Archery Bows & Gear

Archery is one the oldest sport as well as survival skill known to man with archery bows and arrows being its main tools. Today, it is practiced in professional and amateur competitions as well as the recreational sport of bow hunting.

Archery Bows

Although many advances have been made in the materials used and the construction details applied on archery bows and arrows, the basic design from the days of ancient man remains remarkably similar. All bows used in archery consist of a strong and yet flexible string attached to equally elastic limbs with two categories into which these archery tools fall into: first, bows drawn by directly pulling on the string and, second, bows using a mechanism to pull on the string. It should also be emphasized that directly drawn archery bows can also be sub-divided into several categories based on the limb construction method (self bows, composite bows and laminated bows); the shape of the limbs (simple straight and recurve bows); and the cross-section of the limb (classic longbow and flatbow). Other forms of archery bows are the cable-backed bows, the compound bows and the crossbows, all of which are still in use among hunters and athletes today.

Archery Arrows

The complement of the bows is, of course, the arrow. Like the bow, its design has changed little since early man first learned to make and use it for a wide variety of purposes. The most common form of arrow used for modern-day archery bows consists of a shaft with an attached arrow at the front while the back has the fletchings and nock; any variations in the style are intended to improve on target capability. Modern-day arrows are made from a wide variety of materials including wood, aluminum, fiberglass and carbon composites.

 Target Archery

Then and now, archery is practiced in two basic settings. First, target archery is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Tir à l’Arc (F.I.T.A) and is the only archery form allowed during the Olympic Games. This is a highly-competitive sport where athletes take aim at a target from a specified distance. Second, field archery involves shooting at specified targets set up in various parts of an outdoor venue particularly the woods. This way, the experience of hunting is enjoyed by the participants.

 Archery Accessories

Of course, there is also archery accessories available that make the sport so much more enjoyable, not to mention right on target. The most important of all the archery accessories where serious archers are concerned is the scopes, which are similar to the sight scopes used in other target sports like paintball and which are also mounted on the archery bows. These scopes have features like 2nd and 3rd axis adjustments, fiber optics and bubble levels, all of which are designed to make it easy for the archer to be right on target.

 Archery Hunting & Fishing

When going on a bow hunting expedition, the best archery bows to use are those with draw weights of 50 pounds-force or more while the arrows should have masses of more than 900 grains. Said bows and arrows have sufficient power to hunt large animals.

Practicing your archery skills on the field may not be possible or you may have little funds to purchase all the necessary archery accessories from the archery bows to the arrows. In this case, we suggest playing with online archery games that test your skills in target shooting. These are fun games, indeed.