2006RUS

Archery had a large role in human daily life for thousands of years from ancient times until about 1750, when the gun began to supplant it for hunting and warfare quite quickly. Societies all over Europe, north Africa, like Egypt, Persia (Iran), India, China and Japan remember their greatest archers. I am sure that other countries do too.

Wales had Twm Sion Catty; England had Robin Hood and Switzerland had William Tell. Greek and Trojan archers are told of by name in Homer’s ‘Iliad’. Archers all over the world were thought of as popular heroes like footballers are these days.

It seems that bows were first developed in various parts of the world practically simultaneously in the late Paleolithic Age or the early Mesolithic Age. It is interesting that different forms of bows were invented by the different societies around the world and each sort of bow was invented to match the style of warfare that that people conducted and to the environment in which they hunted.

There are too many varieties of bow to give details of them all here, but some of the most common archery bows are: the longbow, flatbow, shortbow, recurve bow, compound bow and crossbow.

The longbow and the flatbow are similar in size, both can be six feet or more in length, but the cross section of the longbow is ‘D’ shaped, whereas that of a flatbow is rectangular. A flatbow is usually wider than a longbow. Both can shoot heavy 36 inch arrows long distances with great force – enough to penetrate the armour of the Middle Ages from 250-300 yards.

The shortbow is shorter, as you might conclude from its name. It is a short range bow, used for hunting small animals in areas where a long bow would be too cumbersome such as in woods or forests.

The compound bow is also a shorter bow, but it is incredibly powerful because the limbs are not very flexible. In order to flex the limbs, use is made of a system of pulleys or cams.

This gives the compound bow sufficient power (more than 50 pound draw weight) to enable it to be used to hunt bigger game such as deer or bear. The compound bow is a new style, which was only invented in 1966.

Recurve bows have tips that ‘point the wrong way’ when the bow is unstrung. This gives the recurve more power inch for inch than the long or flatbow, enabling it to be used as an effective weapon for warfare or hunting from horseback.

Crossbows are specialized bows, which can be pre-loaded like a gun and shot later. In general, it requires less skill and physical strength to use a crossbow.

The arrows are very important too. Arrows can be interchangeable between the bows to a certain extent, but the length should suit the draw of the bow. Crossbow bolts are normally very short.

There are two types or shooting: instinctive and sight shooting. Sight shooting refers to using sights of some kind to take aim, either by looking down the arrow or using optical fibre sights. Instinctive shooting is more demanding because it is intuitive. It cannot be learned, you have either got it or you ain’t.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on various subjects, but is presently concerned with compound hunting bows. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Survival abilities are what individuals need to develop if they need to deal with disasters for an indefinite period. In general, you need survival skills to keep enduring when your life is threatened. You know that you have become better at survival if you understand the means to get water and food, and construct a shelter during an emergency. If you agree that there are more things about survival that you need to understand, read this survival guide.

Developing your survivor outlook means you have to keep calm in the face of danger, learn how to call for help using various means (like fire, smoke, mirrors etc.), steer safely across an unfamiliar terrain and steer clear of accidents. Some individuals have a keener sense of survival than others, especially if during their early years they were exposed to these things. Some individuals need to train in order to learn the principles of survival. How you build up these abilities is determined by you.

3 Essential Survival Abilities

1. Discovering How to Create a Survival Bag

Foresight and an eye for detail are needed in order to assemble a good survival kit. This is the kit you bring along with you if you have to leave a place. Each family member must have his or her survival kit. Make sure you have food provisions, a bottle of water, neon-colored clothes, watertight matches, batteries and pieces of clothing to keep you from hypothermia.

Select materials that can resist water. You need these things because blankets and clothes should be kept dry so you can make use of them to keep from hypothermia.

2. Physical Health

Have you heard individuals say that they become stronger when there’s a crisis situation? It’s true. Under severe stress or excitement, the body produces more adrenaline to survive. It’s the human body’s automatic response to emergency scenarios. But this rush of adrenaline and superhuman strength lasts only for a short duration. If you want to be able to keep up your strength to help yourself, your family and other people during a crisis situation, you should take up physical training exercises.

