Building the wood arrow...Part 1....Shooting technique

    A while back I wrote about the shooting technique of the Hill style and how it relates to wood arrow spine.  I've tried to expound on the benefits of shooting a Hill style longbow with the bent arm, low wrist, fluid and naturally relaxed shot sequence.  These are more lessons from Hill and others about how this all works to help your shooting be as simple and accurate as it can be.

    All these lessons will be for a right-handed shooter, as that is what I am and will inherently default to in my thoughts and words.

    This first lesson on building a good wood arrow to shoot out of your Hill style longbow has much to do with how the arrow reacts coming out of the bow at release.  John Schulz told me that Hill taught him about spine, and Hill stated that a "stiffer arrow is easier to shoot".  Schulz explained that Hill said that a stiffer spined arrow will fly up and left as it comes off the arrow shelf and a weaker arrow will fly low and right.  Remember that these lessons are coming from the standpoint of non-centershot bows.  Hill said that as the arrow flexes around the bow, the stiffer arrow will stay in the shooter's vision in the entirety of it's flight.  If the arrow is weaker, it will temporarily be behind the bow as it flies through paradox and it takes a bit for the eyes and mind to pick up it's flight.  Small nuances for sure, but it was important to a shooter of Hill's caliber.

     What is an interesting lesson about the stiff wood arrow is found originally in Robert Elmer's book "Archery", and later written about in the Western Bowhunter magazine by Dan Quillian as I referenced in an earlier blog. Elmer was a national archery champ many times over, shooting all wood longbows and wood arrows.  He was well regarded in his field and his life span overlapped with Hill's. In testing, Elmer found that using a hand-held bow with a non-rigid form, the pressure of the arrow being forced against the bow as the string moved forward, would slightly push the bow to the off-side.  The stiffer the arrow, the more it would push against the bow.  The heavier the shaft, also, the more the bow would be moved to the side.  This small movement of the bow to the right (remember...right hand shooter) resulted in the arrow clearing the bow better and somewhat negated a lot of the effect of the stiff arrow flying to the left.  In essence, the bow was dynamically being made more "centershot" with this effect.  Elmer tested his theories against arrows being shot while held in rigid shooting machines, or being held in-hand against rigid supports.  Every time the bow was held in a rigid manner, the arrow would fly further to the left, and every time the bow was held in a relaxed hand and bent arm and wrist and allowed to move a little at release, the arrow would fly to the center of the target.

      Elmer deduced that a softly held bow (read relaxed and fluid) would shoot a stiffer arrow to the mark on a much straighter line than one shot from a rigidly held bow.  He found that he could shoot a variety of arrow spines to the center, with consistency.  Because why?

      The stiffer-spined arrows pushed the bow out of the way by force, and the softer-spined bent around the bow more and all would go through various oscillations of paradox but all would shoot the line to the target and end up in the center. What a novelty in thinking compared to today's high-tech world of tuning arrows and bows!  What did those old archers know that we don't today?  How beautiful is simplicity!  A litter stiffer arrow shooting the line just as well as a little weaker arrow because the shooting form allowed it to happen.  Conversely, with today's modern teaching of holding the bow straight out, with a rigidly straight arm, and drawing the bow with maximum extension and maximum back tension to get as long a draw length as possible, will result in that bow that doesn't move much when the arrow is trying to push it to the side, and that will require a weaker arrow and more perfect form because the range of well-shooting arrows spines is much smaller.

