Thoughts About Weapon Use ... Archery

Okay spent the evening hanging with some new friends in the park and trying my hand as knife and axe throwing. I need a lot more practice but I really liked it. It got me thinking (dangerous, huh?) about the persona I am thinking about and how the thrown weapons and the archery I am beginning to learn fits into that.

Now the Cherokee did use bows, one of the reasons I want a longbow (the one I have now is a recurve). My own one got stolen from my car after a women's retreat I went to years back, and a few years ago some of the ladies with some of my family pitched in and bought me a new one. Its 50"in length, 27# bow with a 24" draw length. Now after finding I struggle a bit with the bow when I tried it for the first time yesterday I decided to do a bit of research on how to tell if its the best bow for me right now.

The first thing I looked into was proper draw length. There are two methods I've found for doing this. One (calculated draw length) involved measuring your arm span and then dividing by 2.5. Using the second draw length measuring method (called ATA Draw Length Standard) would have required getting my bow out and restringing it which at 11pm at nite was not ready to do.

My arm span is about 60"/2.5 giving me a draw length of about 24" This is the same as my bow. Also since I need to also get a bow for my daughter... Her arm span is 58/2.5 = Which is just over 23" (as fast as she is growing she is likely to pass that up soon)

Second thing I have to figure out is bow size.... according to the one site I found the bow size is based on your draw length, so for us its either 22" to 24" = 62" bow... so accourding to this my 50" bow is way to small. Well that's a surprise. Not sure what affect having the bow be 14" to small for me has...

Okay last thing to check is to determine the draw weight...they have a chart I found at the same site as the rest that says Beginner recurve draw weight is Adult Women 16 - 26 pounds (for my daughter it is Youth (Age 11 to 13) 10 - 14 pounds) So at #27 my bow weight isn't right either. Looks like come school cash time to shop for a new bow. It's odd cause it look like the bow itself isn't sized right all around which is odd since the guy that made it is supposed to know his stuff. (Randy Dehnel of Saxon Archery)

Going to talk a bit tomorrow about the knife and axe throwing I did, but bed is calling me. Sending a quick note to the archery marshal from yesterday about the bow sizing to see what he thinks. Now sure the best places to look for bows for my daughter and I that we can afford, but maybe he will have some thoughts to share. I did read that longbows are different that recurve so I might need a slightly smaller longbow than the recurve chart lists. Likely closer to a 58". We'll see.