Jay Massey
In the autumn of 512 B. C. a great army of nearly 700,000 warriors — one of the largest armies of antiquity — was encamped on a rolling, grassy plain on the Steppes of southern Russia, somewhere north of the Sea of Azov. This vast army was under the command of King Darius I of Persia, an ancient kingdom in what is now Iran. At the time, Persia was the most powerful nation on earth, with an empire stretching from Egypt to India.
King Darius and his army — composed mostly of infantry — had embarked on the campaign two years earlier. His goal: subdue the Scythians, a fierce, nomadic tribe of Steppe herdsmen who were noted for their horsemanship and their skill with their powerfully-reflexed composite bows. The long campaign had been a disaster for the Persians; the skirmishes and running battles against the Scythians always seemed to end in frustration. The tactics of the nomads had been to retreat and attack and then retreat again. The Scythian horse-archers were excellent fighters, toughened from a harsh life on the Steppes and disciplined from the daily grind of making and breaking camp, forever moving in search of forage for their horses, sheep, and cattle.
Pressed by the huge Persian army, the Scythian horsemen led their pursuers deeper and deeper into the wilderness of the Steppes, periodically moving in with quick skirmishes to pick off the Persian infantry from long range with their horn-reinforced bows. As they retreated, the Scythians filled in the wells and springs, torched the surrounding grasslands and destroyed food supplies, depriving the Persians of food, water, and forage. Morale of the Persian army was at an all-time low.
The light of dawn on that autumn morning in 512 B. C. revealed a relatively small band of a thousand Scythian horsemen on a grassy hill two miles from the main Persian force. The Scythian horse-bowmen paused for a moment atop the hill and then charged directly down toward the great Persian host. The thunder of their approaching hoofbeats was instantly matched by a clamor from the Persian infantrymen as they realized they were being attacked by this puny force. The clamor became a roar as thousands of foot soldiers uttered battle cries as they hastily grabbed lances and swords and prepared to do battle.
Then came the inevitable deadly whistle as the attacking horse-archers closed, released their arrows in a black cloud and then wheeled about in unison and galloped away, leaving in their wake hundreds of dead and wounded Persian
Soldiers. The Persian infantry and some mounted lancers gave chase — and were ambushed by a force of ten thousand Scythian bowmen waiting on the other side of the hill. The Persians withered under the onslaught. The Scythians were too swift, too mobile. The extreme range of the Scythians' powerful horn-wood-sinew bows barely allowed the Persians to make contact.
This two-year campaign against the Scythians — a group of Indo-European tribesmen who had moved onto the Steppes of southern Russia two centuries earlier — ended in bitter defeat for the invading Persians. Those battles which took place between 514 and 512 B. C. are among countless others which were to occur on the Steppes of Asia for nearly two thousand years, as entire nations of horse-archers rose to power and then fell, like waves of grass rolling across the windswept Steppes.
The power of the Scythians was eventually broken on the Steppes — not by the army of any civilized nation, but by the Sarmatians, another group of nomadic horse-archers like themselves. The Sarmatians were in turn followed by many other nomadic tribes, including the Parthians, the Massagetae, the Hsiung-nu, the Avars, the Huns, the Bulgars, the Turks, the Mongols, and a host of other Indo-European and Turko-Mongol groups. All of these peoples were expert horsemen whose principal fighting weapon was the Asiatic composite bow.
These nomadic horsemen had a profound impact upon the entire civilized world — from the Roman Empire to ancient China. Echoes of their hoofbeats can even be found in the writings of the ancient prophets of Israel. Today we still use many phrases which date back to these horse-archer cultures. "Bloodthirsty" refers to the Scythians' and Hsiung-nu practice of lining human skulls with gold and using them — according to some reports — as drinking cups in which to drink the blood of their enemies to celebrate a warrior's first kill or to consecrate a treaty; "Parting shot" refers to the way the Parthian horse-archers turned to shoot arrows over the rumps of their horses as they withdrew from an engagement.
Today, the accounts of these ancient archer/warriors lie buried in dusty volumes, tucked away on the back shelves of libraries, forgotten by everyone except a few historians.
Few archers today have even heard of such peoples as the Cimmerians, the Scythians and the Sarmatians. Even the horn-wood-sinew composite bow used by these ancient archers has been ignored and neglected — as have the longbow used by the medieval English archer and the flatbow used by the American Indian. Though proven time and again on the field and in battle, these weapons are now looked upon as "inefficient" and "antiquated."