Enhance your strength by working out frequently and making sure you do strength training with a specialist. There are times when sheer power is required to help someone else, or yourself, get through a sticky situation.

3. Steering Skills

There is no need to memorize all the places in your city or town, but you must at least be able to use a map and a compass when needed. If you have always been lousy with directions, you need to buck up and learn the fundamentals now. When there’s a crisis, everything you do can affect the welfare of your family, and this includes going to the evacuation site. If you learn the basics of navigating a terrain, you will also be able to stay away from booby traps. Remember that during an emergency situation, you must be able to get from one point to another securely, and as fast as possible.

To get a complete survival guide, leaving absolutely nothing uncovered consisting of natural and man made disasters, emergencies and much a whole lot more, pay the survivalist guide site a visit.

If you are American and you like archery, you will almost certainly have heard of Three Rivers Archery products. In Europe and the remainder of the world, you probably have not heard of them. Three Rivers Archery products are some of the finest in the world. In their own words, they specialize in longbows and recurve bows.

Three Rivers Archery also offers arrows and other archery equipment such as the resources to construct or refurbish your own arrows. These resources include carbon fibre, wooden and aluminium arrow shafts, arrow heads, feathers and nocks. They also supply quivers, arrow rests, bow strings and everything else to do with archery.

The cost of these superb quality products is reasonable and professional archers, hunters, hobbyists and sports people all use Three Rivers Archery products. There are types of archery equipment to suit every application and every pocket.

The equipment sold by Three Rivers Archery is of Olympic standard. That is to say that their recurve bows meet the requirements set by the Olympic committee. Their traditional selfbows are authentic replicas of original longbows.

The arrows are made of modern resources as well as timber. The modern composite arrows are often better because modern carbon fibre and aluminium alloys are better for producing arrow shafts than wood. That is hard to confess for a traditionalist, but modern carbon fibre and aluminium alloy arrows do not splinter like a wooden arrow might if shot from a heavy-duty longbow.

The steel arrow points that Three Rivers Archery sells are far better than the old brass arrow tips as well. The old brass arrow points would often buckle or dent, whereas these new steel points are practically indestructible. They sell whistling steel tips as well, although I am not sure why anyone would want a whistling arrow point. What is the point?

If you are not certain where you can get hold of Three Rivers Archery products, go online. They have an outstanding web site which is massive although still easy to navigate. If you are interested in archery, then I am sure that you could easily spend an hour or more just browsing the web site.

Their web site is very carefully set out with distinct sections for every facet of archery including ready-made items such as bows, arrows, paraphernalia and clothing; there are additional web pages on targets, quivers, accessories, books, DVD’s and adolescent archery. There are further web pages on medieval archery, hunting and bow making. There are even special offers only available to their web site visitors.

If that is not impressive, then there is a forum, an email service and an off-line catalogue. Three Rivers Archery will of course deliver your order to your door. You can order by post, by telephone or over the Internet.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several subjects, but is currently concerned with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Archery is about striking a target with an arrow shot from a bow. The bow can either be an upright bow or a crossbow, although most people think of upright bows when they hear the word ‘archery’. Within the sport or hobby of target archery, there are two kinds: target archery and field archery. The champion is the archer with the highest combined score of his arrows that struck the target.

Target archery necessitates shooting arrows, usually six, from a variety of distances usually 90, 70, 50 and 30 metres. The archers stand in a line before their targets starting at 90 metres and shoot an arrow on the order of whoever is in charge.

Then they all move forward to the 70 metre mark and shoot again on the command and so on. After the six arrows have been shot, the archers advance to their targets and tally up up their scores.

Field archery necessitates walking around a course where targets are set at a variety of distances. The targets can be the traditional round ones or they may be replicas of wild animals like rabbits, elk or bears.

Traditional targets are manufactured from straw. Handfuls of straw are bound with string and crafted into a sort of rope. This rope is then wound around and around itself until a target of the correct size has been made. The rope is held in situ either by pinning it or tying it. A canvas or paper target is then pinned to the face of it.

