Ask me about archery, longbows especially.

[WeilderOfTheMonkeyBlade]

"Longbows a had a much further range than crossbows because they launched a much heavier arrow than a crossbow could, which also gave it more penetration when it hit."
This does depend on the type of crossbow, but the more common windlass crossbows of around the time of the longbow had a far greater range than a longbow( but your archer could run in range and loose about 4-5 arrows in the time it takes to reload).
I also believe that crossbows launched a bolt several times heavier than an arrow, and the impact was greater.
the rest of the information was great though and I learnt some new stuff.

 

[skip.knox]

I have to ask Malik and others here an additional question on this matter of arrow penetration. What do you make of numerous reports in the Middle Ages of arrows sticking out of knights? The case I have in mind is during the Crusades, principally against Turkish archers. The knights wore simply chain mail with linen padding (which is surprisingly tough when layered or rolled).

These reports to me indicate that arrows, but really certain kinds of bows, have a much lower ability to penetrate. I completely agree that the arrow-in-the-belly is just silly, but not everyone made great bows or great arrows, not everyone wielded them effectively, and not everyone shot from close distance.

Rather than say unequivocally that arrows had X or Y ability to penetrate, I'd argue that it all depends on the circumstance of the particular shot. Which, in turn, means it depends on how you are setting up your battle or encounter.

Am I off base here?

 

[Malik]

I have to ask Malik and others here an additional question on this matter of arrow penetration. What do you make of numerous reports in the Middle Ages of arrows sticking out of knights? The case I have in mind is during the Crusades, principally against Turkish archers. The knights wore simply chain mail with linen padding (which is surprisingly tough when layered or rolled).

These reports to me indicate that arrows, but really certain kinds of bows, have a much lower ability to penetrate. I completely agree that the arrow-in-the-belly is just silly, but not everyone made great bows or great arrows, not everyone wielded them effectively, and not everyone shot from close distance.

Rather than say unequivocally that arrows had X or Y ability to penetrate, I'd argue that it all depends on the circumstance of the particular shot. Which, in turn, means it depends on how you are setting up your battle or encounter.

Am I off base here?

The arrows stick out of knights in mail because under that shirt of mail is usually half an inch or more of felted wool or layers of linen, both of which are extremely dense. Often a tabard of leather was worn between the two.

It takes a ridiculous amount of energy to break riveted mail (wearing butted mail -- the junk armor that you see in LARP and the SCA where the link ends are nipped clean and pinched closed without a rivet or weld -- would be suicidal). A riveted or welded mail shirt would suck the power out of any weapon strike the way that a shattering ceramic plate takes the energy out of a bullet in modern body armor. This is why a shirt of interlocking rings of metal was the predominant method of saving your ass for nearly two thousand years.

Riveted mail also twists up and tangles a penetrating object. (Butted mail does not; the links deform and self-destruct instead of trapping the weapon.)

Arrows spin in flight (gyroscopic motion is what makes arrows fly true, the vanes are not tailfins) so this would be amplified. An arrow penetrating real mail would result in a horrific wound, with broken and tangled links of mail wrapped around the shaft and all of it jammed down into the puncture. Yes, the arrow would stick out. And also, ick.

But arrows from any bow big enough to take big game, or bigger, would go right through an unarmored or lightly-armored person, exiting the other side, faster than you could see it, anywhere it hit them, 90%, maybe even 99%, of the time. It would be a rare occurrence on par with a freak accident to see an arrow sticking out of an unarmored person.

 

[Malik]

Not Safe For Vegans. Arrow shots on man-sized living targets (deer). Keep in mind these are slowed-down to what looks to me like roughly quarter-speed. Real time, you don't see the arrow strike -- which is why these arrow nocks are illuminated; the latest thing in hunting technology.

Spoiler: WARNING: GRAPHIC

 

[Malik]

One other thing, too. I won't name names but I was just reading a book in which a character, an archer (an elf, of course) was trying out bows and he drew and fired a bow in a smith's shop with no arrow nocked. You know, to test it.

If you dry-fire a bow, the energy that normally goes into the arrow will get returned to the bow itself. The string prevents the bow from reaching its normal state of rest and the resulting deceleration will at least crack it if not snap or delaminate a limb tip. Fiberglass and modern epoxies used in the construction of bows these days make them less prone to catastrophic failure, but dry-firing a bow made from pre-industrial materials can make the weapon go off in your hand like a grenade.

