Trad Gang

Was flipping through some old TBM's.
Found this letter written by Howard Hill.

Enlightening to say the least!

Check out the 5th paragraph.

You may have to blow it up a bit, had to make it fit the required size for here.   ;)  
Says alot eh? I'm betting he knew a thing or 2 about bowhunting; and was wayyy ahead of his time.

Cheers.
BD    :)      (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v611/ashstyk/IMGP1997.jpg)

Interesting thanks for posting. You think old Howard would change his mind if he knew about carbon arrows,single bevel heads and high efficency bows etc.

10 gr.+ per inch coupled with a bow of according weight?

plenty for our North American game.

He may have changed his mind.
Read a story though where he was not impressed at all with compounds when they came out, or pretty bows for that matter.
His old, beat-up HH longbows were enough for him. ;)

Yeah when compounds came out I'll bet he was pretty set in his ways by then.LOL
 I like the 10gn per lb guide also but a 400 grn arrow coming out of any bow over 40# is hard to argue with.

yep, read that a while back. He knew a thing or two about hunting with a longbow, and if it's good enough for him....

Having said that, I think he did most of his hunting with a 90 pound bow.

Very interesting, than you for posting this.

I hope a bunch of people read this.

TTT

Along the same lines recall Art Young's assertion that he was convinced that he could kill the biggest bear in Alaska with a 50 lb bow and proportionately adjusted arrows and Saxton Pope's concurring statement "Both Young and I are convinced of the necessity of very sharp broadheads, and trust more in a keen blade and a quick flight than to power."

Add to that the fact that Pope and Young were shooting self longbows and that many of the current deflex/reflex, hybrids and recurves can outcast a 60lb self longbow let alone a 50lber and it begins to become apparrent that guys on the heavy drawweight trail may have a nice journey but haven't necessarily gotten to camp any better off than lightdraw travelers.

Can't see any letter on your post  :banghead:

Did someday say 90# longbow?!? How do you even draw that?!?

Interesting that he felt that way about the masses but personally favored heavy bows and work hard to be able to shoot them.. Somewhere along the line he must have felt the need for "more" too.

I've always said you don't need a 600+ grain arrow to get good penetration. I've been killing stuff for a lot of years with less weight than that.

Interestingly enough,,I wonder where/when the "Heavy" arrow-thing came about as being "the word"...
I was re-reading some of my "Traditional Bowyers of America" last nite and nobody was shooting any real heavy arrows, most were cedar, some aluminum, no hardwoods at all.

Even the guys that were shooting 70 pound longbows were shooting cedars and I'm guessing that the average weight was about 520 grains, not the 10 GPI that is all the rave now.

Even Frank SanMarco shooting his 70 # longbow was shooting 510-520 gr. cedars.

I have to think Ron may be onto something??
What Arrow wood is your fave Ron?
Cedar I'm betting?
Also, what weight are your arrows?   ;)     :)  

When Howard was shooting 90 pounds, he was shooting cedars, I'm betting they were not 900 grain plus arrows.  :)   lol
BD

....Well, if I'm reading the letter correctly, He's talking about minimum poundage required by law, and He's suggesting an arrow of 11gr per #s, and that would make a nice quite bow,...that says a lot.

Shoot the heaviest bow and arrow that you comfortably can, because thinks don't always go right, and there's no denying the in those cases an heavier arrow shot with more horsepower will help your case.

correct me if I'm wrong

Correct Manny.  :)

But I'm wondering when this heavy arrow hype came into its own??

I have been shooting some cedars of 500 grs and a bit out of a 54 pound bow, man, they fly like darts and out-penetrate my burlap bag targets and 3D target more than the 615 gr. ash I have.
the cedars are parallel, the ash are tapered?

Weird.