Target archery can be practiced outdoors or indoors and the target sizes are different to match the various distances. An outdoor archery target can be either 122 centimetres or 80 centimetres in diameter. The centre of this target is 24.4 centimetres in diameter and there are four concentric circles around this. The indoor target is 80 centimetres in diameter. The centre of this size target is 16 centimetres and also has four concentric rings around it.

Each ring is about eight centimetres wide on the smaller target. The targets are coloured gold in the centre, then red, blue, black and white. At the centre of the gold is what many archers call the ‘pinhole’.

It is a small cross of about two millimetres in width. The target should then be placed on an easel or stand with a tilt of about 15 degrees. The pinhole ought to be 130 centimetres off the ground (plus or minus five centimetres).

If there is more than one archer, the pinholes should all be at the same height from the ground and the targets should be plainly numbered. The shooting line should be plainly marked and an archer’s shooting spot should be clear too. Five yards behind the archer, there should be another line, behind which non-competitors may stand.

The danger zone between the archers and the targets should be cordonned off to stop spectators wandering into the line of fire. Knowing that the spectators are kept well back helps the archers to focus on their archery.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on various topics, but is presently concerned with longbows for sale. If you would like to know more or for special offers, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

categories: archery,hunting,war,martial arts,buddhism,hobbies,recreation,sports,history,education,politics,government,outdoors,other

Archeology all over the world shows that hunting tools, that is, weapons, were some of the first items that we crafted in the ancient history of mankind. Flint arrow heads and spear tips are some of the most prevailing articles found around the world.

In those days, people hunted for food and fought each other. We do not know, but it probable that men and non-pregnant young women hunted animals and collected fruit, nuts and berries, while the older family members looked after the children.

It is unclear when bows were invented, but certainly more than two thousand years before Christ or four thousand years ago. Earlier than this, hunters almost certainly crept up on or ambushed their quarry and then ran after it, throwing rocks and sharp sticks or primitive spears perhaps with fire-hardened or flint tips.

It is unlikely that they often killed their quarry out-and-out, they probably wore it out until it bled to death. This method of hunting deer is still practiced by some hunters in South Africa and elsewhere.

As people lived and learned, so more complex hunting articles were invented and improved on. The first such weapon would have been the spear and the second either the throwing arrow or the bow and arrow. It is likely that the throwing arrow came first. This weapon is still used by some traditionalist Aborigine hunters in Australia.

Recurve bows and longbows dating back to 2,000 BC have been uncovered all over Europe and Asia. It seems that the longbow was more common in the north and the recurve bow in the south. Recurve bows can be shorter than longbows and still retain their power, which is perfect for shooting from horse back or chariot.

As farming became the norm, so did civilization and more and more often, hunting wild animals was left to experts. The creatures that they killed would be swapped for other amenities or, later, sold for money.

For the majority of people, hunting became recreational, a sport or a game and the animals they killed in their free time they called ‘game’ and we still do now in English.

Most peoples of the world did not only create weapons to hunt with, they also trained animals to help them. Dogs, whose ancestors were wolves, were almost certainly the first whose help was enlisted. Some dogs were used to retrieve the gave after it had been shot and fallen into the undergrowth or the water, other dogs actually did the killing.

Later still, the aristocracy would hunt with no intention of eating the animal at all: foxes in Britain and lions in Afghanistan. This is still being done today. Likewise with falcons and eagles.

Other animals were trained to help chase prey. Horses equalized the speed difference between man and buffalo or deer. Elephants were used to equalize the prowess of tigers and offer a safer platform from which to hunt.

In this day and age, few people have to hunt to survive, but it is still a popular activity, even though for many it is a once a year event. The most famous hunting expeditions were or still are the safaris, despite the fact that now more people shoot with video cameras than with guns.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on various topics, but is presently concerned with compound hunting bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Archery is as old as Old Nick. The oldest bows to have been found date back to about 2000 BC and bows are almost definitely older than that. Archery is so old that no-one knows where or when the bow and arrow was invented. It has always been used in hunting and warfare. Buddhist monks in the Far East have utilized archery in their martial arts routines for centuries as well.

Archery is even now being used by some tribes around the world for hunting purposes and many millions of ordinary people practice archery for recreation. Buddhist monks still utilize it in their meditation techniques. There are essentially three types of archery recognized: primitive, traditional and modern archery.