This biased view of ancient and traditional archery is a recent phenomenon; it did not exist in the time of Saxton Pope, Art Young and Howard Hill. The misconceptions about ancient archery have only become widespread since high-tech, mechanized archery became popular in North America a short twenty years ago. Ignorance of the cultural and historical significance of traditional archery can be found everywhere today. Furthermore, most archers who are fixated on modern archery show little interest in learning anything about the archery of old. To such people, "traditional" archery gear means a willow-limb bow and a cotton string.
Not long ago I visited a photo lab in Anchorage, Alaska to pick up some color prints of my archery hunting clients. One of the photos showed a great bull moose one of my hunters had killed with a recurved bow. The moose had an antler spread of 67-inches and had weighed approximately 1600 pounds on the hoof. One wood arrow tipped with a sharp broadhead had killed the moose within seconds; the bull had run but 35 yards after being hit.
A young man who worked at the photo lab said he was an archer. He expressed amazement when he saw the photo. "I didn't know you could kill a moose with a recurve bow!" he exclaimed with genuine surprise.
His ignorance caught me off-guard, for I thought every archer realized that ancient Assyrian archers had commonly shot African lions with their recurved bows. I was sure everyone knew that Howard Hill, Fred Bear and others had killed African elephants with both recurve and longbow.
And what American archer of Anglo-Saxon heritage didn't know about the great longbow battles at Agincourt, Crecy, and Poitiers, where the sky was literally dark with arrows? The very survival of medieval England had depended many times on the simple yew longbow and the clothyard shaft. Surely any archer of English heritage would be expected to know of such things, would they not?
You'd be surprised! Mention such historical events at a gathering of high-tech shooters and you'll likely draw blank stares. Crecy and Agincourt — who cares? — that's all ancient history.
Such disregard for the historical significance of traditional archery surprises me, for I found the accounts of such archery-related historical events fascinating long before I discovered that several of my ancestors were Cheshire bowmen who had fought in some of the great longbow battles. After learning this I now find historical events such as Hastings and Poitiers even more interesting.
I'm sure thousands of other archers would feel the same if they were to research their own family lines. Descendents of the 5,000 or so English longbow-men who played a crucial role in defeating a vastly superior force of more than 100,000 at Crecy in 1346 are alive today. Most of them probably do not realize that for the power of the longbows held in the hands of their ancestors, they would not be here. I'm certain they'd take a renewed interest in traditional archery — if only they knew.
Trouble is, the longbow — and the recurved bow also — have been forgotten by most modern archers. These trusty, dependable weapons are now relegated to second-class status and are degraded by being referred to as "stick bows." The weapons which were good enough to build nations — the weapons which were capable of sending bodkin-tipped arrows through body armour — are now considered unfit to hunt with.
Such views of the traditional bow are surprisingly common even among the American archery establishment. The archery "industry" — as a group of leading modern archery tackle manufacturers is wont to call itself — has shown little interest in traditional archery, even though increasing numbers of archers are switching back to traditional gear. Some remarks coming from the archery industry and its spokesmen have even gone so far as to suggest that conscientious hunting archers should not use "stickbows." A thinking bowhunter, they suggest slyly, should use only the "best" equipment he can afford. By "best," they usually mean the latest in high-tech gear.
Such remarks by the "industry" are, in my estimation, purely self-serving. My experience in more than a dozen years of outfitting and guiding archery hunters in Alaska has taught me to expect precisely the opposite. In other words, the higher percentage of the hit-and-unrecovered big game connected with my hunting operation has been at the hands of hunters who were using modern compound bows and aluminum arrows with high-tech modular broadheads. Perhaps that's because bowhunters who use traditional gear are generally more experienced, whereas the neophyte archer most often buys the flashy, high-tech gear he sees advertised in the archery publications. At any rate, I can cite several examples if anyone wants to pursue the subject.
Surely the recent surge of interest in traditional archery presents a threat to the American archery establishment. After all, if the tastes of the American consumer were to switch completely to the longbow and recurve, many of the big tackle manufacturers would be in financial trouble.
To be certain, there is less money to be made from building traditional archery gear. The making of traditional tackle is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Such bows cannot be cranked out by modern production methods, but must be crafted almost entirely by hand. There is little profit to be made in building the traditional English-style longbow of crooked yew, and virtually none in building an Asiatic composite bow of horn, wood, and sinew. These latter bows sometimes take months to complete. Building them is not cost-effective for the archery manufacturer who relies on modern production methods and capital intensive industries.
Modern archery manufacturers prefer to build and market the sort of bows which utilize metal handles, steel cables, eccentric magnesium pulleys and other machined parts. Such equipment can be cranked out and assembled quickly on the production line with a minimum of time and labor. Even though mass-produced, the flashy, modern equipment easily dazzles the beginning archer because it is so heavily promoted and advertised — often with photos and testimonials from paid hunters who have used the new products to rack up impressive numbers of big game kills.