BD

Earl, Howard was the exception, not the run of the mill archer. He made his living shooting the Bow & Arrow while few of us do. He always maintained that a person should not over bow themselves and that accuracy and a SHARP properly constructed broadhead were of paramount importance. In other words, just because Howard Hill could shoot a 90# and up bow, its no reason for the average joe to do so. Personally I shoot and hunt comfortably with a 55# longbow and recurve and see no need to shoot anything heavier than that and know quite a few other excellent archers who shoot less and do just fine in the field. Shoot whats comfortable and efficient for you and you'll have plenty of fun and probably good success too. Good shooting! Rich

When I started bowhunting back in the early 50's everyone shot cedar arrows. We didn't care about the arrow weight, just that they were spined correctly for the bow. In the late 50's when I joined an archery club and started shooting Field Archery, "some" people were shooting aluminum arrows but those were just for targets and not hunting. Later of coarse aluminums were also used for hunting. Then in the 60's we had the Micro-Flight fiberglass arrows and those were the craze for hunters, kinda like carbons are now. Again, arrow weight wasn't a factor...we just shot the size that worked for the weight bow and that was it.

The first time I remember that a heavy arrow was thought to penetrate better was in the mid 60's when some people were using the compressed cedars called Forgwoods. They were small diameter (5/16) and heavy. The only problem with them is they dropped like a stone beyond 20yds.

In the 70's the aluminum arrow was king. A few bowhunters stuck with their cedars but they were the minority.

In the mid 70's the archery world went crazy and the compound bow took over like a storm. I dropped out of organized archery when all my "Rowdy friends" hung up their recurves and got comtraptions.    :rolleyes:  I continued to hunt with my 60 and 70# recurves shooting 20-20's and 22-19's out of them.

I had shot a Hill longbow some back in the 60's and because of my disdain for how archery's main stream was going, I went back to a longbow and wood arrows. At the time the heaviest bow I had was a 70# recurve. Even back then in 1977 there was a 6 month wait for Howard Hill longbow. Betty Ekin told me she had an 85# Big Five in stock, I told her I'd take it and a dozen cedar arrows. That was the beginning of the rest of my life.   :thumbsup:

For many years I shot cedar arrows out of my longbows. My bow weights ranged from 70# up to over 100#. At one time I didn't own a bow under 80# and cedars arrows shot well out of all of them.

Like many others, my head was turned when the carbon arrows came out. I think it was when a friend killed a Buffalo with a 57# longbow and a 450gr carbon arrow that got me to try carbons. I shot them for several years and found that they made a good arrow for general shooting as well as hunting. Again arrow weight didn't seem to be an issue for good penetration on game.

Eventually I went back to my old tried and true cedar arrows. I'm shooting a lot lighter bows now days but the deer I shot last year didn't know that when the broadhead punched out the other side.   :archer:

Well said Ron... ;)   :)

Indeed, I am beginning to believe that cedar is THE way to go.
Thanks.
Cary.  :)

Haven,t been at it as long as Ron and mainly just hunted since the early sixties, I still shoot just about every day just for relaxation, but it wasn,t until I got this computor that I found out I didn,t know anything, I,m sure glad all the varmits, small game and deer didn,t find out or I would have been up the creek.

You said it Ron. Good arrow flight + sharp broadhead = good results!  :thumbsup:

Pretty interesting article and reading.

Well put Ron, and I might add you just can't get that great smell from any other arrow material! Rich

I don't see Mr. Hill advocate for light  arrows in his letter        I read it more as the opposite of it. But maybe I don't understand    :confused:    

 

Quoteposted by Big Dog:
But I'm wondering when this heavy arrow hype came into its own??

I think my   bibliography (http://www.broadheads.de/docs/literatur/alllit.html)  is not to bad and I have many pages in it dealing with arrows - scattered "through time". It would be difficult though to point a single one out and say, here it is.
However, it is interesting to note that "spine" as we understand it nowadays was unknown well into the beginning 20th century. But already ASCHAM (1545) knew that a stele which is hard to stand in a bow ... is best to make a shaft of. FORD (1880) and also LONGMAN & WALROD (1894) explained the need for so-and-so shilling weight arrows for a given draw weight bow. They knew what they would need and that all the certain qualities correlate positively with arrow weight in wooden shafts. However, all the above mentioned were "target shooters" in the first place and trajectory was of more concern to them then penetration was. We can assume that all prefered a lighter shaft, as long as it was stiff enough.

