Secrets of the Medieval Longbow / Warbow: Medieval Misconceptions

Shadowversed. Greetings, I'm Shad. And this is actually the first video I'm filming since being back from surgery. Now, just for your information, I haven't fully recovered and I wouldn't usually be making a video so soon. You know, talking is still quite sore and tender there. But I've received a very awesome package that I need to send off to a very awesome person rather soon, which means if I want to film a video with them, this is my only opportunity. Now, you might be wondering why am I holding my bow here? Well, the answer is, is because the package I've just received happens to be some English Warbows. Two English Warbows specifically. Now, I have been wanting to learn how to shoot Warbow for a long time. And I finally bit the bullet and purchased two proper ones. So this is gonna be very exciting. And with these three bows here, I kind of have good levels to build up to the highest one. This is about 45 pound, my standard bow. And this one here, so this one right here, is between 60 and 80 pound, depending on the draw length. And this massive sucker right here, this is 90 to 110 pounds. So this is huge. So what I'm at least gonna do in this video, I'll be opening up the 60 to 80 pound one and give it a fire off. Just to let you know, I have shot a 80 pound bow before, so it's not out of my range. You can certainly feel in your back. And so before, I don't know, we'll see how well I do with this one to see if I'm even game to just test the string. It's not like I'm gonna try and fire it fully or anything, just to at least experience it. But this big one right here, I'm going to be sending off to Jörg Sprave of the Slingshot Channel. Now, if you've been watching my content or even if you've been watching Jörg's content, you will know that he has made something that I find particularly awesome, that he calls the Instant Legolas. And I made a whole video sharing my thoughts on his invention. And I've been talking with Jörg, and we decided, you know, we really wanna see how his invention will do, you know, perform when attached to a proper English longbow. So I'll be sending this off to him, and he is going to make an Instant Legolas specifically for this big boy right here. And then he's gonna send it back to me so I can do a full video review and share all my thoughts on how well it performs being attached to a massive 100, specifically 90 to 110 war bow, depending on draw length. It's probably gonna be sitting at the 90 pound with the Instant Legolas attached because the draw length isn't as far as when you do it naturally, but that's still massively powerful. So what I've set up, if we have a look down here, we have, oh, no, no, no, nothing to see there. But if you see down the range here, I've set a target because there's a couple of things that I'm intending to try and learn, not just to, you know, shoot these war bows, but also I wanna do a bit of, I mean, I guess you could call experimental archeology to learn more about the techniques of English longbow, what it's like to fire, because there are actually some interesting mysteries that exist regarding these bows that I want to try and figure out by shooting, learning them myself. And so, because I suspect this is an opinion, but I tend to feel that there's too much influence from modern day target archery being imposed on English longbow, because most, not everyone, but when I say most, it does look like the large majority are set in firing the English longbow in a very specific way. For instance, the arrow is always being notched on the right, sorry, left side of the bow, but that's actually contrary. When I say contrary, it's not universal, is what I mean to say. There are a lot of examples of the arrows being notched on the left side of the bow, English longbow, right, from historical artwork. Now, what is interesting about that is that there are some modern day archers and stuff who claim that that's actually a mistake in the artwork, the arrow is being held on the right side of the bow, that if you're going to be firing English longbow, it always should be on the left. I made a video exploring the pros and cons of different techniques of archery, left side, right side, back quiver, hip quiver, specifically, and things like that. And now I want to put it into practice to see how viable it might be to actually be shooting on that. And it's just experimental. I'll be shooting on both, building up the strength to be able to get to the high ones. But even when I'm doing it with the lower poundage, by the way, when you're reaching around 80 pounds, that is warbow equivalent, like the average bow, like, you know, 45 pound is the standard. So when you're going up higher than that, you are reaching some serious poundage. So 60 to 80 is no small thing, even there. And so even when I'm practicing with the lower poundage, building up to the higher, I am also going to be experimenting with different techniques. For instance, I bought a back quiver as well. A side quiver is going to be coming so I can experiment with different styles. And I also want to experiment with, you know, speed. Okay, if I can develop it, I'm not going to be Lars Anderson by any means, but just to see what impacts different, you know, quivers and also firing styles