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          

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  

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.  

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.  

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.