In traditional archery circles, if you dry-fire a bow, you buy it.

Dry-firing aftermath pictures:

 

[Aprella]

I have a question....

How long would it take for someone who has never wielded a long bow to master it? The character will practise a lot, but if you never wielded it before... if do think that you eventually have to stop practising because the muscles hurt? Or am I wrong?

 

[Caged Maiden]

when you pick up a bow, even 20 pounds, you get tired within a few rounds. Say a dozen arrows, then take a ten minute break and do another dozen, then another break. However, I shoot somewhat regularly and with my 25 pound bow, can shoot four hours a day (intermittently) for three or four-day events no problem. However, my friends who shoot 55 pound bows can't hang with me all day.

Now, one hundred arrows a day is supposed to be good practice.

Also, you can get relatively good in about 4 months. But to become a master could take 30 years... so you have to be the judge of what "mastery" is to you. If you're looking at Robin Hood, he's probably going to take the thirty years to attain. However, a high-scoring target archer? Probably more like five years. Hunting is something altogether different. It would help to understand what you mean by "master". I know people who have shot for two years and are relatively proficient, and I know people who have shot for thirty years and are very good. But they're no Robin Hoods. One of my good friends, I just made a set of arrows for him, showed me a picture of his twenty-yard target and only one arrow was outside the red ring (the crooked arrow he straightened and now it shoots fine). He makes me sick. He's really really good. But, he's been an archer for thirty years, was an avid bow hunter, and owns like ten bows. I've been shooting for 3-4 years, talk a lot of smack on the line with my friends, and just have a good time, trying to get my stance and aiming adjusted. I'm certainly not good by any stretch of the imagination. Unless maybe I was killing zombies. I could probably hit slow-moving targets up close.

 

[Aprella]

Okay Thank you!

Well the character is being trained to be an archer in a war, but he had never hold a bow since he comes from 'our' world and ends up in a medieval setting. There was this scene were I planned that he would kill a warg like creature by shooting it in the head with a single arrow after like a week or two of training... but it's a fast moving target so I don't think it will be possible so soon?

 

[Caged Maiden]

Shooting two arrows at once and holding arrows in bow hand

hey, I missed the two arrows at once conversation, but I'd like to weigh in on it.

Okay, I shoot two arrows at once and also hold arrows in my bow hand as well as between the fingers of my nocking hand.

When you shoot two arrows at once, the power is greatly diminished. For a 20 yard target, I need to raise my aim point about 18 inches. That's pretty huge at such a short distance. However, both arrows land in the target within about eight inches of each other, so I can't complain. It's a free shot at that point.

I would never attempt this at thirty or forty yards. I'd probably just break arrows. And since I make my own and they aren't cheap... that would just be stupid.

With holding arrows in your hands. I know a guy who shoots 17 arrows in 30 seconds. But... it's during a speed round... at twenty yards.... and he's very well practiced. He holds three arrows in his bow (left) hand, and three in his string (right) hand. One of those is nocked on the string, and the other two are pinched between his fingers, one between his pinky and ring finger and the second between his ring finger and middle. Okay, so I've done this technique more than a few times, and all I can say, is that conditions must be ideal for it to be effective. Let me explain:

Both arrows in your bow hand and string hand diminish your overall power because your grip is affected. So short distances only. Good thing our speed rounds are 20 yards, right? Another thing, is that you cannot effectively hold the arrows pinched between your fingers if you're wearing a glove. So either your bow needs to be weak enough or your callouses strong enough to make sure you don't need one to shoot. My bow is 25 pounds, so I can take off the glove for the speed round. Also, you have to be very careful not to hit the arrows you're holding in your bow hand. One of my friends shattered his held arrow with his shot one only a couple weeks ago. An expensive and scary lesson as splinters are hitting you.

Hope that clarifies for anyone still wondering

 

[Caged Maiden]

@ Aprella. That's near impossible. But anything can happen in a book.

 

[Aprella]

@Caged Maiden: well we want to keep a realistic feel to it. Thanks for the advice!

 

[Caged Maiden]

If you had a character who learned in a week, there's no way their muscles are even developed yet. Starting out, you wouldn't want to shoot every day because of fatigue. It's like if you've never been swimming before. Can you swim a 1500m butterfly in a week? Heck no, your muscles can't even handle it because it's a foreign movement. In fact, to even draw a war bow in a week is impossible. I recently brought out a friend (a male friend in his late 20's, not the brawniest guy, but full grown), and his arm was shaking from a 20 pound kid bow in like ten minutes. Proper technique to stave off exhaustion takes months of regular practice. I once drew a 150 pound war bow. I'm proud to say I did as well as the big boys. But when you draw such a bow, you're drawing to the chest, not to your jaw like a hunting or target bow.