     If Elmer used a more dense, heavier arrow material, it pushed the bow further to the side, which is obvious due to the mass arrow weight.  He found that some wood species would shoot a larger variety of spines than other woods...this was due to the heavier mass weight of the arrow pushing the bow to the side compared to the lighter mass weight arrow materials.  However, one thing was consistent.  The arrows all had to go through the "archer's paradox" of the oscillation and flexing of the arrow as it made its way to the target.  This paradox was an accepted part of shooting an arrow.  He didn't need to shoot an arrow through a paper sheet, or into a bale at super close range to see if the arrow was tuned.  If the arrow flew along the line of sight from eye, along the shaft to the target, then the arrow was the proper spine.  How it got out of the bow could vary a bit based on arrow spine, or release and it's didn't matter too much.  What mattered was the arrow flying to the target it was aligned with.  Hill approached arrow tuning and shooting in much the same way.  Schulz said he was "pretty sure" that Howard never shot through any sheets of paper to tune, and neither did he.  By "pretty sure" which was said tongue in cheek, Schulz meant never to his knowledge and he wasn't taught by Hill to do it either.

     Elmer and Hill shot arrows at targets at very long ranges compared to what bowhunting archers...or most archers for that matter...do nowadays.  The target scene of the American and York and Field Archery shoots demanded good accuracy up to 80 yards.  I think those old masters knew a little bit about arrow tuning.  

    I like to watch slow motion footage of Olympic caliber archers today, shooting arrows at the 40 yard marks.  I love to see that properly tuned arrow flexing its way downrange to the center of the gold and realizing that if I was to stick a sheet of paper at the wrong point along the path of the arrow, I would get any variety of "wrong" paper tears, or other indications of wrong arrow tune.  Bare shaft and paper tuning is catching the arrow flight at a point where the arrow is going straight...between oscillations.  Basically, the smaller the oscillations, inherently the better the tune.  However, if the arrow is going downrange straight to the target, does it matter how large or small those oscillations are?  Is one easier to shoot than the other?  Or are we just proverbial dogs chasing our tails to get that perfect arrow flight with minimal oscillations, all the while forever fending off inevitable target panic because our shooting form or release isn't perfect or consistent enough to make it all work? 

    Hill said in testing that a 27" arrow had the best dynamics for the best flight.  I'm guessing he did some testing in his wind tunnel experiments, or perhaps just through experience.  By the way, Schulz told me that Hill was a good enough shot, that he "knew from shooting" that a right wing fletched arrow would fly about 12" to the right when compared to the flight of a left wing fletched arrow....at 100 yards.  Hill regularly shot the wand, and I'd guess he knew a little of which he spoke.  Schulz also said many times, that the best shooting he witnessed from Hill...on multiple occasions, was Hill shooting six arrows, with a rhythm of an arrow every three seconds, and all arrows going into the center of the end view of a hay bale at 100 yards.  That's quite some shooting and to me, behooves me paying attention to any lessons this guy has for me to improve my shooting.

    But back to the 27" arrow.  To Hill that meant that the arrow tip of the blunt was 27", not back of point.  He did allow a little extra length with broadhead arrows for the broadhead to clear his finger.  And there are plenty of photos showing Hill with some arrow left hanging in front of the bow.  We don't know how many of those still photos were staged where he might not be pulling the bow all the way to his normal anchor in order to get a better face angle for the photo.  Suffice it to say, he was not shooting arrows that were 3" or 4" longer than his draw in order to have an arrow of proper tune.

       If we start our arrow making series with the premise that our shooting form will be consistently fluid and relaxed, with a bent bow arm, bent wrist, bow held snugly with the bottom two fingers but not a death grip and a fluidly dynamic anchor and release,  we will be realizing that our arrows will fly to the mark without the stress of tuning or micro tuning and worrying about exactly proper spine or perfect release of the string.   We will realize that we can shoot upwards of 10-15# spine range out of our bow and all the arrows will end up straight into the target.  Like Schulz wrote...it's generally the archer that needs tuning, not the bow or arrow.  

     So let's make sure your form is tuned up and is properly Hill style and all the following lessons on wood arrow making will fall into place and you Hill style shooters, or you readers that are wanting to understand this part of the Hill style, will once again realize the utter simplicity of the Hill style and how emotionally and physically freeing it is to embrace all this style has to offer, and how it will allow you to

     Shoot Straight.