New Year Shooting at the Medieval Butts

[Rod]

How do you know if I cant match it,

   I don't agree with you Rod so lets leave it there, I not going to argue with you.

The short answer is that I don't know what you can score.
Your name was not mentioned.

If you find a hat on the street that you don't like, why pick it up and put it on?

Rod.

[triton]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEFGvAtt9Es

[adb]

 

[Phil Rees]

Scores can be quite misleading. I prefer the BLBS method of counting hits rather than the actual value of the score, so I,ve looked back through my own records to see my results from York rounds in private practice.
Best 2 way score for a single York round 504 with 127 hits
Best one way single York 502 with 138 hits
I've always considered the latter to be the better shooting

[Rod]

You're probably right that in long shooting spread and the location of the centre of group tells us more than, dare I say, the occasional lucky arrow that bumps up the score on the day.
But it is also true that the more we practice, the luckier we get.
(If we practice enough).

But enough about "target shooting". 

Rod.

[Rod]

I don't know how you can possibly say that, If azncourt was fought in a wood with the french no more than 30 yards away then yep NFAS Field shooting is the way to go, unfortunately for you that never happened it all ways started at a distance, the English were expected to land an arrow within a group of calvery, medevil archers were professional and much better than we can hope to be, to them 220 Yds would be like 30 is to us,

You must have seen the video of Simon hitting a road sign at 200yds go to him and say it was a fluke,

Which video do you refer to Ian, I am aware of two versions of this, one I looked at again today which shows one arrow in the mark, another which finishes with three in the mark.
Look again and tell me exactly what you see.
In fact post links here to these clips.

Rod.

[Ian.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR0pvYkZy7A

this shows him land 3 or 4 close and 1 hit, if he did that all day like they will on the 10th then we shouldl get some results

[Phil Rees]

I suppose you know who Horace Ford is, If anyone liked the man so much as to use his name then they will also
be very much a target archer and will not understand the medieval bow, which is obviously why he has to pick at the
Medieval Butts name.

With the exception of flight shooting, isn't ALL archery "target archery"

[Ian.]

Im not arguing with you,

[Phil Rees]

Im not arguing with you,

Ian ..I'm not asking you to argue with myself or anyone.I'm merely pointing out that with the exception of flight shooting, all archery is target archery ..... even ... shooting at medieval butts or hay bales whatever the case may be

[Rod]

All archery is target archery in the sense that we usually shoot at a mark, even if it is a patch of hair on a game animal, but obviously not all archery is "Target Archery" in the commonly understood sense of shooting repeatedly at fixed distances for hits or points.

Ian, that is one of the versions I have seen.
I have long considered Simon to be perhaps the best at shooting in the heavy bow and have a great deal of respect for his ability.

I'm sure you are right about the shoot on the tenth, anyone who can keep that close will hit it sooner rather than later. I am also sure that Simon understands the place of luck in long shooting as distinct from close shooting.

Having worked for TV myself on more than one occasion I have a healthy degree of mistrust for the media.
In this case we can see that the shaft striking the target enters at a significantly lower angle than than those in the ground.
This is not a comment on Simon's shooting, but upon the practices of the media. It does not detract from the pleasure of seeing him shoot a heavy bow with this degree of control.

Rod.

[Jaro]

To be finicky bastard - when he shows the bow in close up and speaks about heartwood and sapwood its as I strongly suspect Chris Boyton yew hickory backed bow.  So much for television.

J.

[Ian.]

To be finicky bastard - when he shows the bow in close up and speaks about heartwood and sapwood its as I strongly suspect Chris Boyton yew hickory backed bow.  So much for television.

J.

Haha i saw that on he close up

It should be the single growth ring hickory is good in tension and the heartwood in compression

[Phil Rees]

I think you'll find that both those bows were made by the late Roy King

[Yeomanbowman]

I wish this event every possible success, and hope that it grows and introduces many many more people to shooting bigger bows at longer, more challenging distances.

Thanks for the sentiment
I agree that it would have been even more evocative if we had been able to shoot at historical butts but as Yewboy succinctly points out it does not affect the martial aspect.  After all an arrow in the ‘gold’ now is just  yellow ink but does that make the shot any worse?  Let’s face it; you’re not really Horace Ford either!!!  It is worth remembering that Bronze Age tumuli have been known to have been pressed into service as a shooting butt so I think the pragmatic nature of our construction is quite in keeping with the medieval mindset.  Nowadays, rare surviving examples of mediaeval butts are scheduled ancient monuments and getting English Heritage/Cadw to agree to us deconstructing the outer surface to remove stones, ensuring no public right away, ensuring adequate infrastructure and many other logistical issues such as insurance would be, we feel nigh on impossible at worst and extremely difficult at best.  If anyone knows different please PM me and I’d love to be able to do it. 
Rod makes an interesting point about the angle of the blunts shown on the famous Luttrell Psalter illustration and the distance that such an angle indicates assuming it is accurately portrayed.  I understand that many villages had only one butt and that there was no universal protocol for shooting and scoring, which seems to be a Victorian obsession.

Jeremy