have an impact on speed and how viable that would be in a combat scenario, specifically warfare and things like that. And the other thing is the techniques of shooting as well. Now, this one is not something that I feel is a holdover from modern day archery, because English Longbow, actually, they, when you see reenactment stuff, they are firing their bows quite different. When it comes to Olympic style archery, it's a very standardized formulaic kind of technique where they have a set draw position and whether it's marking it with, you know, their thumb or they're pulling it to their eye, but it's always the same kind of draw distance to get, you know, to be as accurate as possible because they're firing against a bullseye and they want to get, well, sorry, they're firing against a target that has a bullseye, and they want to get as close to the center as possible. But that's actually something that, well, first off, I'll finish off this point, is that when you see actual, you know, people reenacting the English Longbow, they're not actually usually pulling back there, they're pulling it back further to a much higher, you know, draw distance, which means the whole technique of aiming is completely different when it's actually far more instinctual. Now, this isn't me saying it, Joe Gibbs. Now, you might've seen him on Todd from Todd's Workshop's brilliant video where he's testing, sorry, bow versus armor. He talks about aiming and that it's instinctual, okay, and you get that from practice. Well, it takes a lot of control, so it's not just pulling, the action of pulling a bow, it's when you release because your body's under a hell of a lot of compression, and when you let go of that string, your body wants to release it, so you have to control that bow arm to stop it doing this or this. So, I mean, do you concentrate on your technique or do you just? No, I think it just comes naturally. So, your body does what it has to do to pull the bow, and once you've been doing it for so long, you don't have to concentrate on pulling the bow or anything, it's all natural, bang, job done. No sort of aiming, no gap aiming, or? No, it's all instinctive. So, I'm just looking at the target and your arm knows where it's gotta go to find that. That's shooting three times a week, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. Instead of having a set, draw position, holding it at the right angle, I wanna develop instinctual aiming, and now going back to the target thing, because if we get stuck into, say, holdovers from modern-day target archery, I think we're gonna be, well, I think there are certain things we carry over that aren't necessarily accurate. For instance, the style of accuracy you want to develop. So, my target down here is a person, okay? And effectively, any hit on that person is the same as a bullseye, and because of that, right, I don't need nearly as pinpoint accuracy to hit that level of bullseye when compared on a target. Now, for the historical archer, when I say historical, because there's a broad range of what a historical archer is, but I'm always gonna be focusing on medieval history, so we're looking at longbow, warbow, right? I don't think, I could be wrong, but very few people would be attaining the accuracy level where I'm gonna aim for the neck, or right between the eyes, or right dead center. In actual fact, they probably are aiming for center of mass more often than not, just for higher chances of hitting. And so, the type of accuracy I wanna try and develop when I'm building up the strength to fire these larger bows is center of mass hitting a person, a target. And this can be translated much better to, say, when you're hunting and things like that. Now, not to say you won't get benefits in aiming at a target, I'm not saying they never did that historically either, I'm just feeling that the standard of accuracy, or what you would consider to be a good archer, is very different when you're aiming at a target compared to when you're aiming at a person. So I have a couple of additional thoughts that I wanna share about what I'm aiming to do in my exploration of historical English longbow specifically, but let's open up one of these longbows and just get a feel. And while I'm doing that, I'll also share my additional thoughts of what I'm planning to do. So there are a couple of places online that you can buy a traditional English longbow. And some are fairly expensive, stuff like that. So when I was entering into the market, I actually, there is a reenactment group that's not too far away, too far away to attend regularly, but they're close enough. And I contacted them, and there's a decent number of them who love doing reenactment longbow. And so I contacted them saying, where do they get their bows? And they recommended a guy named Archie Bowman, who you can find his stuff on eBay. And yeah, very affordable, great quality, and so far everything is brilliant. On the ball, and a simple purchase on eBay of all places to get these brilliantly handmade, high quality, historically accurate English longbows. And so really, really happy, really excited for this. Got the string. Ooh, that is a thicker cord. So have a look at this. I'll come in closer. You'll notice that this isn't just a solid one. He uses kind of a backing of hickory, I believe. But