How to Shoot a Longbow

There are many different ways to shoot a longbow and as long as you're consistent, meaning you do the same thing every time, you can learn to shoot well with almost any form. But I build bows for hunting and I've developed a way of shooting that has made me very successful in the woods and I just want to share with you a couple of tips that might help you be a little bit more successful. The first thing is the way that I hold the bow. I like to keep a really loose grip on the bow so that I don't accidentally torque it side to side with my front hand. So I'll put the handle in the crook of my thumb and then I loosely grip my fingers on the outside of the handle and this also allows me to hold my extra arrows in my bow hand. Then I put one finger above the arrow and two below and the next thing that's really important is having a consistent anchor point, which is where you stop drawing the bow back. With these bows, how far you draw the bow has a huge impact on the arrow flight. So in order to have a consistent arrow flight, I anchor bone to bone. So my thumb bone goes in my jaw and my pointer fingertip touches my orbital bone right underneath my eye. So I draw back until I can get both of those solid anchor points and you'll notice that the arrow is just below my eye. So I look down the arrow at the target and because these bows are not center shot, these are primitive bows, so we're having to deal with archer's paradox, which just means that the arrow has to go around the bow in order to get to the target. So the arrow is going to fly slightly left of where you're looking at, but I find it to be very natural just to move the arrow a little bit to the right so I can see the full target and then once I know how far off center I have to hold with each bow that I shoot, the only other thing I have to judge for is distance, which just comes down to practice. Just a couple more small things. If you find that you're hitting your wrist with your string a lot, that means that you're too sideways to your target and when you're shooting a bow you want more of a boxer's stance and the string comes across your body. That way your body is out of the way of the string and you also have more muscles to pull the bow back with, so you can draw a heavier bow that way. If you're too square, then your draw length shortens dramatically and then you have much less of the bow working and throwing the arrow forward, which would mean you're shooting a much slower, less powerful arrow. For dealing with target panic or buck fever when I'm in the woods, I say a mantra so that I have a loop of thinking that's always the same whether I'm shooting at targets or animals, and that's I aim with my eyes, I draw back to my anchor point, and then I think about my release, and with my release I'm just trying to roll off the fingertips and have my hand come straight back past my ear. So it goes aim, anchor, release, aim, anchor, release, and then you should be able to hit exactly what you're aiming for. You don't want to leave a bow strung all the time, especially if it's completely wooden because it'll lose power over time. So I'm going to show you how to string it and unstring it without any equipment. So all I do is I take the bottom end of the bow and I put it in the arch of my foot. I grab the handle and then take this hand and then push on the tip. I'm bending the bow just like if the string was pulling on it, and then when I do that I lift the string up and slide it onto the string grooves at the end, and I do the same thing to take it back off. Brace height is the distance between your handle and the string, and if you find that you're hitting your wrist really low then that means your brace height is too low, and so what you do is you actually take the string off and you twist it. The strings that I make counterclockwise makes them shorter, which would raise brace height. If you end up with a brace height that's really tall, you're just losing speed and performance out of your bow. So typically I just keep try and keep them as low as I can without it hitting my wrist and making sure that my feathers clear the arrow shelf. This brace height is slightly too low for these fletchings. I should tighten the string so that it sits right about there. One more thing you might want to invest in if you shoot a lot and you notice that it's hurting your fingers is a finger glove, a three-finger glove, or a shooting tab. This just protects your fingers from the string, but personally I don't actually use one. I've shot 70 pound bows without them. I just have calluses from shooting, and in my experience it only takes a week or two to develop really nice calluses between your fingers from shooting. Just don't overdo it in the beginning. The last thing that I'll say about bow maintenance is that it's better to leave it horizontal on a rack like this, or hanging off the string, than it is to actually set it in the corner because it'll actually warp over time under its own weight. That's pretty much everything you need to know. So get out there, start practicing, get in the woods, and see if you can provide some meat for your family. It's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, and I'm so glad I got into this. Yes! Yes! Yes! That's pretty freaking cool. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!