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Long Bow Accuracy

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Buck67:
I have read that the English Archer carried an "Arrow Bag" with 24 arrows.  He could probably use those up fairly quickly.  At a battle like Agincourt the archers were known to run out and collect arrows between attacks.  I assume that the Army had spare arrows to distribute but eventually even these would run out.  Here is the question.  The Long Bow allowed accurate long distance shots, but what kind of accuracy would be expected when using a grab bag of odd arrows plucked from various deceased attackers.  My guess is that the first volley was pretty deadly, then the latter volleys were more of a point blank kind of accuracy.  So the long distance accuracy of the Long Bow became a non-factor once a battle warmed up and the point blank penetrating power of the big bows became the primary factor.

Were the Archers trained to use standard arrows provided by the Army or did they provide their own?

Lucasade:
I've read that the baggage train for the Crecy campaign included quarter of a million arrows. I would assume that in the same way a modern infantryman is not expected to provide his own rifle and bullets they would have been issued with weapons and ammo - they were a professional army being paid by the day. The archers at Agincourt were in a line 800 yards long shooting at a large body of advancing army so accuracy was not that important until the enemy are nearly upon you, at which point as you say it becomes point blank shooting. I also thought they used young lads as runners to get fresh arrows from the rear?

I'm sure one of the experts here will correct me if I've missed something!

WillS:
From what I understand (this is mainly my own opinion as there's very little factual evidence) the archers didn't carry any arrows during war.  Standard sheaves were created by guild fletchers and arrowsmiths, and became government issue.

At the start of a battle, shaves of arrows would be handed out to archers.  The most likely situation is that all the arrows conformed to a type - a specific, military standard size and length.  The fletchers would make up countless thousands of the same arrow. 

If you take the English Warbow Society / British Longbow Society standard arrow as an example, it's 32" long, around 1/2" to 3/8" diameter, with 7" fletchings whipped with silk.  It was armed with a Type 10 bodkin (simple and fast to make.)

You'd end up with thousands of bags of 24 of these arrows, regardless who was shooting, and what weight bow they were using.  When the sheaf ran out, if there were any more a runner would collect some and the shooting would continue. 

The idea of archers carrying their own arrows is, I believe, more a hunting situation as during warfare there would be carts of arrow bags and arrow boxes provided by the government. 

I also don't think archers would have "run out to collect arrows" between attacks.  Historical battles didn't really work that way, and the two sides wouldn't take a break (especially not during a conflict such as Azincourt) so that the enemy could replenish their stocks of ammunition!  Even if they did all go running out together to "re-load" all the arrows would be the same, so it wouldn't make a difference to accuracy. 

There are all sorts of random myths regarding different arrowheads being used by archers for different approaching targets, but when you factor in the fear, short time frame and chaos it's hard to imagine each archer going through their choice of arrows to find the one that best fits.  It would more likely be a standard head on every single arrow.

Just my uninformed opinion of course - I know there are a couple of pieces of medieval artwork showing archers with arrows in their belts, but I do definitely think that arrows during warfare were provided by the government, not the archer.

Lucasade:
I assume if you won the battle you got a lot of your arrows back, if you lost you'd be too busy running as far and fast as you can to worry about little details like arrows to shoot from the bow you threw away when you started running...

DC:
I have no creds to back this but I don't think that accuracy played a big part. When you have 10,000 archers raining 100,000 arrows on 10,000 enemy the only accuracy involved would be getting the range close. It's not like they were picking out the guy in the red hat, they were just aiming at that army over there.

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