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Best Archery in books, movies, games, sports,live show, pratice

Other than the fact that there were no females archers in medieval Europe… (Read any well respected medieval historian, including the masterful Alison Weir, and you will never see a single reference to a female soldier except for Joan of Arc.)

Hollywood archery, just like most things in Hollywood, will never be fully realistic. I understand that and I’m willing to make certain allowances to improper form and tiny incorrect details for the sake of suspension of disbelief.

That said, there are some pretty big archery mistakes movies keep making that I just can’t ignore. They are just too dumb to turn a blind eye to. Here’s some examples.

Get the right type of bow - I’m not asking for the movies to be extremely accurate when it comes to which tribe shot which bow or whether a bow style is a decade or two off. But can you at least make sure that English medieval longbowmen aren’t shooting Mongolian bows or that a magical ancient greek bow isn’t a modern recurve with a sight still attached?

Bows are not that easy to pull - something that will be immediately evident to anyone who’s ever shot a bow is that there is a certain weight you pull when drawing back the string of the bow. This is called draw weight, or the poundage of the bow. The more powerful the bow the heavier the draw weight the harder it is to pull. If we’re talking about bows that have the capacity to kill (whether humans or big animals) then you’re looking at a bow with at least a 40 pound pull. Most warbows would be at least around the 100 pound range, meaning that you should see a noticeable effort when pulling the bow. Now I’m not asking for the actors to actually pull that kind of weight, I know that they usually use 10 pound bows for props or even just CGI the string into the bows. But for pete’s sake can you stop pulling on that string like it was made of garter that you can just pinch and pull back with zero effort????

You can’t hold a bow at full draw indefinitely - in continuation of our discussion about draw weight, unless you’re holding a compound bow, a bow is very hard to maintain at full draw as you’re holding the full weight of that bow at full draw. Olympic archers can generally hold at full draw for about 3–10 seconds while they line up their shots, but they’re generally only pulling 40–50 pound bows and they’re using bows made of the latest technology which are a lot smoother and easier to draw than ancient bows. So whenever I see movies where archers are pulling on war bows (around 100 pounds usually) and then being asked to hold at full draw for an indefinite amount of time while they wait for the order to fire… that makes my head roll. Even worse are the archers who are able to hold an entire conversation while they’re holding a hunting or war bow at full draw:

Arrows aren’t easy to pull out - Once you get hit by an arrow, they’re not actually easy to pull out. Well, okay maybe if you had field or target tips on them. But broadheads? Barbed tips? That’s going to rip you apart if you try to pull it out. And yet we constantly see movie scenes do this:

Strung bows can’t be used for melee fighting - bows aren’t built for hitting someone with it. If you unstrung your bow and you have a relatively simple bow like a longbow, you can probably get away with whacking someone with it without doing damage to the bow, but you can’t put too much power in it otherwise you’d break the bow. A strung bow on the other hand is another matter. Once a bow is strung, a huge amount of stress is placed on the limbs. If you whack someone with a strung bow then at best you’d end up twisting your bow limbs, at worst your bow might even explode in your hands. And that’s just for simple, traditional single-string bows. Hitting anyone with a compound bow with a good degree of force would definitely result in extensive damage to the bow. Yet for some reason they keep showing this in film.

Put some effort into your form - I understand that actors are not professional archers and so I don’t expect them to have perfect form. There’s also the fact that there are dozens and dozens of different archery shooting styles so there’s a great degree of variety in the way you shoot a bow. Still, there are just some things you definitely shouldn’t do when drawing a bow. Things that are just plain painful to watch regardless of how non-nitpicky I’m trying to be. The worst part about this is, a lot of the form errors we sometimes see in movies can be easily corrected had the actor taken 30 minutes to watch an archery tutorial in Youtube.

Stop stringing your bows backwards - This used to be a lot more common in older movies but still happen every now and then even in modern ones. If you’re going to show some archery, at least have the decency to research on how to string your bows properly. Stringing a bow backwards would result in the arrow flying about 10 feet before dropping… or you end up breaking your bow or having an accident. Just… no.

Armor works against arrows - some arrows can penetrate some types of armor, but a good number of arrows can still be deflected by a good number of armors. Yet for some reason arrows seem to punch through movie armors like they were made of cardboard. This especially irks me when I see someone in full plate armor get riddled with arrows. I mean, sure a bodkin arrow can penetrate plate at closer range (especially true of crossbow bolts) but it would still need to be a clean shot, hitting the armor at just the right angle at one of the weaker parts of the armor. An imperfect shot (which would mean most shots) should still glance off the armor or at the very least not penetrate too deeply.

EDIT: Some additional information

It’s also common for movies and games to get the arrow placement wrong, whether it should be on the left or right side of the bow. I didn’t mention it in my answer because I felt this is a small enough issue (especially compared to the ones I’ve listed above) that I can let it slide in order for me to enjoy the movie.

However, I’m seeing a lot of comments discussing this and there seems to be a few misconceptions, so I thought I’d clarify this argument once and for all.

Assuming you’re a right-handed archer, meaning you draw the string with your right while holding the bow with your left, do you place the arrow on the left or right side of the bow?

The answer is: It depends on which technique you’re using.

If you’re using a 3-finger draw, as in you’re pulling the string with 3 fingers, then you put the arrow on the left side.

Those arrow placements are all correct. Rambo (last pic) is a left-handed archer so in his case he placed the arrow on the right side of the bow. Still correct. The idea is you’re putting the arrow on the opposite side as your draw hand.

But what happens if you put it on the same side? If a right-handed archer places the arrow on the right side of the bow? Well, chances are your arrow won’t fly properly. Unless your release is perfectly clean, your arrow will most likely veer right. Heck, your arrow might even fall off your hand as you start drawing the bow.

That’s not to say that arrows were never placed on the right side of the bow. In fact, they were extremely common in Asian cultures like Mongolian archery or Japanese and Chinese archery. But it’s also because they used a different draw technique called the thumb draw, as in you pull the string with your thumb. When you used a thumb draw, putting the arrow on the right side of the bow is the correct way to do it:

Note: A thumb draw is not the same as a pinch draw like the one used by Hawkeye in one of the gifs above.

There are other kinds of finger draws that place the arrow on the right side but thumb draw is by far the most common. Every now and then you’ll see someone place the arrow on the left side despite using thumb draw, and it is doable, but it’s difficult and nowhere near as fast or as versatile as putting it on the right when shooting thumb draw.

Here's a video of a couple shooting both techniques. The female archer on top is using a 3-finger draw placing the arrow on the left, and the male archer on the bottom is using a thumb draw, placing the arrow on the right:

So there. I hope that clears things up. But that’s why I don’t make a big deal out of where the arrow is placed in movies and games, because there are valid archery techniques where you shoot from either side. What movies/games get wrong is they usually combine the wrong technique with the wrong side.

But, meh, compared to the other issues I listed this seems quite trivial. Your arrow will still fly even if you put it on the wrong side of the bow, just that your accuracy and flight will be severely hampered. Compare that to the other issues I listed above and, well, those ones discuss things that are pretty much physically impossible.

Medieval arrows were fletched with snow white goose feathers (not plastic), probably three times as large as above.

An English medieval war bow had a pull weight of more than 100 pounds. That means, for an archer to draw the bow, he had to have arm strength enough to bench press 200 pounds, and perhaps much more.

In other words, a “grey-eyed” English longbow archer was quite likely the kind of dude who could bench press more than his own weight.

An actual longbow archer


picture Source Wikipedia

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