impressive

Show archery.   War archery was rather different.  Not all archers were trained to this sort of level nor were they expected to be.  Even in England where Archery was raised to a fetish, with State sponsorship and policies intended to foster the use of the Bow amongst the general population, the amount of training was extremely variable.   Mongols OTOH along with most other Steppe nomads were perhaps the closest to this ideal but then they depended on the Bow for their bread and butter.

One point that didn't come out from that video was that the higher the speed, the lower the penetration for any given arrow.  The Archer simply does not have the ability to draw far enough back on each successive shot to get the full power from the bow.  It's also interesting that most of his firing is with modern "gimmicky" bows.  He couldn't do these tricks with a full compound bow or an English long bow, drawing over 120+ lbs nor at the ranges most archers fired at on a battlefield.   Military archery relied primarily on mass, not accuracy for it's effect on the battlefield so most of his stuff is just tricks from that perspective.   He's akin the Wild West sharpshooter - incredibly accurate with loads of trick shots but useless outside of the arena.

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Jan 25^th, 2015 at 4:32pm:


English long bows have been recorded at 120+ lbs.  Mongol compound horse bows have been recorded at 150+ lbs draw. 

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I suspect he's referring to a "foot bow", where you sit on your bum and use your feet to hold the bow and you pull back with both hands.   A stunt, not seriously used either in hunting or on the battlefield (for obvious reasons).   

John Smith wrote on Jan 25^th, 2015 at 4:46pm:


It was done at close range and with a fancy gimmicky bow, not a proper recurve or compound bow, nor was the target attempting to defend itself with a shield.   Try it at battle ranges of over 50 metres and see what happens, as he's charging in, with the enemy's own archers firing at the same time.

Its stunt archery, not real archery.   

Not sure archers play a huge part in modern warfare, so talk of it not being 'real archery' is not here nor there.  I suppose haters gon' hate.

Brian Ross wrote on Jan 25^th, 2015 at 4:50pm:


over longer distances he has no need for that sort of speed. I think the whole point was to show that archery wasn't just used over longer distances, but in close quarter combat as well.

freediver wrote on Jan 25^th, 2015 at 9:30pm:


Yet it was the armoured infantry man or cavalry man which dominated the battlefield for thousands of years, FD.

As I keep pointing out, battlefield archery relied on mass firepower, not individual accuracy.  A rain of arrows is impossible to defend against and you don't need to be overly accurate in that situation, you just have to get it downrange and in the general vicinity of the target mass.

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Hence my comment about it being useful on the fringes of the battle. I am not suggesting they would have replaced infantry with heavier weapons. But getting shot with several arrows while trying to engage in a swordfight would be a bit of a disadvantage. His style of archery would allow someone to rapidly move around the battlefield to where they would be most useful.

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That is the recieved wisdom. He is challenging that view. He hints that competition archery may be partly to blame for the misrepresentation, as there is nothing that reflects close quarters combat.