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What does it mean to be a traditional archer?

9K views 45 replies 31 participants last post by  stevelong 
#1 ·
Hello trad talk

A little about myself, I am a barebow turned olympic recurve archer and I've been shooting for awhile now and have come to love the sport.

However, with the amount of time I've been shooting I have come to realize that what I thought was one and the same (traditional archery and barebow) are not actually the same thing.

I always thought that traditional archery just meant shooting without a sight but after shooting with a club full of trad shooters I discovered a whole other culture in archery, and that "traditional archery" has a much more deep and complicated meaning than what is presented face value.

So my question is, what meaning do traditional archers find in their shooting, and how does it differ from the barebow philosophy***?




***Barebow for me meant that as an archer I shoot to achieve an olympic recurve-like result without the use of sights. Extreme concentration, a method of aiming and excellent shot execution was the priority.
 
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#2 ·
To me, Traditional is just a class you can shoot in at tournaments, beyond that it's just archery. Too many guys adopt this whole "trad" persona in an attempt to preserve a time that never really existed. Guys just shot and hunted with the best equipment available to them, not with some romantic notion of what they were doing. Then along came the compound bow and all of a sudden archery became "Trad" or compound.


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#3 ·
To me, Traditional is just a class you can shoot in at tournaments, beyond that it's just archery. Too many guys adopt this whole "trad" persona in an attempt to preserve a time that never really existed. Guys just shot and hunted with the best equipment available to them, not with some romantic notion of what they were doing. Then along came the compound bow and all of a sudden archery became "Trad" or compound.

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Well said !
Welcome barneygtrguy. Good question.
 
#11 ·
"cults" come in all sizes, shapes and colors. :jk: there is quite a bit of bleeding over/blurring between the disciplines, and there is something to be learned from all of them. consistent form tips from a target archer help a hunter, some ideas on flight bows by Marc St. Louis give me the itch to try in building a hunting bow. i try not to pass up the chance to learn something about anything. my wife says i am "a vast repository of useless knowledge" LOL! useless to HER maybe...:shooting:
 
#31 ·
First, this made me laugh out loud.

Second, please forgive the long post, but I'm going to write this in the style of a "stream of consciousness."

Third, this is my perspective as someone who only recently entered the archery world:

Whenever we define anything, we often use lexical definitions, colloquial usage, or attempt to find the "essence" of a thing by breaking it down to necessity. I think all three of these approaches are evident in this thread, and I'm not sure how confident I am that a resolution will ever be achieved by any of them.

On the one hand, the lexical definitions would likely be derived from the rules of the organization a particular event is being hosted by, whereas the colloquial usage would depend on the particular culture, experiences, or ideals, of the people you ask. As for what it means to be "traditional archery" independent from one's own perspective, I think this would be most difficult to tie down because "traditional archery" may in fact be contingent upon the perspective of the individual or group determining its true nature.

Another approach, though, might be looking at the differences of each style and starting with a broader question - "what necessary conditions need to be met in order for it to be archery?" Once that's answered, we can ask a follow up question like, "how might 'x' being added to my equipment or style of shooting change the conception of archery we have," or maybe, "how does 'x' being added to my equipment or style of shooting fit into our conception of archery?"

If we define archery as a method to kill an opponent (whether it be an adversary or potential food) by firing a long, sharp object from a string tied to a wooden stick, then we can see how things might become opaque.

As a new archer, I was most drawn to the idea of using as little shooting aids as I could, but even that is debatable. I thought that shooting consistently while using a minimal amount of shooting aids meant that I was a better archer since I relied more on "form" than anything else. I've come to recognize that while this rings true in some aspects, certain shooting aids could also help me identify what needs to be corrected in order to shoot even more consistently.

I've also come to realize that "traditional archery" may mean something different entirely; rather than define it by the type of bow used, how might we define it by the objective? If the equipment we use doesn't matter so much as the form and objective, how might that change our perspective?

A longbow shooter can say there's no shelf so it's more traditional than a Hill Bow. A Hill Bow shooter could say there's no additional weights added for stability so it's more traditional than a barebow shooter. A barebow shooter might say they don't use a sight so they are more traditional than an Olympic shooter. Then you have barebow shooters who limit their stabalizer length and may opt to use specific rests and no plungers, or people who enforce keeping the index finger touching the nock for each draw...the list goes on.