Traditional archery includes such bows as the longbow and the recurve bow. Bows of both types have been found dating back to 2000 BC. It appears that the longbow was more common in northern Europe and the recurve bow was more widespread in southern Europe and east from there all the way to Japan.

The contemporary compound bow can achieve a heavy draw weight by using relatively little physical strength compared with traditional bows by the use of a set of pulleys or cams, but still a lot of people prefer to use traditional bows. People appear to want to get back to the root of archery.

Longbows are very simple implements, traditionally made from one piece of yew or ash. Recurve bows could also be made from one length of wood, but more often, the tips would be made from wood and horn or bone. Remember that the tips of a recurve bow point to the front when the bow is unstrung.

Because of the recurved tips, a recurve bow is more powerful than a longbow weight for weight or inch for inch, but recurve bows are typically fairly short, so the average longbow is much more formidable than the typical recurve bow.

However, both types of bow require quite an amount of physical strength to draw them to full power and hold that draw to take aim.

This sequence of drawing and holding without shaking or trembling takes a lot of strength and concentration, which normally has to be acquired. It can take years of training to master traditional archery. The British longbow men of the 14 th and 15 th centuries trained all their lives.

In fact, Henry VIII made it law that all English and Welsh men had to train with a longbow at the butts every Sunday shooting at targets at least 220 yards away. Nowadays, 90 metres (100 yards) is about the furthest archers shoot. It would often take ten years to become this proficient, but some archers could cast an arrow 400 yards and more.

In order to cast an arrow that far, traditional longbows used in combat had a draw weight of between 160 and 180 lbs, which would send a three ounce, armour-piercing arrow about 300 yards. Not many men could draw a bow like that these days These days, a standard draw weight for a longbow would be 100 lbs and for a recurve something like 60 lbs.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on various topics, but is currently involved with archery bows for sale. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Bow hunting or bowhunting is one of those sports that you either love or you hate – a little like fox hunting in the United Kingdom. Town people abhor it and anybody involved with it and country people see it essential to cull wild animals that could otherwise become a nuisance.

Despite its macho image, which was encouraged by the film the Deer Hunter, there are growing numbers of women who go bowhunting. The big difference between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow is distance. A hunting rifle with telescopic sights can deliver enough punch at 600 yards to take down a deer with a single shot virtually wherever it is hit in the chest.

On the other hand, a hunter using a bow with a fifty pound draw weight will need to be within about forty yards to be able to deliver the same sort of lethal punch, if the shot is accurate to the heart.

This means that if you seriously injure an animal from 600 yards, it will most likely be dead by the time you get there, clambering over fallen trees and rocks, but if you seriously wound a deer from forty yards you witness its anguish.

This has a sobering effect on most bow hunters. The overwhelming majority of bow hunters do not want to see this and they do not want the animal to suffer either, so they wait for the perfect shot. If it is not there, they do not shoot.

A hunting bow needs to have a draw weight of at least fifty pounds to kill large game and that used to mean quite a hefty recurve or longbow, but the compound bow was invented in 1966.

A compound bow makes use of pulleys to help with the draw, which permits less beefy people to accomplish a draw weight of fifty pounds, which has opened up bowhunting to women and adolescents.

Large wild animals are dangerous and some will attack without warning if they feel in danger. This creates a danger zone around wild animals. Every sort of animal has a danger zone, for a lion, that could be pretty large and for a stag less so. This danger zone is an locale outside of which you are fairly safe.

If you are hunting with a gun, you can stay outside that danger zone without difficulty, but with a bow and arrow, well, you often have to go within it. This enlarged danger supplies a greater rush for bow hunters – a bigger thrill. Especially if they are hunting bears or mountain lions.

In contrast to the Deer Hunter, most bow hunters go on prearranged trips these days. The hunting trip is organized through a specialized firm which will provide guided trips into areas known to have large numbers of the animals you want to pursue.