look at how beautiful this shaft is. So the string I showed you before actually wasn't the proper string, and this proper string is even thicker, waxed and everything. All right, so let's pull back lightly to give a feel of the... That's beautiful. All right, I'm definitely gonna be shooting this. I'm gonna get a leather glove, I think. Something like this is a bit too mechanical, but anyway, it'll serve the purposes in the meantime. Actually, not yet. Oh, this is only a two-finger one, though. See how we go. So of course I've ordered far more historically accurate arrows than this, but they haven't arrived yet, and I do need to send off the big one, the big bow, to Jörg. So in the meantime, I'll just be firing this one here. And so I'll do a two-finger draw because this is one that's meant for two fingers, but I have a feeling I'm gonna be switching to three fingers just because of the heavier draw weight. But in the meantime, we'll do two fingers and we'll give this one a fire. You see that? Right in the heart. Now, of course, I wasn't aiming for the heart. I was just aiming for center of mass, but I'll take that, okay? And again, this is me focusing on instinctual archery. And I actually think I'm not even gonna need to practice with my normal bow because that was very comfortable and easy, the fire. I actually reckon I could do the 100-pound if this one was that easy. But I'll try another again. And when I say try the 100-run, not to do 10 arrows, just to feel the weight. But anyway, let me fire a few more because that was fun. Now, usually I would actually have something better than just wood behind the target. I'm gonna buy foam and everything so I won't ruin the arrows. But my proper arrows haven't arrived and I don't mind sacrificing these just to be able to fire this a couple of times and get a feel for it. And so again, this is 60 to 80-pound. Ooh, in the gut. There's a lot of artistic sources, historical sources that show people using war bows. These are English artistic sources, not English, European medieval, what I mean, with the arrow being housed on the side. And the assumption is that this is an artistic mistake. The reason being is that there is an assumption that the best way to shoot a medieval war bow is with the arrow on the left side. If that was the case, it is strange that there are so many medieval artworks depicting the arrow being notched on the right side of the bow. Now, I'm perfectly aware that there are other styles of archery that come from other cultures that have a much more prominent practice of notching the arrow on the right side of the bow, Mongolian horse archery being a very common one. But I'm not talking about other cultures in this instance. I'm talking about medieval longbow war bow. And when it comes to the medieval war bow, it does seem like the practice of notching the arrow on the right side of the bow just simply is ignored in modern day reenactment and anyone who wants to learn medieval war bow. Again, the idea that shooting a medieval war bow with the arrow on the left side has become so ingrained that I have literally come across modern day archers claim that these artistic depictions of showing the arrow being shot on the other side of the bow are artistic mistakes and that it wasn't done historically. This is why I think that's incorrect. The attention to detail in many of these artworks are extremely high. When I say extremely high, you'll notice backup arrows being held in the belt or something like this. And the other big thing is the stance. Now, if you want to know something that's very contrary to historical or English, when I say historical, war bow archery compared to modern day target archery is the stance. These bows are a lot heavier. And so this is something I haven't even developed yet. I was shooting just basically shoulder strength. When you get up to the really heavy ones and shooting consistently, you'll notice, and we see this in say Joe Gibbs in Todd's video. Have a look at his stance when he fires. The thing is so hard to pull back. He is activating all his back muscles and is doing this kind of lean forward thing like so. Well, guess what we see in historical artwork? That exact same stance. The artists were so familiar with archery or they had seen archers, historical archers, right? Medieval historical archers firing enough bows to know the proper stance to depict them in when they were painting them. So if they have that such attention to detail, you really think they're going to get the side that the arrow is housed on wrong. And we see both sides, left side and right side historical archery. But in these particular instances, we see the arrow being housed on this side with such attention to detail in every other aspect. And so to impose a modern mindset that we get from modern day target archery and say, that's just a mistake. Because even in modern day examples when people are depicting modern day target archery, there are examples of people showing the arrow on the wrong side of the bow. And that can be far more due to the person who is, you know, making the artwork being unfamiliar with archery so much so that they put the arrow on the wrong side when depicting modern day target archery. Because modern day target archery, the universal standard with only a couple of