Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XII

[GnomeFighter]

Edit: Just noticed something amusing - in the video linked earlier, they had a clip from Avatar with one of those blue guys (Na'vi?) drawing the bow in the way that a modern compound archer with a release aid would, which is completely different to any known technique - even Ishi, a completely isolated Native American archer, used a variant of the thumb draw.

Thats going to annoy me now. Doing that you will end up hitting the back of your head or taking your ear off. You could argue they hand being the wrong way is a function of some alien anatomy, but drawing that far back... Your going to have a nasty accident, and going to have allot of problems aiming.

In a non-military situation, if you find yourself outnumbered and cornered, then maybe some rapid trick shooting might allow you to escape.

You don't want to find yourself in that possision. For a start why would you spend time stringing your bow rather than running away?

In military combat volume of projectiles is useful as there's a chance that even a weak projectile will land a lucky shot. However, that was typically accomplished by massing archers. Also, you can, to a certain extent, trade effective range for penetration (i.e. an arrow that won't penetrate armor at 100 yards, might do it at 15 yards) -- although I think the aerodynamics of arrows used with bows are pretty good(?), certainly when compared to a military crossbow bolt(?).

The power of the bow is in its range. With the exception of horse archers (who do not rely on volume) you want your enemy as far away as possible. Once the enemy get close enough you drop your bow and pick up something else. The European archers (both cross and long bow) would have pikes and swords for when the enemy got close enough. You would not see the kind of combat you see in films or D&D with archers shooting that close. Apart from anything else a bow is unwieldy and takes time to fire.