Longest practical distance to bull's eye with a medieval-style shortbow?

[rj_anderson]

Setting is contemporary but it might as well not be, as my characters are working with homemade medieval-style bows (long for men, short for women) and arrows.

I have searched: medieval shortbow; what's the longest distance you can shoot accurately with a shortbow (and various permutations thereof); target archery women primitive; and various

Comments

[peefy]

I'm sure someone will be able to be of a bit more help, but from a basic physics standpoint (and probably not using proper archery terms):

Have you tried searching for the speed an arrow leaves a bow, to try and get some idea of what your character may be capable of? Because when it comes to distance, it's all about how fast the arrow is traveling when it is released (and then some basic physics can tell you how far an arrow going that fast could travel before hitting the ground).

So, if you could find a good estimate of how fast an arrow is released from a bow, depending on the tension and weight of the string, that may help you more than searching specifically for distance.

[rj_anderson]

Well, I know that various types of bows with various types of pull can shoot various distances. But I'm specifically concerned about accurate shooting, i.e. straight into the bull's eye, and I want it to be obviously a matter of skill and not merely of chance. So I don't think knowing the speed would help me much there, because it's all about the technique.

And unfortunately, modern Olympic-style shooting uses compound bows and special high-tech arrows, so looking up the current records for target shooting aren't going to tell me much about what could be done with basic wooden bows and arrows, either.

[fydyan]

And unfortunately, modern Olympic-style shooting uses compound bows and special high-tech arrows, so looking up the current records for target shooting aren't going to tell me much about what could be done with basic wooden bows and arrows, either.

Just a suggestion - have you tried looking into the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA)? They do archery with these kinds of weapons, and I'd bet they keep contest records, too. At the very least, you may find a more knowledgeable group to ask. A google search of "SCA archery" brings up a slew of pages. How many might be useful to you, I can't even guess.

[rj_anderson]

Ooh, that IS promising. Thank you for the tip! I'll definitely look into those.

[monissaw]

Did you try searching for: shortbow accuracy? Sometimes the simplest searches are most effective and a discussion of accuracy usually involves distance (Translation: I'm sure I could look this up at home but i won't be until this evening so i'll put a hopefully useful comment here so i'll remember to come back later to see the question was answered)

[rj_anderson]

Alas, no luck on that front either. But thanks for the suggestion, it was definitely worth a try. I inevitably fail at search terms -- never can think of the right synonyms for the information I want...

[ellenmillion]

"Range" is probably the search term you're looking for. :)

[rj_anderson]

Thank you for the tip! Though sadly, I still did not get the information I needed from using it. I may have to ask in a specialized archery forum...

[deadhavyn]

I don't know if you could find it, but I recall an episode of some show on the history channel that covered medieval bows. There's also a show called "warriors" on the history channel. I think they may have done something with bows as well when they covered English Knights. According to wikipedia that episode was called "Knight Fight" and they covered the English longbow. It might be worth looking into.

Also, in terms of accuracy a quick search showed that the longbow is more accurate than the short bow, though it's from wiki-answers so who knows.
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I don't know if this will help, but it has information about shortbows needing longer arrows to be more accurate or at least that's what I'm assuming.

I don't know if this'll help either, but it might give you some ideas about distance:

This site is wicked confusing but if you can figure out the table halfway down it might be a great help: I wish I could figure it out for you, but I'm a bit bad at things like that aka math. But this page might help (just make sure do like ctrl-a so

[rj_anderson]

Thank you very much for the links! Some of those I had seen already, but some I hadn't, and I appreciate the suggestions.

[aliskye]

I don't think I can give you a good answer but I used to shoot archery a little in the SCA.

We routinely shot a Royal round which was 6 arrows at 20 yards, 30 yards and 40 yards and a 30 second speed round at 20 yards. I was never very good and practiced only once a month or so, but I knew people who shot 2-3 times a week and they were amazing. They could nail the bullseye repeatedly at 40 yards. Some of the best would go back and shoot from 60 yards as well.

One thing you will want to take into consideration is the draw weight on the bows of your character. I used to shoot a 35 lb recurve and if I hit the haybale, let only the target face at 40 yards I was happy :)

[rj_anderson]

That is very helpful, actually! Thank you so much for sharing your experiences as a SCA archer with me.