I'd think... any bow heavy enough to go through a warg skull, would be too heavy for me to draw even four years into my hobby. My arrows would bounce off the skull at even thirty yards. How do I know this? haha my arrows bounce off a carpeted hay bale at thirty sometimes, and I'm using sharp bodkins, not dull field points.

If you want my suggestion, make the character have some experience, even if it was just in high school or college. Give him the muscle memory and the knowledge of correct stance and aiming as a foundation off which to build. If he's truly completely green, there's no way the shot is plausible. But again, you can make it a lucky shot.

One of my favorite characters I ever wrote was my archer character in my last fantasy novel. I love him because I got to combine two things I love. But I had to make it realistic and his archery skills were the thing that got him his job, but I tried not to make his skill Robin Hoody. It's just not believable.

Best wishes. Feel free to post more questions or read my article: Medieval Archery for Writers

 

[Malik]

@ Aprella, Caged Maiden is completely correct but I want to chime in, here, because I hunt and that sometimes involves moving targets, both of which are considerably different than anything your MC will have experienced if all he's done is shoot at a stationary target.

Against an aggressive animal, not only do you have to hit a moving target, but you have to hit a moving target in a place that will kill it or disable it. The only way to drop an aggressive animal with an arrow and not have it continue on and kill you is to either break its spine -- a very tough shot and impossible on a charging animal; plus, if you take the shot from the side and miss, you miss big: a high lung shot or meat hit between the spine and guts is only going to make whatever it is REALLY mad -- or to shoot it in the head, which is even tougher. An arrow can glance off a skull, and the brain on most non-humanoid animals is very small. A wolf's brain is about the size of a baseball, inside a very thick helmet of bone. Headshots on animals go horribly wrong more often than they work, which is why ethical hunters never take headshots. Headshots just don't work. There is a disabling shot on a four-legged creature that is effective but not immediately lethal: through the hips -- break the hips and it can't jump, can't charge, and can't run. Unfortunately, that's also a tricky shot, easy to miss from the side and fully impossible on a charging animal.

(The bow is a lousy defensive weapon. I keep a full-sized Ka-Bar knife at my belt when I bowhunt. I'd grab for it long before I'd use an arrow if an animal was intent on attacking me. I'd use the bow to fend it off and go for its face with the knife if it still felt like attacking me. Most things in this world will leave you alone if you stab them in the face. That's a tip, folks; write it down.)

Now, keep in mind that not only is the animal moving, but you need to factor in flight time for the arrow. A bow is not a rifle. An arrow travels 150-200 fps from traditional tackle. 200 fps is the great benchmark that bowyers try to hit and very few do. A lot can happen in a quarter of a second. An animal can "jump the string," meaning that between the time it hears the bow go THUNG! and the time the arrow arrives 60 feet later (1/4 - 1/3 of a second), a deer, bear, or wolf can duck, or jump, far enough that you will miss completely. At 50 yards, any intelligent creature can see an arrow coming and get out of the way. So, dynamics of the situation come into play unless you are close enough to reach out and swat the critter with your bow when you shoot.

On top of this is the skill required to hit a moving target. You have to be intimate with your bow's characteristics; i.e. you have to have shot that particular bow with those particular arrows enough that you know how long the arrow takes to travel a variety of distances. Then, you have to practice shooting while your bow moves. This is counterintuitive and usually presented incorrectly in movies and TV. You can't just hold on a point, fire, and hope the target runs into the arrow at the moment the arrow crosses its path. It doesn't work that way. You have to consciously keep moving the bow while tracking the target and leading it, and keep the bow moving ahead of the target's trajectory while you loose the arrow. On top of this, the target will never be moving perpendicular to the arrow's flight, so flight time is going to vary and so will your lead; you need to work it out in your head and adjust your lead accordingly depending if the target is angling toward you or away. As you're doing this, seconds count, because your arrow is traveling around 175 fps. If you have to calculate -- if you can't just feel the shot -- a running target will be too far away to hit by the time you have a firing solution. 50-60 yards -- one second of flight time -- is about the longest realistic range for a hunting bow; things get fuzzy after that with flight time and the weirdnesses of animals. A good archer can hit a hay bale at 75 yards but only by sheer stupid luck would he hit a running -- or even a walking -- animal at that range.

