Today’s compound bows are technological marvels, far advanced from the first compound bows of the 1970s.
They are very fast and accurate, with low noise and vibration, but the flip side of the coin is they are getting increasingly expensive and technical. With modern archery focused on innovation and high tech gadgets, some archers are longing to get back to the roots of the sport.
Traditional archery is basic archery, literally a stick and a string.
This is archery as it was for thousands of years — the sleek longbows of the Middle Ages, the Native American’s flat bow, shaved out of local hardwoods, and the beautiful recurves of the 20th century, made faster and lighter for sport hunting by laminating several types of wood together.
Although traditional archery equipment from all these periods is widely available, some archers like to make their own gear, especially the primitive bows and arrows used by Native Americans during the Woodland culture.
They handcraft wooden arrows, with field points and broadheads made from bone or flint. Arrows are fletched with wild turkey feathers that are secured to the arrow shaft by splitting the feather’s quill and wrapping it with sinew or thread.
One of the most popular primitive bows is the Indian flat bow, a fast shooting, short bow with wide limbs made from straight-grained native hardwoods. The most efficient design has a flat back and flat belly (the side of the limb facing the archer).
Flat bows are typically made from ash, birch, hickory or Osage orange, a yellowish dense wood that gets harder as it ages. Osage orange, also known as hedge apple, was planted in fencerows throughout Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region in the 1930s as a wind break to prevent soil erosion. Now it’s considered a nuisance tree.
Staves are split from a seven-foot section of straight-grained tree trunk or limb in December, when the sap is down. The ends of the staves are sealed to prevent checking, splitting open of the wood as it dries.
After the stave is dry, a rough outline of the bow is drawn on the stave, and cut out with a bandsaw. A drawknife and rasp are used to remove excess wood.
The critical stage is the tillering process which ensures that both limbs flex together with the same curvature when the bow is drawn. If tillering isn’t done properly, the bow won’t shoot straight. A cabinet scraper is used to remove wood from the inside (belly) of the limbs during the tillering process.
The final steps are cutting the string grooves on the ends of the limbs, and the sanding and sealing of the wood.
The bow’s grip is wrapped with leather and animal fur is tied to bow strings to dampen noise.
Arrows too, have changed dramatically through the years.
Before compound bows, most arrows were made of wood, typically western red cedar, or yellow poplar. In the 1950s and 1960s, nocks, field points or hunting broadheads were glued onto the shaft.
Today, traditional archers who bow hunt deer and turkeys can get better performance and arrow durability by shooting either a metal alloy or carbon arrows made to look like traditional cedar arrows. They have a wood grain finish, and are fletched with feathers.
Two options are:
• Easton Legacy XX75. For more information, click on this link.
• Gold Tip Traditional. Click on this link to learn more.
Since traditional bows have no sights, all shooting is done instinctively. The archer uses sight and brain power (the body’s onboard computer) to lock onto the target and estimate range. The string is released with the fingers.
The shooting form is different too. The bow is canted at a 45 degree angle so the archer can look right down the arrow as the string is being drawn back. The anchor point is low on the jaw, with two fingers under the nocked arrow and one finger over.
There’s a lot to like about traditional archery. Part of the appeal is putting challenge back into the sport, and recreating a bygone era in archery’s storied past.
Art Lander Jr. is outdoors editor for KyForward. He is a native Kentuckian, a graduate of Western Kentucky University and a life-long hunter, angler, gardener and nature enthusiast. He has worked as a newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and author and is a former staff writer for Kentucky Afield Magazine, editor of the annual Kentucky Hunting & Trapping Guide and Kentucky Spring Hunting Guide, and co-writer of the Kentucky Afield Outdoors newspaper column.