These professional guides know how to bait zones to lure your prey; they can give advice on safety aspects and they carry a big gun in case a hunter is too stupid to take their advice. Unfortunately, the gun is to use on the animal, not the idiot.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on various subjects, but is presently involved with compound hunting bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

categories: archery,hunting,war,martial arts,buddhism,hobbies,recreation,sports,history,education,politics,government,outdoors,other

Archery is now a very popular sport and hobby all over the planet, but in the past, long ago, it was even more widespread. Every army had bowmen and men hunted with bows for food. Every country or every territory developed its own peculiar style of bow and therefore, even nowadays, there are many different styles of archery bows. Modern technology has meant that new types of archery bows are still being invented.

Some bows were developed by people who rode horses a great deal. These bows were shorter, other bows were intended for long range shooting and these bows were longer. I will list some of the main types of archery bows below with a short description of each

The traditional Welsh or English longbow was made from a single piece of yew (or other wood) at least the length of the bowman, but up to about six feet six inches (two metres). It was ‘D’ shaped in profile with the flat, bark side, facing away from the string. The rounded inner side followed the natural growth rings of the limb. The timber itself was left to dry for two years.

The draw weight of a longbow was between 160-180 pounds, which is hard to accomplish by modern man. In the days of the longbow, in the Middle Ages, men and boys were obliged by law to do target practice with longbows at the village butts every Sunday. The target range for a man was to be no less than 220 yards by order of king Henry VIII.

The longbow was used to great effect as long range (400 yards) artillery by the British army at Crecy in 1346 and Agincourt in 1415, raining lethal three ounce, three foot long arrows down on the enemy. As the armies drew closer the longbow could be used accurately to aim at particular targets. Not long after these great victories, which can be attributed to the archers and their longbows, bows were superseded as military weapons by firearms.

Flat bows, like the longbow, can be over six feet long, are not recurved and can be made out of a single length of wood. However, they are rectangular in outline, not ‘D’ shaped.

Short bows are comparable to longbows or flat bows in every detail except size and because they are shorter, they do not have the potential or the distance of the other bows. Sort bows are easy to carry and easier to use in cramped situations like woods or a forest, so they were used by and large for hunting small animals.

Recurve bows are more powerful that any other bow inch for inch of length. The tips of a recurve point frontward when the bow is unstrung and look odd to the inexperienced. The recurve was very popular from the Mediterranean to the Far East from about 2000 BC until 1700 AD. Nowadays, the recurve is the only kind of bow permitted to be used in the Olympic Games.

Compound bows use very stiff materials in their assembly so have pulleys or cams to help bend or draw the bow. This mechanical aid to drawing the bow to the best distance means less physical force on behalf of the archer, which means that the archer con concentrate on the target more.

Crossbows have the limbs mounted crossways on a length of timber and the draw string is held by mechanical means until it is released with a trigger. The arrow, or bolt, is much shorter. They are well-nigh half-way houses to guns.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on several subjects, but is currently involved with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

categories: archery,war,hunting,martial arts,buddhism,hobbies,recreation,sports,history,education,politics,government,outdoors,other

People have been involved with archery for a minimum of four thousand years, but very nearly certainly for a lot longer than that. Sections of composite recurve bows have been found dating back to the second millennium BC, but the parts that were found were the non-wooden, composite parts, usually of horn.

The wooden sections usually rotted away thousands of years previously, but a wooden longbow from the same period was found in Somerset. Most probably, people had been using all wooden, single piece bows long before they started constructing complicated composite recurve bows.

The skill of archery has always enthralled mankind and, in spite of the fact that guns have made archery obsolete, it still fascinates people today, although nowadays archery is practically exclusively used for sporting purposes. It is a thriving sport and hobby and is the national sport of the Kingdom of Bhutan.

If you are interested in practising archery, you will first have to make your mind up which kind of bow you prefer. Among other varieties, there are the longbow, recurve bow, reflex and decurve bows, deflex bow, pyramid bow and crossbow.

To a certain extent, the arrows are not interchangeable either. For instance, a longbow can cast a three foot, heavy-gauge arrow, whereas a crossbow shoots a six inch bolt. The bows also had distinctive uses although there was a certain degree of overlap.

