Hunting with the Bow and Arrow

is a strange thing that all the men who have centered about this renaissance in shooting the bow, in our immediate locality, are of

history, and soon found that the English were its greatest masters.

found in the existence of arrowheads assigned to th

e is no doubt, and the use of the bow with arrows of le

to have understood the principles of archery, used a miniature bow and poisoned arrow in shooting game. In the magnificent collection of Joseph Jessop of

y of the bow should read the volume on arc

ns, the Peruvians, and the Irish seem never to have been toxophilites. The famous long bow of Merrie Old England was brought there by the Normans, who inherited it from the No

. The conquered Saxon, deprived of all arms such as the boar-spear, the sword, the ax, and the dagge

his fields and therefore was allowed to use a blunt arrow, headed with a lead tip or pilum, hence our term pile, or target point. If found with a sharp arrowh

w, stab

ond, blo

r, carrying game on his back, or with the evidence of recent butcher

port. In these days the legendary hero, the demi-myth, Robin Hood, was born. What boy has not thrilled at the tales o

shot the toy bows of boyhood; shot with Indian youths in the Army posts of Texas and Arizona. We played the impromptu pageants of Robin Hood, m

ds of these past glories are so vague that we must acc

osed to have shot a mile, and his bow was so long and so strong no man could draw it. In sooth, he was a mighty hero, and yet the ballads refer to h

om the bottom of the ocean in 1841, the staves were recovered and are now in the Tower of London. They are six feet, four and three-quarters inches long, one and one-half inches across the handle, one

very fine grained stave of seasoned yew and made an e

yards. When drawn thirty-six inches, it weighed seventy-six pounds and shot a flight arrow two hundred and fifty-six yards. From this it would seem that ev

asured distance was four hundred and fifty-nine yards and eight inches. That is very near the limit of this type of bow and fa

extinct, I have undertaken to record the strength and shooting qualities of a representative n

ia, I have had access to the best collection of bows in America. Thousands of weapons were at my

e publications of the University, and here 'tis

tandard. It was thirty inches long, weighed three hundred and ten grains, and had very low cropped feathers. It carrie

ad these bows shot by Mr. Compton, a very powerful man and one used to the b

f its value as a weapon in war or in the chase. Weight, as used by a

least six times over a carefully measured course and the greatest flight recorded. All flights were made at an elevation of forty-five degree

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t bow (import

light bow....

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nsi, China, by my brother, Col. B. H. Pope. With this powerful weapon I expected to shoot a quarter of a mile; but with all its dreadful strength, its cast was slow and cumbersome. The arrow that came with it, a miniature javelin thirty-eight inc

he Turks and Egyptians. They were perfect in action, the larger one weighing eighty-five pounds. With this I hoped to establish a record, but after many atte

ess the best flight arrow is made of Japanese bamboo five-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, having a foreshaft of birch the same diameter and four inches long. The nock is a boxwood plug inserted in the rear end, both joints being bound with silk floss and shellacked. The point is the copper nickel jacket of

at my back, using a Paraguay ironwood bow five feet two inches long, ba

subject; let it stand that the English yew long b

rows; they are incapable of projecting heavier shafts to the extent of the yew long bow,

re made of the flight and penetration of arrows. A

yew bow, travels at an initial velocity of one hundred

eight degrees, and describes a parabola twelve to fifteen feet high at its

feet high, and requires eight seconds for the round trip. This test was

n and comparing the penetration with that made by falling weights. Such a striking force is, of course, insignificant when compared with that of a modern bullet, viz.,

This was ascertained by shooting two arrows at once from the same bow, their shafts being connected by a silk thread, so that one paid off as the other wound up the thread. The nu

ly through it. A broad hunting head will penetrate two or three inches, then bind. But the broad-head will go through anim

made in Damascus in the 15th Century. It weighed twenty-five pounds and was in perfect condition. One of the attendants in the Museum offered to put

kin point and shaft went through the thickest portion of the back, penetrated an inch of wood and bulged out the opposite side of the armor shirt.

ian head as compared to those of the sharpened ste

esh deer skin tacked in place. The interior of the box was filled

ther his modern substitute. Upon repeated trials, the steel-headed arrow uniformly penetrated a distance of twenty-two inches from the front surface of the box, while the obsidian uniformly penetrated thirty inches, or eight inches fart

ad-heads sharpened by filing have a better m

f the arrow, such as some aborigines use, supposed to promote bleeding. In the first place these marks are inadequate i

ermit the escape of excess blood, and, as a matter of fact, nearly

r of penetration in animal tissue inherent in b

g other tribes, practiced shooting a number of arrows in succession with such de

legendary hero, Hiawatha, who is supposed to have shot so strong and far that he could shoot the tenth arrow before the first desc

lattened rear ends so they might be fingered quickly. Then I devised a way of grasping a supply of ready shafts in the bow hand, and i

re the first touched the ground. I used a perpendicular flight. Upon several occasions I almost accomplished eight at once. I feel

t. To obtain experimental evidence, I constructed two miniature bows, each twenty-two inches long, one of pure white sap wood,

d shot forty-three yards; the red wood sixty-six y

of that noted bowyer, he came across a laminated bow made entirely of sap wood. Barnes stated that he had constructed it at

ing the sap wood four inches from the perpendicular, it pulled eight pounds. Drawing the heart wood the same distance it pulled fourteen pounds, showing the

n fact, they are reciprocal in action. The red yew on the belly of the bow gives the energy, the sap wood preserves it from

add materially to the cast of a bow, only insure it against fracture. On the oth

ten pounds, but only shot sixty-three yards, showing a decrease in cast. But the backing permitted its being drawn

xteen lines to the inch, the other a fine-grained piece running thirty-five lines to the inch, the finer grain had the greater

Such an apparatus would permit of several experiments. It would answer some of the queries that naturally pass through the mind of every ar

lination to the left of the point of

effect of placing the co

y group? Would not such a machine give accurate data regarding the flig

time of holding a bow full draw

of changing the weight of bows

oss arm and a vise-like hand grip. This latter was padded thickly with rubber, so that some

, serving the exact function of the drawing hand. These were spaced so that the arrow nock fitted between th

and releasing on count, so that every sh

eft side of the bow, and that the angle of divergence for a 50 pound bow and a 5 shilling English target arrow was between six and seven degrees. Using a s

ease, under these fairly stable conditions: The day was calm. We shot an arrow ten times in succession and all the shots centered in a six inch bull's-eye; that is, none went out of a circle of this diameter. In other words, at sixty yards a bow can sh

rrow to the left and causes it to drop lower on the target. T

tance they took. It would be possible by this machine to select arrows that would make co-incidental patterns. It is obvious, however, that differences in individual arrows

. However, when this time was increased to fifteen seconds, we found that our groups averaged seven

increased to fifteen degrees and all individual reactions were correspondingly increased. The flight of the individual arrow was less consis

ce equivalent to the left, when the bow is held rigidly. An arrow that exerts four ounces pressure will fly correspondingly a greater distance to the left. But when the bow is held in the hand, there is cons

f the arrow, on the feathering, the holding time, the mai

cience. Empirical methods have dictated the art so far. In target equipment and shooting there is a wide fi