The bow, the arrow and 'you'

Let us think about it. The bow has been around for several thousand years. Composed of a simple piece of wood, sinew for a string, tied at each end when the bow was bent. When was it invented? Nobody knows for sure, but estimates range from 10 to 20 thousand years ago. 

The Bible speaks of bows in several places, even of shooting animals for meat. Also used in warfare, the Israelites used the weapon to fight against their enemies. These simple but effective bows protected them, fed them and kept their animals from predators. No wheels, no cables and no over-draws. For these thousands of years this simple stick and string was used all over the world. 

Various cultures used variations of this weapon. The Turks used short recurves for horse fighting. 

These nomadic tribes were the scourge of the land and men like Genghis Kahn wiped out the land for hundreds of miles. The sword and the spear were also in use but the principle weapon was the bow. It was safer to shoot from a distance then to fight hand-to-hand combat. 

Bows were used like this through the middle ages into the 13-17th centuries. These bows could pierce armor and wipe out hundreds of men in little time. The Romans used them; the French, Germans, Chinese and English were famous for their prowess with the bow and arrow. 

Today they are finding Egyptians and Chinese writings on walls of caves and monuments of humans shooting wooly mammoths and other animals with these weapons. Arrows made of straight and not so straight wood with goose or duck or any feathers they could find would be tied to these shafts. Some had no points at all, just sharpened to a point on the tip. Others with flint rocks hammered into a not so sharp wedge, tied to the split-wood end. 

From the caveman to the American Indian and African pygmies, they used these crude arrows and some cultures still do. These weapons were of mass destruction wiping out hundreds of the enemies with a single arsenal of several hundred arrows flying all at once. You have seen it at the movies and that is exactly how it worked.

The English in the 14th century made it mandatory that all males over the age of 14 years practice archery on Sunday afternoons. It was their main defense against armed conquering armed forces. In one French-English battle, the waxed bowstring made the difference between winning and losing in a rainstorm. 

The Thompsons in the 180s and, Saxon Pope and Art Young were inspirations to a young man named Fred Bear. Archery began to catch on and Ben Pearson along with Fred and others showed what a bow with a straight cedar shaft could do. They were impressive. What they passed on to names like Stacey Grocup, G. Fred Asbell, Howard Hill and Byron Furgeson show what even compound shooters cannot do. Not because of a lack of skill but because of their style of shooting. 

Compounds are here to stay and I am glad of it. But let us not forget how they evolved. When we loose a carbon arrow traveling at 330+ feet per second or a cedar arrow doing 120 feet per second, you are part of a heritage that goes back over ten thousand years. It is not the bow or even the arrow — it's the archer.

So as you draw back your bow, no matter what kind you are shooting, remember you are also turning back the clock and becoming part of history. Historians claim that the invention of the bow is only second to the invention of fire. Become that tradition. Become that feeling, become that history — do not keep it — pass it on to others so the history of archery will continue another ten thousand years. It's up to you.