The neophyte archer, who has been force-fed on this diet of advertising and promotion, sees the results and is made to believe that true success (as in terms of game kills or higher target scores) will come his way if only he purchases the new archery products.
We live in a fast-paced, competitive society. In it, success is measured mostly in materialistic terms — not in such values as personal growth and self-satisfaction. Satisfaction, most believe, is to be found sitting astraddle a buck deer, no matter what methods are used to get there — and certainly not from stalking through the woods with your handcrafted traditional bow. Many American archers have not been informed of the differences between quality bowhunting and taking the easy way out. And there are certainly easier ways to bowhunting success these days than by using the methods of Ishi and Pope and Young!
Greed and laziness, however, is not without its price. An unfortunate side-effect of the results-oriented philosophy of modern archery is that certain qualities which made it unique have been lost, thus cheapening the sport and causing it to lose much of its magic and its appeal. At the same time, there seems to be a growing backlash against archery hunting. Only a few short years ago the bowyer's art and the appeal of traditional archery had all but disappeared. Robin Hood and Ishi seemed to have been replaced by Rambo and bowhunting celebrities. The romance of archery and the spiritualism of the natural world had given way to high-tech efficiency and a "whack'em" mentality, with its emphasis on steaming gut piles.
There's an old Chinese saying that, "Where everyone sees beauty, there is already ugliness." This adage is just as true in America. Don't think for a minute that the American public does not recognize the ugliness which has crept into our sport.
Consider, for a moment, the public icons of bowhunting — that image, or images, which exist in the mind of the public. In the early days of archery hunting, the icons of our sport were strong and positive. In the early part of this century. Art Young and Saxton Pope were seen as heroes, for they represented the epitome of American self-reliance, hardihood, and sportsmanship. Not surprisingly, their adventures were frequently written up in such prestigious publications as Harpers. Howard Hill was a frequent guest on such television shows as Art Linkletter's. Fred Bear's hunting trips were glowingly written about in such national magazines as Time.
Are we getting this sort of favorable publicity today? Hardly!
The most recent coverage of bowhunting I saw on television showed a well-known bowhunting rock star shooting a domesticated/feral pig from an elevated tree stand. The graphic film sequence showed the pig as it was shot through the chest with an aluminum arrow from a high-powered compound device. The camera zoomed in as the pig ran around frantically and then fell on the ground, kicking and squealing as only a pig can squeal. The sequence was revolting, even to a hunter. And it was shown on prime-time national television.
Such negative publicity only reinforces the distorted public perception of bowhunters as a bunch of camo-clad, kill-crazy dilettantes armed with space-age shooting devices which operate with pin-point precision. The public at large never gets to hear about the traditional archer who stalks quietly and who truly loves the woods and its wild inhabitants.
We seem burdened down by our negative "Rambo" image. The word "bowhunting" has begun to convey such images as Space-age archery equipment, camo clothing, treestands, and bait stations — images which are not entirely positive in the mind of the public.
Fortunately, there is a growing cadre of tradition-oriented archers who not only recognize the ugliness which has crept into our sport, but are willing to put forth the sweat and hard work which go into true archery. They are learning that real satisfaction in archery doesn't always come by taking the easy way out.
Learning to shoot a traditional bow is not easy. You can't just pick up a longbow or an Indian-style flatbow and learn to shoot tight groups with it in a single afternoon. It takes perseverance and hard work. Making traditional bows and arrows isn't easy either. But both making traditional gear and becoming proficient with it are well within the reach of an individual who is truly dedicated to archery. And the results are well worth the effort!
My own experience in archery, which now has spanned close to 30 years, has come around full-circle. I started out in the mid-1960's by making self wood bows of Pacific yew and Osage orange and then graduated to laminated longbows of yew and fiberglass. After that I began building heavy-handled laminated recurved bows of maple and fiberglass and experimented with such things as overdraw systems and even bow sights. My arrows evolved along with my bows, starting out with birch dowels and Port Orford cedar and then changing to fiberglass and, for a short time, even aluminum alloy.
As my archery gear grew more sophisticated my success rates on large and small game went up drastically. The bows I designed, built and used in hunting would cast a fiberglass or aluminum arrow with great speed and accuracy. I came to feel supreme confidence, to honestly think that any animal within 40 yards was as good as hanging on the meat pole. A few of my kills were a lot further than that.
I never switched to the compound device and so I never completely abandoned traditional archery. However, it was obvious that at the peak of my deviation from tradition, my equipment had slowly, inexorably, moved toward greater and greater sophistication. As it did, my archery tackle seemed to become more impersonal, more inanimate. Although highly efficient, the fiberglass-laminated recurved bows were heavy in the hand and awkward to carry in the brush. The bow quivers I often used added even more weight to the heavy-handled bows, making them feel less a part of me. I began to feel as if my bow and arrows were a thing — no longer an extension of my body.
