[George Davidson]

Guys
am pondering a leap away from swords into into the mysterious (to me) world of traditional archery. How while I'd like a byzantine cavalry bow, no one seems to make them (the Grozer Roman bow is too big) so I am pondering a mongol bow instead.

I've seen the max pull weight found as being in the 140lbs range but haven't seen any figures as to what the rank and file might carry. One article with no references did hint at 45-55lbs for a horse bow of no fixed abode but I thought I'd put the question out to you chaps for opinions/references and a little healthy discussion.

comments opinions and light banter appreciated

Geo

[Henrik Zoltan Toth]

450-550's: hunic bow; but just for allied troups.
550's-800: the three grozer types of the avarian bow (used by the byzantine light cavalry and by the catafractoi too)
800's-1100: hungarian bow (originally the ones with C shape) , used by bulgars, pechenegs, torks, hungarians, seldjucs, greeks
1100-1350-60-80.1s:-) : the kitay/kuman bow, used by hungarians, byzantians, kipchaks, mongols. Not produced yet anywhere.
1350's: ottoman turk bow, crimian tartar bow.

Zoltán

[Dan Howard]

Send a pm to Russ Mitchell. He should have some ideas.

[Joel Minturn]

On bow draw weights. From what I have read, in my quest to build my own bow, the bowyers bible and other sources say that most hunting bows are around 50lbs and war bows are more depending on the culture and what not but usually start at 70lbs and go up. And that one could tell the function of the bow and the cultures use a bow from the draw weight. The theory is most animals can be brought down with 50lb draw weight. If you need more hitting power then you just sneak closer. War bows on the other hand where more powerful to get the archer away from the enemy archers. The guy with the longer accurate range can live to see another day.
That was there theory.

[Kelly Powell]

I wish I could remember the site.....It sold differant ethnic bows...including hunnish and a few other horse peoples besides "mongol"

[George Davidson]

Thanks guys...

Kelly, The sites supplying bows I have are ...
Csaba Grózer's
http://www.grozerarchery.com/index_m.htm
and Kassai Lajos'
http://www.horsebows.com/

Joel, The thing with the horse bows is that according to a phd in byzantine studies (Tim Dawson), weight of fire was more important to the horse archer than strength of shot. He could also ride right up to his target (say an infantry formation) and pepper it with arrows as they were'nt going to catch him on his horse, so a massive pull weight wasnt required. Also horse archers tended to face other horse archers till they migrated west and met heavy armour so again heavy pull weight wasn't important. Thats what I was told one slightly drunken evening at a banquet in the Royal Armouries in Leeds. <a top evening indeed>

Henrick, I must admit i liked the look of the Avar bow on grozers site and your breakdown of bows is seriously pushing me towards an avar bow (being a 'fan' of the late justinian/Heraclian period - 550-650ish).

regards
geo

[Jean Thibodeau]

Some of these are available at Kult of Athena ( No I don't have shares with the company ), but they are one of the good vendors and they are a source for horse bows. Note: The draw weights seem to be in the 50 pound range but the site says something about being able to ask for heavier weights on special order.

http://www.kultofathena.com/archery.htm

http://www.kultofathena.com/product~item~FL02...te+Bow.htm

Made in Hungary but I don't see a makers name: But an e-mail to Ryan might be a good idea to get more details about that and options.

( Edited: George for someone in Europe buying/ordering from Hungary might be more convenient and less expensive as far as shipping charges are concerned ).

[Darryl Aoki]

Seven Meadows Archery (http://www.sevenmeadowsarchery.com) also sells some quite nice horsebows. I've bought two from them, and can vouch for their quality; they also sell thumb rings, and I've been happy with the one I got from them too. The quality of the archer, on the other hand...
I have seen bows on their site ranging from 25 lb @ 28" to, I believe, around 65 lb @ 28". The one I've got is a 45-pdr, though I think I'm drawing it past 28".

For what it's worth...

[Mrak E.Smith]

I don't have many knowledges about general histories of bow and archery, but I've read Adam Kapowicz's latest thesis on Turkish bow , he tested 39 samples randomly (but putting later sport bows aside deliberately )chosen from museum, and the draw weights are show clearly in this diagram(see attachment)

Of course Turkish bows were used both on and off horseback, but IMO it's a useful reference worth quoting in this topic, hope it helps.

[George Davidson]

125lbs as an average!! Wow! thats impressive.
Wonder if the pull weight went up in the heavier armour period
OR
if it was always at this high a level even in the earlier period

[Nathan Gilleland]

Just pure speculation. I am not an expert on bows or related cultures pertaining to this topic.

I would speculate (based on the diagram given by Mrak) that 125 pound draw was the average because, while it was a heavy draw, it was easier to pull and fire repeatedly than it's heavier counterparts, but still had enough punch to kill pretty much anything they aimed at (heavy or light armour).

