Since The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is playing on TCM, I decided to see what Da Jungle had in the way of longbows. They are available in pulls of 25 pounds to 150 pounds. I haven’t used a bow since I was an adolescent, playing with a fibreglass bow-and-arrow set from Western Auto. IIRC, the draw weight is how many pounds you have to draw with your pulling arm.
So what is a good recreational draw weight, just for sticking arrows in a target? My wife doesn’t have a lot of arm strength. We’re not going to go out and kill deer or zombies or anything.
If you have a portable luggage scale, you can rig up a couple of bits of rope or strapping with loops at each end and the scale in the middle to see what draw weight you can achieve, and hold, for about 10 seconds without too much strain. The total length should be a couple of inches less than the distance from your outstretched palm and your cheekbone in the classic archer t-shape shooting pose. Loop one end over the thumb of your bow hand and “draw” the other end towards the side of your head, increasing the pull force until you are just on the edge of struggling to maintain a steady pull. Subtract about 5 pounds from that force as a reasonable starting point.
It sounds like you and your wife may each require a bow. For basic closer range (< 50 yards) target shooting I wouldn’t suggest less than 35 lbs, likewise I’d say 60 lbs is probably the top end.
Age, build, tendon and joint condition(ing) all come into play. But for sticking arrows in a target, period, I would go for 30 - 40 pounds. It is plenty for a novice. Overbowing is really, really common, and it does no good for accuracy, consistency, or enjoyment.
It would be best to have two bows, one lighter in draw weight than the other. Longbows are almost non-adjustable in that regard, although a shorter draw by a smaller person is also a lighter draw.
60 lbs. is pretty standard for modern compound bows, but these bows pull app. 10 lbs. at full draw, or less than a 8-yo’s longbow. Longbows don’t have let-offs, so if you have a 40lb. longbow, you need to hold the 40 lbs. at full draw. I hunt deer with 45 - 50lb. selfbows - you don’t need lots of pull weight.
A guy of average build and no health issues can gradually work up to shooting well over 100 lb. longbows, but no-one who just wants to stick some arrows in a target does that. At high weights, it is a full body workout, using a completely different shooting technique. Great for bragging rights!
So what is a good recreational draw weight, just for sticking arrows in a target?
For plinking at 15 or 20 yards, get the lightest 25 lbs draw bow. It’s perfectly adequate for the purpose. And it’s the most enjoyable way to get into the sport. If you find you enjoy archery, you’ll have no misgivings about spending more money on something better (not a fiberglass thing from Amazon).
If you aren’t going to hunt with it, I would go for 35 lbs. That’ll give you enough oomph to try longer shots where you need to account for gravity. At 15-20 yards you won’t see much arrow drop. I hunt with a 55 lb recurve and that’s about the lowest weight I would use for hunting anything bigger than a turkey. For beginning archers I like the Genesis compound bow because both the draw weight and length are adjustable. I taught my daughter on one when she was 7 yrs old and at 23 she still uses it.
You should also get arm guards, finger tabs or shooting gloves, nocking point clips and a bow stringer. For the finger tab or glove, you need to find your dominant eye, which will determine if you shoot left or right handed. Fortunately the longbows you’re looking at can be used either way, but the finger tabs or gloves can’t. A nocking point clip is a small brass clip that you squeeze onto the string to mark where the arrow goes, although you can make your own with some thread and glue. A bow stringer is a length of cord with a small cup on one end and a loop on the other that you use to string the bow. They are fairly cheap and both make the task easy as well as lessening the risk of warping the bow limbs, although for a fiberglass bow limb warping is less of an issue.