Different Types Of Archery Bows

The challenges of archery, whether for hunting or simple target practice, offer a refreshing return to our primitive roots. The influence of outside factors on accuracy, such as the wind and short trajectories, make archery a very difficult proposition that requires a great deal of training and practice. The basic "bent stick" bow, despite its primitiveness, has a variety of forms, in various levels of technological complexity.

The Longbow

The most basic form of archery bow, the longbow is the famed weapon of the historic English yeomanry. Used at Agincourt en masse to defeat the superior numbers of heavily armored enemy knights, a properly built and designed longbow can punch an arrow shaft completely through the armor and body of an opposing knight, or large game. For sport archery, popular contests include dropping aimed shots into targets several hundred yards away. While the English longbow is ideally the height of the archer, the simple design was also common in shorter lengths among other ancient peoples, such as some Eastern woodland tribes of Native Americans.

The Recurve Bow

A step up in evolution from the simple longbow, the recurve bow features tips that curve back against the primary curve of the bow's belly. This adds a greater degree of force, enabling a shorter, handier bow that has the same power as a significantly larger longbow. Historically, this made the recurve bow an important development because it allowed for mounted horse cavalry that could easily outmaneuver traditional infantry archers on the battlefield. In the hands of plains-dwelling tribes of Native Americans, this allowed them to more effectively hunt the American Buffalo by running the bison on horseback and shooting them on the run. Doing so allowed the hunters to keep up with a fleeing herd, providing a much larger harvest of the source of food, shelter and tools.

Modern Compound Bow

The modern compound bow only superficially resembles its more ancient cousins. Although it looks somewhat like a bow and fires an arrow, the compound bow relies on a system of pulleys to drive the bowstring that launches the arrow, rather than spring in the bow's limbs. This allows a bow that is much easier to pull to full draw to fire a projectile exponentially faster than its more primitive antecedents. For the hunter looking for an edge in archery season, who is unconcerned with sportsmanship, the modern compound bow offers almost crossbow-like speed, power and accuracy.