Deadspin is part of Gawker media - so it is basically an online tabloid. Most of the stuff on it is crap, occasionally they break a story that goes big, and occasionally they offer an interesting article on a sports topic.
Because its Olympics time, they are bringing up a few-years-old video to say that Olympic archers are poseurs who would die immediately if pressed to actually do their thing in battle.
But that few-year-old video: Jeez!! This guy, Lars Anderson, appears to be a complete battle-ready archery badass! Just as importantly, the video speaks to a number of “forgotten battle archery techniques” that apparently Anderson focused on and mastered, such as nocking the arrow on the outside edge of the bow, not inside edge, so you can release more quickly and smoothly, how to carry arrows (shoulder quivers are for poseurs, apparently), and using either hand to pull.
I thought it was great. Have you guys seen this? Any archery/SCA-type Dopers who can comment on the legitimacy of his archery mastery?
I’m not an archer either, but clearly they are taking two fundamentally different things and comparing as if they were the same. Olympic archers train and hone a very specific skill, and the cartoonish “battle archery” in that video has absolutely nothing to do with it.
To add, Andersen uses very low draw weight bows for his “battle archery” - 30 lbs. ain’t gonna cut it when you actually need to fight with bows. So, circus gimmicks at best.
I am not an archer either, and none of the videos came up for me.
However IIRC in most medieval battles using archers I believe it was the archers firing into massive lines of troops where they were not targeting specific individuals, just fire as fast as you can at the line coming your way.
Andersen’s tricks are cool to watch, and impressive for what they are, but what they aren’t is actual battle techniques. If the enemy’s as close as the targets are in most of his tricks, you don’t want a bow at all (no matter how rapid-firing or precise), you want a pike, and very shortly after that a sword. If the enemy is two hundred yards away, meanwhile, it matters not at all how quickly you can get arrows to thirty.
Yeah, they weren’t counting who made ace.
“Using either hand to pull” is just a matter of training. I’m ambiclumsy and one of the consequences of that is that archery instructors take longer than usual to determine which side I should use, but in the end it mostly comes down to “dominant eye” (my right) beats “dominant hand” (my left). I’ve been told to go lefty, righty, righty, and “you’re better as a righty but yeah it’s close”. Give any archer enough time to train both sides, it can be done.
Indeed. Andersen’s assumptions support the idea that combat archery was something akin to either sniping or something out of swords-and-sorcery fantasy.
In most of history, archery was artillery: a ranged area attack against an enemy formation. Generally, arrows weren’t addressed to specific combatants; they were all labeled “to whom it may concern”. Certainly, the most historically-celebrated instance were precisely that. Parthian tactics, Scythian horse archery, longbows at Agincourt, that kind of thing.
It’s a visually-interesting demonstration, although you also have to realize the cherry-picking and practical effects utilized. (E.g., splitting an arrow inflight using a low-velocity incoming shot and a lightweight easy-to-split arrow shaft. And lots of takes before getting one that worked.)
