I know where Hillbilly is coming from with his comments on D bows and the English "mystique".I made a post about Timucuans and Caloosa Indians penetrating mail with common cane arrows with sharpened wooden points and was totally ignored.Even though the thread was on penetration of heavy poundage bows.I just chalked it up to everybody wasn't really discussing heavy bows ,really English heavy bows.
JD,There really is not a disavantage with a short bow as far as cast and power.If you are hunting targets or circles in the dirt,maybe so.But after an arrow makes a complete pass through shot and the animal falls down it doesn't really matter how far the arrow goes.I also think there are a few Flight shooters that might disagree also.
You said,"In terms of power and accuracy,English longbows are pretty brilliant"Well, Like you said you might need to explore and try some new things. 
Hey Eddie,
I am not completely ignorant on other designs. I've made a lot of flatbows and I really like them. I read just about everything I can get my hands on about all different styles. But, even if I were completely ignorant on all other designs, it wouldn't make everything I said above wrong would it? Here's a little more:
1. A basic axiom of target archery is that length equates to stability. Ishi was probably an excellent shot within his method of shooting but he excelled at short ranges where almost any bow would suffice. Steve Allelly has an English longbow in his personal collection and told me not long ago that he had to ditch his Ishi-style bow for his English longbow in the middle of hunting season because the little bow was hurting his elbow and he was having accuracy problems. He prefers hunting with a Native American design but says an English longbow is more accurate and it obviously adapts to his style of hunting.
2. Generally speaking, there is a cast and power advantage with longer bows. Less stack equates to higher early draw weight and more working length allows for longer draws and fat fd curves. "Short bows perform almost unbelievably slower than longer bows," Tim Baker. Read the 'West Coast' chapter of TBB1 and look at the pictures of the little bows the native Americans in my area shot. Compare that with Lewis and Clark's comments that every elk they killed while they wintered here (5 miles from my house) had broken-off Indian arrows in it. By today's standards, they were guilty of egregious, unethical hunting.
I am sorry that your post on mail penetration was ignored but that just happens here. Half of what I say is ignored. Make that everthing. Anyway, I have no doubt that a sharp stick would penetrate mail. A long bodkin arrow shot out of a EWB will hardly slow down going through chain mail. Mail doesn't stop sharp projectiles as well as it does other things. A cane/chain mail penetration test would be very interesting to see and I hope you do one and post the results.
As far as your comment about hunting targets and circles in the dirt let me just say--I get slightly miffed at the implication of so many members of the primitive archery world that pass-through shots and dead animals are the only thing that matters. As if primitive archery is so pathetically narrow in its scope. For thousands of years bow cultures have been engaging in flight shooting, warfare, target competitions, using bows as musical instruments, entertaining with tricky shots, and so on. I'm an avid hunter but I don't make the mistake of thinking that hunting is the only thing a bow is supposed to do. Hunting is illeagle in many parts of the world and it may one day be illeagle here. What am I going to do, abandon my love for archery and take up tennis? Not hardly.
You assume that I need to educate myself and try new things because I would say something so foolish as "In terms of power and accuracy, English longbows are pretty brilliant." I'm sure you could teach me a great deal about native American bows, but could it be that you don't understand the English design well enough to see why I said they were 'brilliant'? If you don't care about them enough to study the design, why would you be upset when someone like me does study them and finds them to be something special?
J. D. Duff
