Ozbow

After shooting with the recurve for 6 years and finally got a long bow iv noticed that shooting this is a completely different aft for. The first thing I noticed was how quiet it shot compared to the recurve, secondly aiming is a completely different ball game. You can't aim down the shaft as in gap shooting as all the shots go slightly to the left with it not being centre shot, and with this I can no longer gap shoot but have come round to the idea of instinctive ( and it's working for me ) I just need a little more practice.

Has anyone got any tips or advice to help me out or just want to discuss shooting the longbow?

G'day Matt, to me it sounds like your arrows might be a bit too stiff for your longbow. Are you using the same arrows for it as you did for your recurve? Remember the arrows have to bend more to get around the off centre shot that the longbow has. You may have already considered this but it was just a thought.

Ranger

Mattkaye wrote:.......and with this I can no longer gap shoot but have come round to the idea of instinctive ( and it's working for me ) I just need a little more practice......

If you are going down the 'instinctive' road it may pay to buy a book or DVD such as Instinctive Shooting by Fred Asbell.

Perseverance is the name of the game.

Daryl.

The arrows are spiked correctly for the bow. And there is no contact with the riser when shooting them. The DVD is a good idea and I will give it a go. But to be honest Im pretty happy with how I'm shooting out to 45 metres. I have no problem getting groups it's just not as close as my recurve. But as I'v only shot the bow once and am shooting in a competition different style I recon within a week or two it should be just as good as the recurve if not better.

The arrows I'm using are specifically for the longbow. They are very weekly spines compared to the recurve and I got the impression it was because the recurve was centre shot but the long bow isn't.

Does it help to canter the how a little?

Generally yes, if the longbow is outside centreshot then a lower spine is required, but also the reason is because of how the limbs load.

Have a play with the 'Stu Millers spine chart' on 3Rivers. This is a good means to show how centreshot, limb configuration, point weight, arrow length etc effects the spine: http://www.3riversarchery.com/SpineCalc ... asp?pass=2

Assuming you are using a side of the face anchor (as apposed to a target archery anchor - under the chin with nose touching the string) you will probably find that canting the longbow will help you to get your eye over the top of the arrow, and help take care of your left and right 'windage'. According to Bryon Ferguson, you experiment with the degree of cant until your arrows hit centre. On some of his pictures, he looks to have about 25-30 degree of cant. This also helps to get the top limb out of the way of your sight picture.

This way you can go back to shooting gap or instinctive/intuitive.

Thank you guys, iv decided to do a bit of bare shaft tuning to see if the arrow are under spine but I have also made the arrow rest closer to centre to see if this helps. I just have to wait two days now to apply all the finish back to the bow and re yest but will try canting the bow slightly too to see how that goes

Well after fileing the rest closer to centre and canting the bow ( which I think was the main benefit. As I held it straight befor ) my arrows at hitting exactly where they need to be. I have to admit shooting the longbow is a totally different game. And to those who shoot well with it, I take my hat off to you.

Matt,

To throw a spanner in the works of all the advice above, I have been shooting longbows all my shooting life since the late 1970s and early 1980s and now shoot longbows with NO arrow shelf at all. I shoot off the index finger of my bowhand.

I also shoot arrows which spine up to 15lbs stiffer than the charts recommend and I have never in my life tried to bare-shaft tune an arrow to my bow. Likewise, I have never in my shooting life ever had arrows which shot left or right or anything else other than straight down the line of sight apart from those days when you can't hit the side of a barn for trying.

I put this down to shooting my longbows (both flat and ELB with a moderate cant. I do not actually cant my bow. It is the natural position of the bow when I hold it out at arm's length.

I used to check this natural cant by rotating my bowarm wrist one way then the other and letting it unwind until it stopped. Where it stopped was with a small cant of somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees of lean to my right (I am a right handed shooter). This is a natural unforced cant and is therefore constantly repeatable without any effort on my part. That is the natural angle on which I hold a bow.

Being able to shoot a large range of arrow spines from my bows seems to me to be partly the result of the cant which I cannot otherwise explain. Contrary to this, it does occur that with a completely new batch of arrows, I will shoot briefly to one side or another, but that seems to disappear very quickly and the arrows go down the line again within a single practice session.

Because I shoot instinctively, my only thought is that the instinctive style corrects for the one-sidedness of the arrow strike by sub-consciously moving my bow arm in such a way that it brings the arrows into the necessary position to allow for a stiff arrow or a weaker arrow. I am sure that one's peripheral vision picks up on the erratic arrow flight and because the master eye is looking at the mark and never the arrow which is invisible to the conscious mind, the mind makes the necessary correction without being forced to do it.

If I try to consciously correct, then the arrow will strike too far in the opposite lateral plane. So, I just trust in my sub-conscious mind to do its job and it does do that if you don't try to force it by consciously re-aligning your arrow or deepening arrow shelves.