Then there's firing under stress, which is its own thing entirely. As a professional soldier I could talk about this for a week but I won't, here. Suffice it to say you have to practice under stress if you want to shoot accurately under stress.

Short of sheer, stupid beginner's luck -- which happens -- no one with less than maybe a solid year behind a bow, shooting every day, would hit a fast-moving living target, under stress, and disable it.

Now, if you're married to the scene, you could make that once-in-a-lifetime shot the beginning of your MC's love affair with the bow, or a sign that he's "a natural," or somesuch. Maybe make it the shot that he spends the rest of the series trying to repeat.

 

[Valentinator]

Let's say you got hit by an arrow to the stomach. What you should do in this case? How does it limit your fighting skills? Can you still fight well if you are in adrenaline rush?

Another question. You are standing in front of the archer who wants to shoot you. There is no obvious place to hide and you don't have any weapons. The distance is 300ft (100m). What should you do to maximize you chances to survive?

 

[CupofJoe]

Another question. You are standing in front of the archer who wants to shoot you. There is no obvious place to hide and you don't have any weapons. The distance is 300ft (100m). What should you do to maximize you chances to survive?

I'm half serious when I say
Stand still...
Wait until they shoot and then run left or right, at 100m I would guess the flight time would be several seconds...

 

[Malik]

Let's say you got hit by an arrow to the stomach. What you should do in this case? How does it limit your fighting skills? Can you still fight well if you are in adrenaline rush?

Another question. You are standing in front of the archer who wants to shoot you. There is no obvious place to hide and you don't have any weapons. The distance is 300ft (100m). What should you do to maximize you chances to survive?

It depends on the type of arrow tip and the location of the hit. If it only hits your stomach (the organ, not the area) then you've got hours before you bleed out. Stomach wounds were considered one of the worst ways to die, BTW. Extremely painful, and you die of sepsis, absolutely insane from sickness and pain. You could pack the wound off -- you'll need someone to help you pack off the exit wound in your back, BTW -- and you can live for a day or so.

If the tip so much as nicks your liver or a kidney, though, you're done. Both process so much blood every minute that an injury to either is like pulling the drain on a bathtub. You're dead in minutes. There's also spinal damage, nerve damage, broken bones, and/or damage to the diaphragm, all of which will inhibit movement and breathing. You could take a hit to the side of the stomach if you were really fat; it might miss anything vital and pass through. A bodkin point might -- might -- go through someone on a one-in-a-million shot and not hit anything. On a physically fit human being, though, everything's packed in there pretty neatly.

CupofJoe is correct. At 300 feet you have over a second and a half, maybe almost two seconds if it's a stickbow (stickbow = a single stick bent into bow as opposed to a recurve or laminated bow). Two seconds might as well be forever.

It's a non-issue, though, because he won't shoot. He can't hit you from there if you can see him, and he knows it.

The bow is an ambush weapon, or an area denial weapon when used en masse. One on one, it's pretty much useless, no matter what Hollywood tells you. Flight time negates its deterrent ability against a lone target at more than about 75 feet.

Typical human reaction time is about .25 seconds; it's much faster than that for people who have ingrained responses: professional athletes, trained soldiers, etc.; ingrained "flinch" responses can take a tenth of a second or less, and part of military and martial arts training is molding flinch responses into useful ones. At 200 fps, .25 seconds gives you about 50 feet of effective range. That's with a good bow against a target who knows you're there and knows you're going to shoot, and knows what to do about it and won't panic.

At 150 fps, that range now comes down to about 40 feet.

At 150 fps (a primitive but still-powerful stickbow) your effective distance against a trained adversary could be down to 20 feet or less; more than close enough for him to slip the arrow -- or, if armored, swat it out of the way -- and then come kick your ass while you're reloading.

There is nothing in the world as satisfying as having someone shoot at you and miss. At that moment, you are a god of war. A person you just missed with a weapon is a very, very dangerous man because he is now, in the parlance of our times, both validated and enabled. This is an absolute psychological phenomena and it is addictive. There would be men who would want you to take the shot. Food for thought . . .

 

[wordwalker]

Serious statistics, great news for us writers, and evocative writing too. I may even stop making fun of Star Wars for implying no real hero ever gets shot. (Of course, those are supposed to be guns, and massed fire...)

