New bow!

A few weeks ago my bow developed a crack, which I repaired with glue and reinforced with tape. The repair appears to have been effective but, since I couldn't know if or when it would fail again, I thought it was time to upgrade to a new bow. My old bow was an American flat bow, nominally pulling at 35lbs. However, since I draw arrows to my ear, it was actually working out at 40lbs. The new bow is a Chinese made Hungarian style longbow, bought through Amazon. I wanted a stronger bow and this was quoted as being 50lbs at a draw length of 28 inches. However, it has a safe draw length of 33 inches and my own draw length is 30 inches, I anticipated that I could probably get a pull of 60lbs (which has turned out to be the case).

(I have to admit that the price was an important factor in my choice of bow. I would really fancy buying a genuine English longbow but, at five to six times the price, that would be too much to pay unless I was sure that I could handle one of at least 60lbs draw weight.)

The new bow arrived last Wednesday, since when I have been learning to adjust to the bow's particular characteristics. At the start, with my old bow, I was hitting the gold with roughly a third of my shots. This continued with the new bow but the wilder shots nearly doubled in number! I think that this was because the extra power exagerated the effect when my technique was poor.

I have been concentrating on using the new bow and the ratio of good shots to poor ones has improved considerably. However, when I briefly went back to my old bow it was interesting to note how little effort it seemed to require to use it! My accuracy had also gone up to nearly 50%!

In the longer term, I expect the greater power to be a big advantage, particularly over longer ranges. Already I find that I am making adjustments in my technique and the bow is becoming comfortable to use.