It seems to me that these cultures would fight amongst themselves quite a bit, so draw weight would come into play, just as they did with stationary archers. You wanted to be able to shoot your opponent before they could shoot you.

Again, this is pure speculation. I really don't know if this is correct.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Hmm...interesting. But if I recall correctly, Adam's study included all kinds of traditional Turkish bows--flight and target as well as war--and the graph in particular does not distinguish bows designed for use on foot from those designed for horseback use, so it shouldn't be used as a reference for the weight of cavalry bows.

There's been an interesting discussion on the subject of horse-bows and their power in the ATARN forum here:

http://198.170.108.27/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1033

and the tentative conclusions seem to support the idea that the bows used on horseback were fairly light, at least in comparison to those designed for use on foot.

[Alex Standerford]

Hey George!

As Curtis says, calvary archers of almost all countries if not all of them had lower weight bows than the foot archers. The reason why has been lost from my brain, but I would not say its because they are weaker and heavy bows are harder control from horse. I think its more that they are able to come closer to enemy, and can shoot more accurately up close for say face shot or through armour gaps. Even though their bows were lighter, it wasnt by much. Saying cavalry bow was 50 pound rane and infantry bow was 150 range is quite strange. More accurately, it would be closer to 100-120 for cavalry and 120+ for infantry. That is for say average out of whole, but these are not correct numbers as I dont study much of the draw weights, just the construction method since I am bowyer

Reason for heavier poundage bow is not to just get longer range, it is too get longer range with heavier arrow. You can shoot much farther with light maybe 300 grain arrow for distance 500 yards but this does nothing to plate armour man or even chain maille of quality unless of course it hits open skin. With heavier arrow, same bow that shoots 200 yards with light arrow can only shoot maybe 150 yards with the heavier arrow. In this case, draw weights increase to get the range back to 200. Heavy arrow is what really defeats armour, not the bow. You can shoot light arrow from heavy bow and it does nothing because lack of momentum, but with heavy arrow and heavy bow, penetration is accomplished. Also, as armour got stronger, so did the bows and the arrows got bigger.

One exception for lighter bows would be sharp shooters. They were still able to shoot heavy infantry bows, but because they could shoot man face at 100 yards relatively easily, they could use lighter bow, for better accuracy. Lighter as in maybe 70-90 pounds, still heavy by modern standards!

Btw, from what I hear from my warbow shooter friends, bows do not start penetrating armour regardless of arrow weight/arrow head until about 100 pounds. Thats on relatively weak plate type armour. Once above 120, they were good enough to start penetrating armour and higher would just make it even easier. I only can pull 110 max......really max so cant aim yet hehe so I cannot give good solid info on armour penetration. However, we are not speaking about armour penetration, but draw weights. Maybe for another thread

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Well, 50 pounds would be on the lower end of military bows that would have been usable on horseback, but I'm skeptical that horse bows would go up to 100 pounds, let alone 120. The heaviest horse bow I've personally examined probably had a draw weight of slightly over 80 pounds when it was new, and I suspect this would have been the upper limit for the majority of horse bows; a few people may be willing to draw 90 or 100 pounds on horseback (100 pounds is the heaviest extrapolated weight I've ever heard ascribed to an actual horse-bow) but these would have been the statistical outliers that shouldn't be seen as typical. 120 pounds is...well, possible but quite impractical.

Anyway, heavier bows are harder to control on horseback; the heavier the bow, the harder it punishes faulty technique, so it takes greater skill to handle heavier bows on horseback without injuring oneself. I'd say 80-85 pounds is probably the cutoff point beyond which the relation between draw weight and difficulty becomes exponential rather than linear. Using (relatively) light bows also puts less strain on the horse archer's stamina, which is important because trying to control a horse while shooting with a bow is quite tiring to say the least. It definitely tired me out (both physically and mentally) much faster than shooting on foot!

Note that armor penetration might not have been a very important matter for horse archers since their tactical role didn't necessarily require them to kill heavily-armored troops, only to annoy them and break their formation and lure them into ambushes manned by heavier horsemen. The troops that horse-archers could have reasonably been expected to kill were the lightly-armored ones, principally the other side's horse archers and non-elite infantry. As for the heavy horse archers that were expected to regularly face the enemy's heavy troops and win, they were equipped with other weapons like lances, maces, and swords to do that job once the enemy had been disorganized by the arrows.

And of course, let's not forget the lines of Du Fu's poem:

Before you shoot the rider, shoot the horse,
First take the leader, ere you take the rebel throng.

Throughout the horse archer's existence, the horse was much less likely to be armored than the man, and even when armored it was frequently given only a lighter form of armor or one with far less than complete coverage. The horse is also much, much larger than the man over most of the angles from which a horse archer could have made his shot. So it makes perfect sense to shoot the horse first, and a heavy arrow shot from a 60-pound bow the usual horseback shooting ranges of 15-50m would definitely be more than enough to seriously injure an unarmored or lightly armored horse!