Pick a style of bow you enjoy.  Get outside.  Shoot arrows.  Have fun.  Unless you're a competition shooter, that's all that matters.

That’s why I shoot alone on my farm and not at a club elitism ruins every hobby.

When I thought of a longbow, I see this as a main category besides Recurve Bows.

"What does it do? - It shoots arrows". Have fun with that.😂

I agree brother. Archers should stop trying to say other archers don’t belong and should band together as archers, for the love of the sport in all its forms.

Same with swords etc. Definitions change over time, back in the day they might've just called it a sword but today it's labelled and categorized depending on era, location of origin, shape and style :D

The Bo staff with string on it is an iconic look.

Wholeheartedly agree with you . I like to think they are kind of like ice cream, so many different flavours to chose from.

There are no ugly truths. I own all kinds of different bows and they are all different characters: Manchu, Yumi, Modern hunting recurve made of latest materials, 60s style traditional hunting recurves, Korean traditional bows, English longbow, horn bows, laminate bows, fibreglass bows on and on. They are all different, they all require a different approach, all are fun to shoot. There are no good or bad things just different. I'm tired of people entering hobbies and start creating drama, just shoot and have fun.

At this point, the guy on the left seems like a proper target 😂, i would have taken the shot

That Holmegaard Bow is real beauty.

Because of Victorian era mythmaking the modern English have a sort of religious veiw of the longbow. Part of it is thinking their ancestors were special for having it. Another part is attributing the characteristics of every other powderless ranged weapon to the longbow. It has the range of the great-crossbow, the accuracy of the skirmishing crossbow, the armor penetration of the pillum, or the ability to stagger without peircing armor that more common javlins had, the formation breaking effect of the Frankish spring-hafted throwing axe, the accessibility and lofty training requirements of the sling, and the rate of "fire" and ability to come down at sharp angles from close range that the plumbata had.

They claim to love the longbow. But they can't appreciate it for what it actually is.

Just because a couple of people come up with definitions doesn't mean they mean anything. If it's not recurved and it long enough for a full anchored draw, it's a long bow. If you wish to differentiate between styles, add to the description.

I classify based in objective of the conversation.  In construction, self bow vs. composite.  In tooling, molded recurve vs. Whatever.  Shortbow vs. Longbow concerns being able to shoot it without having the upper limb whack the ceiling.  My real categories are :  funbow, suckybow, slowbow, fast bow

I totally agree with this, I joined a HEMA club sparring with longswords and stuff, I mentioned I do archery and shoot a longbow. It’s a bear Montana longbow, works amazing for me and being a hunter it’s exactly what I want. I brought it out the one day and one very opinionated guy was saying “you are cheating that’s not a real longbow yours has a shelf and is laminated.” And it honestly really felt insulting. I shot compound for years and wanted a challenge and I guess that’s not impressive enough for this guy who doesn’t even shoot.
Edit: Not to mention he was also saying I was cheating again when I used a stringer to string my bow instead of the leg method which I explained a stringer helps keep the limbs from being twisted and warped and it’s just much easier with the stringer. Not to mention it was used throughout history. ALSO I wasn’t using the bow to shoot at people at the HEMA group I was just showing it off to people who wanted to see it it’s a hunting bow only, I’d never shoot that bow at someone because that would be extremely dangerous even with the padded tips it still has the risks of the arrow pushing through the padded tips at its poundage.

Thank you. I've been making bows the old fashioned way since the late 90's and I've essentially been saying the same things as you all this time to anyone who cared. Lol. Btw, my favourite bow wood around here is hop hornbeam.

I do historical reconstruction, and the only two destinctions I use is 'longbow' and 'historical longbow' the later I use to describe bows that a literal "stick and string" and are also long, the former is for everything more modern. And mostly I do that because when people hear that you have actual "proper" longbow they usually want to see it. Never needed more terms and I wouldn't want more terms because I reenact times were people didn't care about terminology that much

I agree with your assessment, and also: Nice Collection

Great video! You can put the short one back again, cause in the term of a hunting longbow, there is no rules about the lenght. The only rule is that the string only touches the nocks.

A thing is what it is, and not something else - Butler.