Hill style shooting form and bow design

     This post is a shallow dive into the nuances of a Hill style / ASL and how a properly made bow will shoot in a forgiving manner using the proper shooting form as promoted by Howard Hill and John Schulz.

     One of the most obvious things one notices when picking up a Hill style longbow is the physically light mass weight.  It's almost wand-like when properly constructed and balanced.  The very essence of this style of bow lends itself to being shot with a fluid Hill style form.  Hearkening back to the earlier blogs saying how one should shoot a Hill style for some time before beginning to tune arrows, this is one of the reasons why and how it pertains to the construction of the bow.  

     The Hill style longbow has a straight or at most, slightly dished grip that will seat itself into the palm of the hand along the base of the thumb.  The thumb joint as Hill described, not the thumb knuckle as has been taught by certain instructors.   This is a couple of photos of a Hill style longbow seated deeply into the hand...notice the thumb rides alongside the handle, and there is a lot of meat of the base of the t thumb as the grip seats deeply into the palm.

    When the bow is seated this deeply into the hand, it can basically be shot with open fingers as the fingers are not needed to keep the bow in place.  However, squeezing a little tighter with the bottom two fingers will keep the bow seated in the hand firmly and puts the pressure against the bones in the arm, and this pressure keeps the bow's lower limb from traveling back towards the shooter as the bow is drawn.  This helps keep the lower limb in proper dynamic tiller.  This seemingly small detail on the grip helps keep a bow's timing correct and that affects the feel of the bow, bow noise and arrow flight.

    If the bow is not squeezed to death because it is seated deeply into the hand, then another overlooked aspect of bow design can come into play.  The light weight, non-centershot handle.

    If a longbow is shown in high speed - slow motion video during the shot, and the arrow can be seen, one will notice that the arrow is flexed into the bow by the pressure of the string moving forward.  Because the Hill style bow is not centershot, the arrow is "thrown" into the bow on an angle.  As the arrow rebounds and flexes away from the bow it begins what is known as "archer's paradox"s which continues and gradually diminishes as the arrow flexes and oscillates downrange.  If an arrow is too stiff, as it is pushed into the bow, it doesn't bend as much and it will clank against the side of the bow and kick to the side and veer to the left (RH shooter).  If the arrow is weak, it will flex too much against the bow and rebound too much and the excess flexing causes the arrow to over bend to the right (RH shooter) as it goes around the bow. This is fairly common knowledge among archers.  However....

    If the bow isn't held stiffly, and the bow arm is flexed and bent, and the wrist is bent downward (due to the straight handle) then the bow can be allowed to move just a bit.  When a stiff arrow is thrown into the bow on the slight angle caused by a non centershot handle, the pressure of the arrow pushing into the bow will cause the bow to be pushed slightly to the side. Not talking about a great amount, but somewhere around 1/16" to 1/8" off line to the side opposite of the shelf.  This will not happen to any measureable extent if the bow is held rigidly in a stiff-arm target shooting form, or even in a shooting machine.   However, there is quite a bit of bow movement that can be measured by a stiff arrow pushing against a softly held bow.  Dan Quillian tested this theory back in the 80's.  He wrote an indepth article series on his findings in the old Western Bowhunter magazine column he authored.  Dan attached a type of seismagraph instrument to his bow and traced the bow movement during the shot, both stiff arm rigid hold and soft arm, soft relaxed hold.  It was eye opening to see how much a bow moved during the shot, being pushed to the side when a proper Hill style shooting form was employed.  Subsequent tests over the years by other archers have shown that a Hill style longbow shot from a shooting maching needs softer spined arrows than one shot by a fluid Hill style shooter.

    So what does this mean?  Well, if you have a light weight, non centershot Hill style longbow and you shoot with a fluid, relaxed, bent bow arm, bent low wrist bow hand, you can shoot stiffer arrows than the guy that shoots with a straight arm, target style form in a heavier handled ASL.  This is proven all the time by serious Hill style devotees versus the modern fad target shooting style being employed by various longbow shooters/teachers.  The stiffer arrow would seem to shoot more to the left (RH shooter)...true, unless it is also pushing the bow to the right.   These two forces will negate each other to some extent and the arrow doesn't need to bend as much around the bow as it would seem.  If the bow arm is held stiff and rigid and straight, the bow isn't allowed to move to the right (RH shooter) so the arrow needs to be weaker to bend around the bow.  Simple huh? 

    This is proven time and again by archers who first pick up a Hill style longbow and immediately go try to tune arrows...they need weak arrows to get good flight...many times the arrow spine is weaker than the bow weight by 5 or more pounds.  If they continue to shoot their bow and get used to it and learn to shoot more fluid in the Hill style, they will learn that they need stiffer arrows out of the same bow...why? because their shooting form is getting more Hill like and the bow is allowed to move in the hand and it is allowed to be forced to the side by the pressure of the arrow.  Most shooters proficient in using the Hill style of shooting can shoot arrows 5 - 10# over the weight of the bow.

    I read once of one of the old time longbow shooters from the 1940s bemoaning the issue of the "current" trend of archers obsessing about tuning their arrows to great extent to their all wood longbows...instead of doing like the old guys of getting a stiff arrow and learning to shoot it.  I guess this was his way of tuning his equipment.  Let the stiff arrow push the bow out of the way, and the arrow will go where it is aimed.

   This is a pretty intense post, give it some thought if you've never done so to this kind of information.  It is something that staunch long-time Hill style / ASL shooters have known and accepted that works, without maybe really knowing why...and information that the new wave of archers forcing their target shooting methods on the Hill style / ASL  have yet to realize.  But it's all part of the Hill style.  Until next time,

Shoot straight.