Shooting the English Longbow - A review

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GrahameA
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Joined: Thu Mar 10, 2005 4:28 pm
Location: Welcome to Brisneyland, Oz

Shooting the English Longbow - A review

#1 Post by GrahameA » Mon Oct 27, 2008 7:50 am

Shooting the English Longbow by Pip Bickerstaffe. A Review

On the weekend I was lent a copy of, ” Shooting the English Longbow by Pip Bickerstaffe”. This is a 99 page, A4 sized, soft covered book devoted primarily to shooting English Style Longbows, it appears to be self published. The book is broken up into two sections. The first 50 pages deal with shooting ELB’s and the next 50 odd pages are copies of the handouts used on the UK “National Field Archery Society Coaching course”.

This is not a very large book and you can read it in a couple of hours with no difficulty. It is however a mine of information that shooters of English Longbows and Field Archers will keep on returning to for many years.

I am unsure as to who the intended target audience is for the book. It was probably written for those who are interested in shooting ELB’s however the contents of the book probably require you to have a bit of experience (a year or two) in Archery to get full benefit from the information presented.

It is biased towards Field Archery, not surprisingly, and is a bit light in the target area. If Target interests you will benefit greatly from using point-of-aim - read Ford's book.

His comments on how to hold the bow will probably cause a few discussions and it was that very material that made me think about who the target audience was. It helps to understand why.

I could write a few pages on an in-depth review of it but perhaps it can best be summed up as follows.

If you like to shoot English Longbows – buy yourself a copy.
If you are interested in Field Archery – buy yourself a copy.
If you are involved in Coaching Archery – buy yourself a copy or at least borrow a copy and have a read.

***

I do not know who sells the book in Oz. If you want a copy try Bickertstaffes in the UK or give Wildwood a ring, I seem to remember they sell Bickerstaffe bows.
Grahame.
Shoot a Selfbow, embrace Wood Arrows, discover Vintage, be a Trendsetter.

"Unfortunately, the equating of simplicity with truth doesn't often work in real life. It doesn't often work in science, either." Dr Len Fisher.

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