With the revival of bowhunting as described by THOMPSON (1879) or later POPE (1925) the heavier draw weights came back into use. Even though the ELB generally requires weak spined arrows because of it's rather thick handle, the use of a (heavy) broadhead asked for some good quality shafts. POPE used birch, which is quite heavy and his shafts had some good weight to them. A proper working hunting weight combo would thus always lead to a heavy shaft as well. There was hardly the danger to go out with a to light weight arrow at all. In the good old days, when men were still men and even a target bow had 60#    ;)  

Along others, there was a guy by the name of Fred B. BEAR, who wrote a nice article in Ye Sylvan Archer (1943: Vol.14, No. 10: 1-3) on Hunting Arrows. He tested shafts ranging from 300 to 800gr with bows of different weights and measured their striking force. The whole text would be worth quoting here but I will only give you  the introducing as well as the last paragraph:
"To few archers realize the importance of using a rather heavy arrow for hunting. The growing popularity of field shooting has created a demand for light weight, fast arrows and it is assumed by many archers that the same qualifications are proper for hunting."
On the following three pages he gives his explanations and what he found in his testings and closes with
"... there is definately no substitute for heavy bows and heavy arrows. A light weight arrow traveling faster will not bring the desired results. But let us not insist that moose tackle be used for deer and that nothing less will suffice."

Okay, that was that. Sorry for the lenghty text and the excursion in history etc.

BTW, Howard Hills elephant arrows were over 1700gr

Cheers,
Falk

Thank you Big Dog, for posting this letter by one of our traditional hero's.  Better still, is the wonderful comments posted by today's hero's (those of you who are still passionate about this sport).  I especially appreciated Ron's and Falk's comments.  Now I am going to take a deep breath and jump into this murky water myself.
   :pray:    

While I have neither the experience of Ron, nor the knowledge of Falk, I've developed my own arrow hunting opinions over my last seven years of traditional bowhunting.  I shoot my own tackle, that is, I have made my own selfbows and arrows, strings, ect.; and I tend to shoot bows that are in the 50# and up range.  Coupled with these bows are arrows that tend to be heavier than most because I make them out of native wood (which is not POC).  I also use heavy broadheads (in the 190 gr. catagory) and rubber blunts (closer to 250 gr.).  I wind up with heavy tackle because I make it myself, AND because it is the oppisite of what the store-bought, mechanical, technologically encumbering, wheelbow shooters do.

This may not be reasonable, but I admit freely that I do not participate in this sport because I am reasonable.  Every compound bow hunter I talk bow hunting with is trying to create the lowest weight, least areodynamic disturbing (whoever coined windplaning should be rich), FASTEST arrow possible.  From the two inch vanes (even my kids shoot three inch fletchings), to the mechanical broadheads to the carbon shafts (read teflon coated, titanium core, turbo charged, buzz word, buzz word, buzz word), everything is being done to create an arrow shooting rifle.  Seldom to I meet one of our mechanical brothers who does not boast of his arrow speed or 60 yard plus range.  And as convinced as they are about the performance of their advanced arrow design, I am equally convinced of my primitave design performance (and I have a longer liteny to defend this performance).

All that said, I believe the most important thing any bowhunter does is shot placement.  My best friend took a doe at twelve yards with a 35# selfbow shooting heavy arrows (don't know the specs, but the broadheads were 190's) and she only made 20 yards before she fell dead.  A double lung shot speaks more to the efficiency of the arrow than it's weight, spine, FOC, ecetera.  If the bowhunter has confidence in his choice of arrow weight and backs it up with experience, then he has the right arrow.  After that...Aim small, miss small. IMHO

-Brett

I read a few comments about 90lb. longbows on this thread. i am one of the crazys that worked his butt off to be able to handle the heavy stuff.  I hunted with microflight 12s loaded with a birch dowel. I shot a 160 pound buck uphill 18 yards from my "lunch Log".   Hot knife through butter was an understatement. the arrow didn't seem to slow down. A couple years later from the same place I shot a similar sized doe, same shot. With a 36lb. longbow and about a 450grain arrow, my elbow had given out and that was all I could handle. The arrow went through the deer, but not out to the middle of the corn field.  The doe died within feet of where the previous buck went down. I have never used a heavy bow since that day. 64 is my max and low 50s is what I used the most. Hill said that combo would also work for elk and moose. I remember an article in Outdoor Life by Howard Gillean that talked of moose hunters using forty to fifty pounders for moose. I am not sure of that logic, all the moose I have ever seen are really big, black and scary up close. I would prefer a good pair of running shoes to boots for sneaking up close to a bull moose.