Long delayed progress report!

There has been an overall improvement in my shooting. Using the system as discribed in my last post, comparing my average scores in April to that in October:

       Inner 10's:   4.73% -   7.25%

                 10's: 11.80% - 17.63%

       9's & 10's: 31.50% - 45.98%

8's, 9's & 10's: 54.63% - 72.65%

I changed to a recurve, take-down bow, but I have now ordered my first longbow. I suspect that I am over-straining the recurve bow as it seems to be designed for a draw of 28 inches and I have a 30 inch draw (it was a relatively cheap bow, so I really can't complain that it developed a small crack). 

The longbow will be much better quality and is something I have always really wanted. My experience with the other bows tells me that I should be able to handle the draw weight I want. The new bow is just heavy enough to be classified as a war bow at 70-75 lbs at a draw of 32 inches. However, at my usual draw of 30 inches it should be roughly what I am already used to.

Update

It has been quite a while since I last wrote anything and quite a lot has changed. Firstly, I now keep my own way of accurately recording my progress.

Scoring:
The normal way of scoring is that an inner gold scores 10, an outer gold scores 9 and then the inner red ring counts as 8, etc. However, there is a further small ring marked at the center which is normally only used in competitive shooting, to differentiate between two 10 scores. For my purposes I count how many arrows are in or touching this inner circle, then how many (including these) that would have scored 10. The I count the total in the gold target area, then the total (including the gold) that would have scored at least 8. I do not bother counting anything outside of this. I now have three targets set up with a total of 11 small target faces mounted on them. I shoot two arrows each into 8 of the faces and three arows into my third target which only has 3 faces. Rather conveniently, this means that I can shoot a round of 25 arrows before needing to recover the arrows and score them. 4 rounds gives me a total of 100 which therefore gives me the score as a percentage. I normally shoot 300 per day, usually in three separate sessions. (Sorry if this is boring, but that is how I can keep track of any changes in my shooting.)

When I was last writing, I was just getting used to shooting with a 60lb Hungarian style horsebow. By August of last year I was getting on quite well, my muscles had adjusted and I was consistently keeping at least 70% of my shots within the inner red and gold bands of my targets. Then I noticed that the bow was becoming distorted! The core of the bow seems to be a steel spring and the top and bottom of the bow were no longer sharing the same degree of curvature. So in September I started with a new, take-down, recurve bow. Nominally, it pulls at 55lbs at 28inches of draw. I draw to 30inches, so I calculated that should give me the equivalent of my 60lb horsebow. Miscalculated! Turns out that it was giving my 65lbs of pull for my draw length, so I was a little over-bowed once again! Took me a lot longer than I expected to get fully adjusted to this. I reckon that it took me two months before I could shoot this bow with ease and my scores were about the same as with my previous bow!

Then I decided to increase the distance I was shooting at from 10 metres to 13 metres (the furthest I can conveniently do in my garden). The result was a bigger decrease in my accuracy than I expected! So I am now on a new learning curve!