TLDR; I think the answer is not looking to what equipment people are using per se, but to determine what conditions need to be met in order for it to be considered archery, then see how the addition or reduction of certain parts of the equipment or style of shooting may change that definition altogether.
 
#13 ·
a lot of "trad" people I have met have sort of an romantic idea of how things were in "the old days" that never happened.
they make it a sin to have an aiming process or seeing anything but the spot they are burning a hole in. (their words, not mine).
actually in the fifties and well into the sixties you either were a bare bow or a sight aided shooter at the tournaments I shot in, mostly field and York/American rounds.
the bare bow guys and gals used all sorts of aids to help their shooting without comment by other archers. there were elevation aiming aids between the shooting line and targets that archers used at almost every tournament. ann hoyt used a paper cup a lot for that and would tell anyone off that touched it.
point is, they all wanted to hit and score all 6 arrows of each end, fixed sight or not. now, somewhere close seems to be the goal for a lot of trad purists.
 
#25 ·
Traditional archery has nothing to do with formal target shooting. It's like what Hank said, it is a style of hunting with a bow. When Schaffer or Wensel made their defensive shots on Lions, they didn't have time for Ann Hoyt's paper cup. But it is on it's way out and is now just a marketing term. Like Muzzle loading used to mean old looking/functioning rifles and buckskins, but is now just a means of selling the largest number of people rifles they don't need to shoot in seasons that they want a chance to score in.

Back in the 60s, that was the period I believe when the US Army tried to improve scores in Vietnam, with their Quick Kill/Skill method of point/instinctive shooting of rifles. Didn't pan out I guess, and modern optics are almost the best of both worlds, but it might indicate that back in the day the whole question of how best to address targets wasn't quite as settled on aiming as you suggest. Not to mention the FBI, Bill Jordan, or the Israelis.
 
#14 · (Edited)
My opinion on traditional archery is that it encompasses all sorts of bows without the bells and whistles. It doesn't matter to me if you shoot with a compound bow or a stick bow. Getting your body and mind in the right place to make a good shot at any circumstance is what makes archery, traditional. If you are hunting, shooting medieval Frenchmen, or target shooting you always want to achieve your goal. Killing your target.

Some traditional archers seem to think that shooting the English longbow is the only way. Every culture has it's own archery style. They are of course traditional in their purest form. It doesn't matter to me if the traditional/cultural bow is made from modern things like carbon of glass fiber.
 
#15 ·
"Tradition means not picking up the ashes, but passing on the flame."

~ Ricarda Huch


:shooting:

John
 
#19 ·
This is a very personal subject that has been breeched... To me there is really no set nomenclature as "traditional archery." or "compound archery," It is all archery just as doing the Australian crawl or the dog paddle is all swimming. Just a different way of doing the same thing.
The crossbow is different from either of those methods as the X-bow is held in a horizontal position but it is still considered archery. The similarity is that they all send a pointed shaft toward the intended target. And I insist that the X-bow is also "traditional" in the sense that it was in use at the same time as the long bow. The difference is that those X-bows didn't have all the "bells & whistles" on them that are available today.
As far as "sights" are concerned, well let's just say that I, personally consider them a "crutch" and that I will not use them for as long as I'm able to get along without them.
I really have nothing against those using a sight or truly the use of a sighting method I believe that every archer uses a sighting method of some kind be it gapping or instinctive the pile of the arrow or some "spot" on the target at which to launch a shaft.
To repeat, it's all archery in one form or another and it is an individual sport you choose what is best to help you hit your target.
Personally I enjoy the "romance" of the bow & arrow and it is that non-existent "fact" that keeps me doing my archery thing!
 
#20 ·
If you run with guys that wear colorful quick dry, athletic style clothes, probably Nike or Under Armour, then you are barebow. If you run with guys that wear a fedora and plaid, or look like they are either coming from, or going to a hunt, you are trad. If you run with guys that dress up in medieval attire then you are a LARP'er. Check out my avatar. I am definitely barebow. That's Nike, buddy.
 