From time to time Td get this little feeling of nostalgia as I recalled my first season of bowhunting. I'd remember the light-as-a-feather feel of a yew wood bow in my hand and the soft, musical hum of its bowstring as a cedar arrow leaped forward in flight. I could almost smell the aroma of the linseed oil I rubbed on my bows before heading out on a somber November morning. I could almost hear the soft rustle of a dozen broadhead-tipped wood arrows in my oiled leather back quiver.
Like many other American archers, I came to feel distress at the direction archery seemed to be headed. Something valuable was being lost here. I began to understand how the Plains Indian and the mountain man felt when they saw buffalo trails being plowed under and traversed by the steel tracks of the railroads.
As the rising tide of high-tech archery gear became a flood, I began to feel as though I were being swept further and further away from true archery. More and more I began to miss the type of archery I had seen practiced by the old-time archer/bowyers of Oregon — men like Gilman Keasey and Earl Ullrich. My nostalgic longing for the old archery was becoming stronger even while everyone else seemed happily engaged with the new high-tech toys.
One cold November day, while making an annual sojourn to the Oklahoma woods of my youth, I found myself wandering the plowed fields of a river bottom farm, looking for arrowheads. On my brother's land, near the confluence of two creeks, was an ancient Indian village site; the plowed ground was strewn with chert flakes and chips and broken points. Nearby, in the rich soil of the river bottom, were hundreds of bois d' arc, or Osage orange, trees growing straight and tall.
The discovery of the ancient artifacts provided fuel for my imagination; the Osage orange wood provided the natural raw material. Together, they would send me on a path away from modern archery. At first I was reluctant to abandon modern methods of bow-making; 1 cut down half a dozen Osage trees, had the wood ground into laminations and used the laminations to build several wood-fiberglass recurves and longbows, all of which had small, traditional-type handle risers. For reasons 1 didn't understand at the time, I could not bring myself to build a heavy-handled bow with these Osage laminations, which 1 considered special. 1 instinctively felt that whatever bows I made from this wood must at least have a traditional design, even though 1 would laminate them with fiberglass on the back and belly. So 1 designed a short recurve bow, 60-inches overall length, with a small, longbow-type handle. 1 used the bows to take several big game animals.
After turning the corner which would take me back to traditional archery it wasn't long before 1 began making sinew-backed Osage bows. Sinew is a remarkable material, and when combined with good bow wood will make a bow which will rival the best glass laminated bows built. I've made several sinew-backed bows in the 60-70 lb class which will send a 500-grain field arrow through the chronograph at well over 180 feet per second — every bit as good as most of my wood-glass laminated bows will do. Sinew-backed bows are dependable and have a long life, plus, working with sinew and hide glue is much better for your health than keeping your hands immersed in epoxy resins and breathing fiberglass dust into your lungs!
After having made and shot sinew-backed bows exclusively now for the past several years, Tm sold on them more than ever. They are fast and they are durable, for the sinew backing makes a good wooden bow almost unbreakable and greatly extends its life.
At the start of this transition period — which for me began about a decade ago — there was no existing network of archery traditionalists. But unbeknownst to me, there were plenty of other archers out there who also were dissatisfied with modern archery. Most of us had simply followed our instincts in returning to traditionalism, feeling that if archery stayed the present course, we would, in the words of old-time archer Glenn St. Charles, "re-invent the wheel." That is, we would continue to improve the efficiency of archery equipment until we ended up with a crossbow or a bow-gun.
Several years ago this back-to-the-basics movement really began building, and as things swung back toward the old archery, traditional archery shoots began springing up all across the U. S. and Canada. Traditional archery books and publications started rolling off the presses. These developments were a sure sign that thousands of American archers were equally fed up with the way archery had gone high-tech.
Now, midway through 1992, archery traditionalism is stronger than ever. This is a refreshing change, for it means, among other things, that the forms of archery practiced long ago on the Steppes of Mongolia, in the forests of North America, on the African veldt, and in the sunny glades of England will continue to live on. It means that such desirable qualities as woodsmanship, self-reliance, resourcefulness, and hardihood — important attributes in any society — will
Once again be appreciated. The traditional archery movement means that taking game with the bow and arrow will once again be a meaningful event.
I hope Volume II of The Traditional Bowyer's Bible will help archers everywhere recapture the romance and excitement of our rich archery past. And to the contributors and the readers of this book, I extend a hearty salute, for these people represent that which I most respect and admire in the world of archery. Things which are truly worthwhile do not usually come easily, and to strive toward them is to gain strength of character.
World History