exceptions is always on the left side of the bow. But in medieval times, archery was far more common, okay? And the average lay person would be far more familiar with it. And so the chances that this artist who got so much right in his attention to detail where the arrows are being held on the body, the stance of the archer, that he's gonna make such a rudimentary mistake as to get the side of the bow that the arrow is housed on incorrect is utterly ridiculous. And it's posing a modern mindset onto historical concepts, ideas, and in this instance, historical medieval archery. Additionally, the sheer number of medieval artworks that are depicting the arrow on the right side of the bow dramatically increases the likelihood that this was a real practice. Also, if this was just an artistic mistake, it is a mistake that is happening way too often. But if this was a mistake, the artists were actually completely unaware which side of the bow the arrow should be resting on. The reason we would then assume why they're depicting the arrow on the right side of the bow is so it faces the viewpoint of the actual artwork. So you're looking at it and you have a clear shot of the arrow. If they knew nothing about archery, it would be an arbitrary decision or something that they're making based on the aesthetic view of the image. But this picture here contradicts that notion completely because we see two sets of archers facing in different directions at a central target. My goodness, I feel sorry for that guy. But on the left side, we see archers holding their bow with the arrow on the right side. Yet on the right side of this picture where the archers are facing the opposite direction, the arrows are still on the right side of the bow being shown behind the bow, not in front. This is absolute evidence that the artist is placing the arrow on the right side of the bow intentionally and is accurately depicting it regardless of which way the archer is facing. When we're looking at the archer from the front or behind, the arrow is consistently on the right side. This means it is absolutely intentional. It's not arbitrary. There's no aesthetic position which they feel the arrow should go in the artwork so it's presented to the viewer. The artist is intentionally placing the arrow on the right side of the bow regardless of which direction the archer is facing. And I mean, just have a look at the other accurate details that are on this bow. The artist is accurately showing both the sapwood and the heartwood of these longbows. The clothing is all completely accurate in varying different styles. The additional weapons. Look, there's a dagger there that's fully accurate as well. The windlass on the crossbow, the brocades being worn by the cavalry men in the background. This is an artwork that has specific attention to detail including the side in which the arrow rests on the bow. And in my opinion, is a very accurate visual depiction of a medieval scene. Medieval archers in many instances, not in every instances, I won't even say in most instances, but in many instances shot their bows with the arrows resting on the right side. And unfortunately, this is a practice that I myself have not seen recreated in reenactment. If you know of any instances, please do share them in the comments below. I personally think it should be done more prominently to give a more accurate representation of what medieval archery was like. I want to explore what are the pros and cons of loosing an arrow from this side of the bow and how accurate you can get with it. And also same with back quiver, because there's another thing, back quivers are depicted in historical archery as well. And there's the idea that back quivers were never used and even Lars Andersen has done, been a poet perpetuating that myth. But if it's shown in historical artwork and the artists have such attention to detail and they're familiar with archery far more, that's not an artistic mistake in my mind. They're actually reflecting something very real that was done historically. And so instead of trying to contradict the evidence, let's actually see if it's viable through experimental archeology. And so I'm shooting in a way that is more natural to me. I've used bows ever since I was a kid. And of course I've always fired, you know, this way on the left side. So I will experiment, try and let one loose on the right side. But this time I'm gonna see, because what I'm doing differently with this is that I'm not pulling to a set draw position. I'm trying to use instinctual archery where just by my experience and feel, get an idea of where the arrow will go. Again, it's very interesting because this type of target, a person, is a lot easier to hit than a bullseye. Now, if there was a bullseye, say, right in the center, I would have missed every time, but I'm not aiming for bullseye. I'm aiming for essentially a person. My first miss. Let's see what, I think that went right through the plywood. Let's have a look. Yes, these arrows are not made to handle high impacts like that from a 60 to 80 pound bow. Now that's thin plywood, went straight through, but snapped it like a twig. Okay, so I'll do two more. One, this next one, I wanna draw back further. Okay, so this should be an 80 pound draw as opposed to, the other ones were probably closer to 60 