#22 ·
This something I had to clarify just this week.
I intend to shoot at a club competition a few hours from home next month and they only have four classes to enter.
These are Male compound, Female compound, Traditional and junior.
As soon as I saw the rules I contacted the club to make sure I could shoot my current ILF bare bow rig in their Trad class.
Turned out to be fine as trad to them just means anything with no wheels.
Just to make a point and have a laugh at the last NZFAA shoot I attended I shot the Barebow recurve class and won as I was the only one in the class due to every other recurve archer shooting in the recurve unaided class which many of them shouldn't of been in..
Some days it really does pay to know what you are,,,LOL.

John.
 
#23 ·
Me personally, I draw the line at a single string for calling something traditional. I don't have a bias for or against sights, releases, etc., as they have been used to varying degrees and designs for quite some time.

I think a major leap forward in archery was made when pulleys were attached to limbs, and am thankful for the development. However, I don't think a bow with wheels could be called traditional. I have not yet been elected emperor of the world, so I have been unable to enforce this view!!

I see it as a spectrum, with the super short compounds with all their aids and tools and such at one end, and a simple selfbow with natural material strings and tackle at the other. It's all archery, and it's all relative.

There is a fantastic leap forward, though, in available energy when you add wheels, and that is enough, for me, to draw a distinction. It's not wrong or right or anything besides a difference. Tradeoffs, and the assignment of nomenclature to a particular part of that spectrum just helps to identify capability limits. There is a noticeable difference between an osage self bow with rawhide string shooting cane arrows with stone tips and an ILF bow with a modern string shooting the latest micro diameter carbon arrows at 200+ fps, but the difference between those setups, and a compound that is capable of over 300 fps is significant enough to warrant the separation, in my opinion. Is either lesser, or greater? Depends on the shooter. I remember seeing an old indian hit the 40 cold bore dead center, and often see compound shooters struggling to achieve the same. All in all, I enjoy shooting my longbow more than my compound, by far, but I keep the compound so I can still hunt if I haven't had time to maintain the desired level of proficiency with the longbow. Neither is better, or worse, and both are archery. Just different. As far as competition rules, I could care less. I'll shoot where they say my kit falls. I wouldn't even keep score if I didn't have to give my scorecard to someone else to mark it.

Only person I want to shoot better than is my past self. Even then, I fall short as often as not, whether it's a longbow or compound.

I do derive far more personal satisfaction from the more primitive kit than with the modern stuff, whether single string or not. Feel free to disagree. Until I become emperor. Then such transgressions will be punished severely!! As if reading my post wasn't punishment enough.
 
#24 ·
Currently we are at a period where a lot of the guys who defined what traditional was, created the brand, before all the late comers arrived, are either dying or at least retiring; and there is a huge influx of new equipment that isn't compound that wants to shade itself in the tent it didn't create; and there are a lot of people entering the sport who weren't born when the brand was created, or weren't interested in archery at that time. The result is the term is rapidly loosing it's original meaning. But it will live on in some form. If you look at what the US meant when it was founded, and what it stands as today, it's not the same thing, but the US carries on.
 
#26 ·
This from the 50's . . . never again, more's the pity . . .



(Considered one of the most iconic bowhunting photos ever. Fred bear and bob Kelly using the suspension bridge to cross the little delta river Alaska 1959.)

Regards,

John
 
#27 ·
Traditional archery has every thing to do with target archery! Every archer I knew in the fifties and early sixties shot field every week and York or American tournaments when there was a contest nearby, and ALL of them were successful hunters. The big change in attitude came with the flood of former compound archers that turned to recurves and longbows in the 70's that had no touch with any of the history of Archery or knowledge of what Archers really did in the early days. They started a whole different set of expectations based on misunderstandings of films and books written by new "hero's" and embraced lowering the bar for the need to shoot a bow well, under the false idea that a bow is a "short range" weapon with a 20 yard range. It's been stuck there on the internet since then.
 
#30 · (Edited)
#32 ·
I have tried to be a "traditional archer", but must admit I have failed. Two things have held me back from this distinction, I have never, even after studying Superman, been able to burn a hole in a target with my eyes, and targets are so expensive that, even if I could burn holes in them, I simply could not afford archery any longer.
 
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