#bowstyles

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Right, so you've (hopefully) joined a club and you're ready to get started on your own magical archery adventure. Presented for your reading pleasure, for future reference, and so you can sound very clever when chatting with other archers is the following summary of bowstyles; scroll down for a bit of guidance on how to choose a style.

Disclaimer: All this information is shaped by my opinions and experience. If you have a question about any of the following, or would like to add something or correct an error, please send me an ask. I'll be happy to direct you to the information you need or update this primer as necessary.

Note: You can think of the various bowstyles falling on a hierarchy of technological sophistication. This primer will list the styles in descending order along that hierarchy. Unsurprisingly, this hierarchy is social as well; pretty much everyone (including me, so be forewarned!) dismisses styles above theirs as overly complex and too serious, and styles below theirs as primitive and silly. It's all (mostly) in good fun.

1. Compound

Take a look: Indoor World Cup Final 2013

The basics: Compounds are the scary, complicated-looking contraptions with the wheely bits (cams) at the ends. Compounds have all sorts of extra aids to help achieve high precision and consistency, including spirit levels, scopes, and release aids.

A diversion into technicalities: the cams at the top and bottom load the draw weight as the bow is drawn into the cams/limbs; this means that the draw weight "lets off" sharply towards the end. The practical upshot of this is that you can have a compound with 60 lbs draw weight that, at full draw, only feels like holding 20 lbs. This allows for a longer, steadier full draw and aiming process with high poundage, which gives you very high arrow speed and very high precision. (Seriously, I know almost nothing about how compounds work; if you're interested, check out more detailed guides like this one for more information.)

2. Olympic recurve

Take a look: Ladies Olympic Finals 2012

The basics: The recurve is named for the ends of the limbs, which "recurve" back away from the archer. This is the standard, entry-level style for beginners (although with very simplified kit, of course). A good summary of the anatomy of a recurve can be found here.

A diversion into technicalities: Unlike a compound, draw weight increases linearly with draw length, so the farther you draw the bow, the heavier it becomes. At full draw, an archer shooting a 45lb recurve will be holding 45lbs of draw weight. 

3. Recurve barebow

Take a look: Ladies Field Champs Barebow Gold 2012

The basics: Essentially, a recurve barebow is an Olympic recurve with none of the extra bits. Barebows are allowed no aiming aids, stabilisers, or other accessories to help with consistency (e.g. a clicker). For target archery, a barebow is allowed: a rest, a pressure button, and weights attached directly to the riser. There are a variety of techniques to aim without a sight, including stringwalking, facewalking, and gapshooting (full posts coming soon!). 

A diversion into technicalities: A barebow obviously shoots the same way as a recurve bow. In general, barebows are less accurate because they lack specific pieces of kit designed to improve accuracy; however, a dedicated, experienced barebow can match or beat recurves. It's a simple(-sounding) matter of doing on your own what recurves rely on their kit to do for them: stabilise, draw consistently, aim precisely, and release smoothly.

4. Traditional recurve, horsebows, flatbow and longbow

Take a look: A guy shooting traditional recurve in his backyard; a guy shooting a Mongolian horsebow; a slow-motion comparison of a Japanese yumi and an English longbow. Note that there are no official competition videos, although people do shoot them in competition.

The basics: these are the sorts of bows you will recognise from films and books depicting medieval warfare, or from Robin Hood movies. Precision is difficult with these bows due to the variation inherent in their construction and the lack of stabilising and aiming aids. Traditional bows are also not allowed to stringwalk.

A diversion into technicalities: traditional recurve (which are the size and shape of an Olympic recurve, but made of single piece of wood), the Japanese yumi, and horsebows are all still recurved, while flatbows and longbows are a simple parabolic arc. The slow-mo video above explains briefly what difference this makes. I am not well-acquainted with the intricacies of these styles, and the expense and expertise required means that beginning archers are unlikely to start here.

So, how do I choose a style?

To start with, if you do join a beginner's course, there's about 100% chance that you will learn to shoot recurve, first barebow and then with a sight. This is a solid way to get to know your way around the basics of archery, and then you can choose which style you want once you can hit the target consistently. If you like recurve, stick with it! Any style you enjoy shooting is going to be fine; the important thing is that you enjoy what you're shooting, be it competitive compound or a horsebow.

Compound: First, some people switch to compound because of physical reasons. Because of the loading and letoff, they allow people who have less physical strength, problems with balance, or injuries/disabilities to still shoot competitively at high poundage. Other people shoot compound for the speed, power, precision, and prestige, or for hunting. Switch if you like: high-pressure situations, extreme accuracy and precision, fine-tuning, being miserable (kidding! Mostly.)

Barebow: Barebow offers a nice compromise between the technical sophistication of a recurve and the challenge of shooting unsighted. Some people don't like shooting with sights and stabilisers, don't want to pay for all the extra recurve kit, or just enjoy the challenge. As a side note, especially in the UK, there are relatively few competitive barebow archers, so it's easier to become competitive quickly and achieve higher rankings.  Switch if you like: A (slightly) more relaxed shooting atmosphere, spending (slightly) less money on kit, achieving/winning a lot quickly

Traditional: Traditional archers (in my experience) are generally more interested in doing archery as a fun hobby than for competition. This is absolutely legitimate if that's what you want to do! On the one hand, since seriously competitive traditional archers are fairly rare, if you're good at it you can do very well fairly quickly. On the other hand, there are very few (no?) serious competitions for traditional archers; even recurve barebows have little in the way of serious target competitions in the UK (outside the UK Barebow Champs). Switch if you like: doing archery for fun, traditional styles, not always hitting the target

(Obviously I'm being a bit facetious. Choose what you like!)

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