For example, longbows were the heavy, rapid-firing artillery of their day, being able to lob a heavy, armour-piercing arrow hundreds of yards; whereas a short recurve bow was perfect for attack from horseback. Crossbows took less ability to operate but were slower than a bow.

There are different types of arrow as well. Historically, arrows were made of wood with a sharp metal tip, but these days arrows can be made of aluminium or carbon fibre. The arrowheads are distinctive for different applications as well. A simple brass tip is adequate for everyday shooting whereas a vicious, slashing broadhead is used for killing.

The majority of people who take archery seriously use carbon fibre arrows these days which is the typical arrow shaft in use at the Olympic games. The flights are usually of bird feathers and are used to stabilize the arrow in flight to reduce wobble. Plastic flights are also available as they are less susceptible to damage.

The Welsh (and English) longbow was perhaps the most powerful hand bow extensively used. These longbows were typically six feet or more in length and made of one section of seasoned yew (or other woods). The draw weight of a Welsh longbow at the time of Henry VIII was between 160 -180 lbf and that would shoot a heavy three ounce arrow up to about 280 yards.

An account of the damage that one of these arrows could wreak was given by Gerald of Wales in the 12th century:

“… in the war against the Welsh, one of the men of arms was struck by an arrow shot at him by a Welshman. It went right through his thigh, high up, where it was protected inside and outside the leg by his iron cuirasses, and then through the skirt of his leather tunic; next it penetrated that part of the saddle which is called the alva or seat; and finally it lodged in his horse, driving so deep that it killed the animal”.

It took years of practice to draw and shoot one of these longbows bows accurately.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on various topics, but is presently concerned with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

Bowmen have played a key part in warfare and hunting for thousands of years. Primitive bows were made of a single piece of wood, but composite recurve bows were being manufactured from Greece to China as far back as the second millennium BC.

Recurve bows, those with the ends facing the ‘wrong way’ when unstrung, are more powerful inch for inch in length than one piece wooden bows, which made them more suitable to confined conditions such as on horseback, in a chariot or in wooded areas.

Bits of composite recurve bows, usually made from horn, have been discovered in many parts of the world. Early arrows were made from naturally straight twigs or pine needles with napped flint tips affixed. Wooden bows did not preserve so well and exemplars are rare.

It seems that archery was being developed in the early Mesolithic or late Paleolithic Age. Archery was especially well developed in some Islamic countries and in Asia, where Zen Buddhist monks used archery as part of their meditation techniques.

In the early days of archery, there were miscellaneous sentiments about archers. In those days, people battled hand to hand with swords and spears and some of the traditionalists reckoned that archers were cowards because they attacked from a distance out of immediate danger. This point is made quite clear in ‘The Iliad’, Homer’s account to the siege of Troy.

There are or were many varieties of bows made to suit different fighting or hunting conditions. Some types of bow are the; long bow, short bow, recurve bow, composite recurve bow, reflex bow, decurve bow, deflex bow and crossbow among others.

The longbow was extremely hard to learn to use and the archer needed massive upper-body strength. The bow was often six feet long with a weighty three foot long arrow. The draw weight for maximum power was around a hundred pounds and the function of the bow on a battlefield was as long-range artillery.

The heavy arrows and fierce armour-piercing arrow head would rain down on the enemy from a hundred yards or more and penetrate shields and armour as if were not being worn. Shot horizontally, the three-foot arrow could pass through several people.

In fact, the longbow was so essential to the triumph of Great Britain that a law was passed making it obligatory for men over a certain age to practice with their longbows every Sunday on the village green in order to develop the required skills and upper-body strength in case war came.

The arrows are made to go with the different kinds of bows and the different bows and their specific arrows are suited to different kinds of hunting – whether you are hunting men or animals.

There are essentially two types of shooting: instinctive shooting, which is very demanding as the archer does not take his eyes off the target, but does not look down the arrow; and sight shooting where the archer makes use of sights to align the arrow with its target. Most people find sight shooting simpler.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several subjects, but is presently concerned with archery recurve bows. If you would like to know more or for special deals, please go to our website at Kids Archery Set.

categories: archery,war,hunting,martial arts,buddhism,hobbies,recreation,sports,history,education,politics,government,outdoors,other