pound with the draw length I was pulling to. So this one, I'm gonna try and pull all the way back to my ear. Missed again. But in terms of drawing back all the way to the ear, not a problem. So this is actually a very comfortable starting off draw weight for me. And as to the 100 pound one, well, it's wrapped up so nicely and I'm lazy that it's perfect to send off to Jörg as is. So I'm not gonna open it up. It's ready to be packed off, sent off, but that means you'll be able to see me loosing a 100 pound one when I receive it back from Jörg with the Instant Legolas. If you're wondering why I'm short of breath, remember, recovering from surgery guys, gosh. But I'm gonna do one more and I'm gonna shoot from the opposite side. I've never even tried loosing a bow like this, okay? And so I wanna practice, get more proficient at it. And I expect this is gonna go wild because one of the things, with a traditional bow like this, there's no window cutout. And so if you're trying to line it up directly, it's gonna be offset no matter what side the arrow is housed on. So see how it points like that? And usually the instinctive way or the way that people do when they first pick up bows is to line up the string with the shaft and the arrow, when you're looking at it aiming, it's coming in like an angle. And so it actually takes a lot of practice to compensate for the angle because usually you'll overshoot or undershoot and it goes wild. So it takes a bit of practice just to get the instinctive knowledge of where to correct the angle when you're housing the bow just on the left side. And so I expect this is gonna go wild because again, never fired a bow like this before and I have no idea how to compensate for the different angle or gosh, even. So this is gonna be fun. Pretty awkward for me. And so we can compare this shot with when I practice and show you next time. Cause even holding it there like that is a lot different. I just noticed something. To just balance the arrow, I needed to lean. Instead of leaning the bow this way, I had to lean the bow that way. By leaning the bow that way, I was engaging all my back muscles and it was easier to draw back than the other side. That's actually really significant. When I'm housing it here, I can lean it in and just use nothing but my shoulder like that. And it puts a lot more strain on my shoulder. This is actually really significant is leaning that bow this way, drawing it from this angle, I am instantly engaging my whole back and it's easier to draw. Cause that's an instant advantage I'm finding just from trying to pull it back, not even firing yet. And so this actually might be an additional point of evidence that we can accumulate as to why historical medieval archers fired on this side, not all the time, but there's artwork showing that it was done and perhaps it could have been a training method where you're getting someone new who has never fired a bow this heavy, perhaps having them house the arrow on the right side of the bow, helps train them to use the right muscle groups to be able to fire much heavier bows than just this. And once they train and are using it right, then they can do it. And so let's actually fire one off. Gosh, even housing and getting it stable is a technique in and of itself that I need to train up and figure out. Maybe using three fingers will be easier. And by the way, this is why I'm doing two because notches like this are a modern thing. The arrows that are coming, that I've ordered have smaller notches and holding it on the string, having a finger over and under helps out with that a lot. Not saying everyone has to do it that way. I'm not saying everyone, yeah, reenacting officer, I got to do it that way, but I'm finding it better. I wonder, but anyway, so, just trying to hold it onto the string. Like I said, there's a challenge in and of itself, but okay, here we go. As I predicted, I missed completely. Again, trying to figure out the angle that is sitting on the bow. I personally feel, this is just from my own anecdotal experience, it's easier to do pinpoint accuracy with the arrow on the conventional modern archery kind of side. And when you're trying to hit the center of a bullseye, you probably, you want every advantage you can to get as pinpoint accuracy as possible. But if you're going to be, you know, loosing, you know, firing, shooting bows with instinctual aiming, I noticed that once I get it down, it's going to be very similar to firing on the other side because I'm not doing pinpoint. I'm not trying to line up the arrow exactly. I'm feeling the angle of the bow compared to the string because even just doing it like this, right? You can feel holding it out, holding it in, angling like that. You get an instinctive kind of intuition as to where the arrow is going to fly when you loose it. You don't necessarily need to line up the arrow because you just learn how to do it with how the bow is being held in the angle compared to the string in the hand. But of course the arrow helps as well. So that's actually, it's going to be very cool. And I'm looking forward to using this more, building up to the big hundred pounder. 80 pound was really, really comfortable for me. So thank you for watching. I hope you've enjoyed. And of course I hope to see you again. So until that time, farewell.