwards and twist the string to the right, clockwise. This will roll the arrow away from the side of the bow, either making the flight unpredictable or just causing the arrow to fall off the thumb. With the arrow on the left side of the bow, resting over the knuckle, the clockwise twist of the string pulls the arrow inwards, against the bow. The bow keeps it in place, and the release is consistent and predictable.
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Ah, well now we've seen that it is infact doable and that some do it. Ive tried, and it works if you are carefully holding tension against the arrow as asian styles do.
What im getting at is that maybe these venerable bowmen were infact better trained than we may have thought. It would shave seconds off the time it takes to nock an arrow. would it redefine how devastating a volley would be in the last, heartstopping seconds before mounted knights approached the front lines? Maybe in fact excavated bows have markings on multiple places on either side at the arrow pass spot. Wishful thinking...
Atlatlista:
Marks on either side of the bow might just indicate the existence of lefties. I swear we're real...
I think we view the past way too monolithically. If we have these variations in a world of mass media, coaching, and instructional texts online and in print, why would they not have existed historically?
1442:
in TBB 4 there's a picture of Ishi shooting his bow and he has the arrow on the thumb side
PatM:
Ishi shot with a variation of a thumb draw though.
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