I take it this is the kind of dodge that doesn't break your stride much, if you know what you're doing, so you aren't just giving the archer time to try again.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Yeah, wow 300 yards? There;s no way a single archer, even a well trained one will hit a small human target at 300 yards. It's just not going to happen. The reason the English war bows were so deadly is that they fired every 6 seconds and rained down volleys of THOUSANDS of arrows upon an army. A single archer wouldn't hit a buffalo standing stock still at that distance because they're firing up at the sky. I participate in cloud shoots (shoots at about 150-200 yards). THey paint a huge circle on the ground and twelve feet out, they put a second ring, and twelve feet further out, the third. rrows score based on which ring they land in. Does that give some perspective on how big the target t that range needs to be? They;re called cloud shoots because you're aiming at the sky, in the general direction of the target, hoping the arrow lands in a circle.

 

[Valentinator]

Malik, Caged Maide, CupofJoe great answers, thanks a lot!

 

[Ravana]

Let's say you got hit by an arrow to the stomach. What you should do in this case? How does it limit your fighting skills? Can you still fight well if you are in adrenaline rush?

Another question. You are standing in front of the archer who wants to shoot you. There is no obvious place to hide and you don't have any weapons. The distance is 300ft (100m). What should you do to maximize you chances to survive?

To maximize your chances of survival, stay at 100m. No experienced archer would waste an arrow on an isolated target at that range… not unless he was sniping, and the target was unaware of him. Which doesn't sound like the situation here. Or else just walk away.

Now, if if part of your problem is taking the archer out, that's another story altogether.…

And the answer is basically close the distance as rapidly as possible, wait until it looks to you like he's ready to shoot, then start zigging about and hope he misses. Probably, he'll release at about 15-20m, depending on how rapidly he can draw his melee backup weapon. (At which point you're probably dead anyway, unless you meant "don't have any ranged weapons": if you meant "don't have any weapons at all," you'd better be really good at tackling.…) He will not, in any event, wait until you're point blank, because he knows the odds of disabling you with a single shot aren't good, even if he does hit, which he knows is not guaranteed.

Which leads into your first question. A shot to the abdomen–I'm generalizing it from "stomach": I assumed you didn't mean that organ specifically–could cause anything from immediate shock to no visible hindrance whatsoever. The problem is that things such as shock are so idiosyncratic there's no way to predict them. Lots of people, especially those without military training but even some who have it, will go down to a single, non-disabling wound on just about any part of the body. Other people will keep coming even after suffering multiple wounds which are eventually but not immediately lethal–to lungs, kidneys, just about anything other than heart, brain or spine. Sometimes even heart or brain, depending on how great the damage is and exactly where. Also, blood loss will eventually begin to tell on the victim, though again this will depend on how rapid the rate of loss is, which in turn again depends on what's hit: if no major vessel is damaged, the loss of blood from a puncture wound may not matter for several minutes at least–you can lose more than a third of your blood and keep functioning–and, again, will depend on the victim himself. (I get dizzy whenever I have more than two vials drawn for testing. On the other hand, I'm not in a situation where I'm fighting for my life when that happens, so I might react differently on a battlefield. Or at least not notice the dizziness at the time.)

Example: consider the normal male reaction to a good knee shot to the groin. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever this ought to be disabling… it's only pain. But for most, it's more pain than their wiring can cope with. Most… but not all: there are those few who can shrug this off. Same applies to any other wound: unless the physical damage is such that it makes an action impossible, i.e. breaking a long bone in two, severing the spine, crushing the throat, etc., it's possible the victim will keep coming; it's also possible he'll fall to the ground and curl up in a ball from what is essentially a flesh wound.

So a gut shot could have pretty much any effect you felt like it having, in the short term. In the long term… it depends on what organ or organs are hit. Gut wounds have a very nasty tendency to be fatal in pre-modern settings, as internal infection is all but guaranteed unless the victim is immensely lucky and the arrow manages to slide between intestines rather than lacerating one (or more). A hit to a kidney is very likely to be fatal in the long term. Other organs, I'm less sure of. I'm pretty sure the liver can soak a lot of damage, as long as it's the only thing damaged, but don't quote me on that. Get some good medical charts to see what's behind what, if you intend to do into details; otherwise, if the situation requires the gut-shot character to survive, just have him be one of the fortunate few who's lucky enough to have all the important stuff missed, to have someone competent enough to draw the arrow without doing additional damage and clean and close the wound properly, and to escape peritonitis.