Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting Longbow or Recurve? opinions please

my son and i like Black Widow bows.

Jumping in a bit late here, but I've been shooting longbows and recurves most of my life and started building my own longbows a number of years ago. I prefer longbows but do shoot recurves better and developed a hybrid bow that (in my opinion) combines the best features of both the longbow and recurve. I haven't built any for a few years, but this is the last one I built that was for a friend of mine:





I'm getting the bug to start building them again and have three new designs ready to start on...

If you want to give it a try without getting in too deep, order up a Samick takedown recurve from Amazon. The Koreans take their archery very seriously, and the Samick is pretty smooth and runs about $140, last I looked. Limb sets are about $75 if you want to go higher or lower. The same bow sold under an American label is about $100 more. Mine's 45lbs, and 64", about right for an old fat man who sold his 50lb Bear TD years ago. I'm using arrows originally bought for the Bear and the Montana LB my son used to have.

Pappy, I was looking at the Samick option, but kind of wanted a one-piece bow, so went that route.

JGray, that looks really nice.

I'm getting myself up to speed with things I've never heard of before...things like Spine, PPI, GPP, FOC. Lots to learn. with the 50 lb longbow and my longish arms, looks like I'll need about a 32" shaft, 400 spine, probably 150-200gr head.

One reason I like the Samick is th 64" length, which used to be hard to find. Don't know what's available now, really.

By all means follow your feeling. Archery is definitely an activity where individuality matters.

Your draw length will be shorter with that style of bow vs. a compound but you won't know your actual draw length until you have the bow in hand. For grins until the bow arrives, you can take a yard stick and hold it against your chest and reach both arms out until your finger tips meet and read that length-it will be close to your draw length. With ordering a 50 lb bow, that will be 50 lbs at a 28" draw and you will likely draw a bit further with your height/wing span. That bow will gain 3-4 lbs for every inch of draw past 28" and I expect you will be shooting closer to 55-60 lbs at your draw length. Assuming you're going to start with carbon shafts, 400 spine should be in the ball park and they should be 32" uncut. I'd leave them full length and play with tip weight to adjust spine to get them shooting good. If you decide to try wood shafts at some point, they're a bit more forgiving as to spine and have always been quieter shooting for me, though harder to come by good quality and are less durable.

I know we live fairly close and I have a lot of experience getting these bows set up and shooting. If you want to meet up, I'd be more than happy to get you started out on the right foot (or maybe left foot in your case ).

I did the wingspan divided by 2.5 estimate. That came to 30.5"

JGray,

I appreciate the offer for help getting started. If I get really jammed-up on something i'll give you a shout. At the same time, I want to go through the 'journey' of learning and understating all the different things that go into this, on top of building the skill to put an arrow on target.

The bow will likely be along in a week or so, and I'm getting myself 'learned up' on a lot of the details regarding arrow selection.

Good stuff.

I haven't used that one before - just learned something! It comes up about 1/2" long with recurves and 1" to 1.5" long with longbows for me.

I saw a couple references to it using google-fu….grin. I came out 76" across, 30.5" draw.

Well if that is 1" to 1.5" long on the estimate for me, I guess that's not a problem.

As you said, I'm already worked out I should order 32" shaft arrows, so they can be tailored as needed.

Black Widow recurve here....love it

Those Black Widow bows look amazing. Wow.

That's an offer I'd jump all over, even if it was just for a day when you first get your arrows! There's tons of help out there for the asking and I've found trad shooters to be the friendliest folks out there when it comes to sharing secrets and knowledge.

Another good bit of advice is shoot one arrow only, go get it and shoot it again. Your body will have time to recover from the previous shot (especially if you're starting heavy) and you'll improve faster by concentrating on each arrow fired without having that "Darn, well... I'll make up that shot with this next one" mentality. Your arrows will last a LOT longer too since they won't get slammed by any other arrows.

Nice Offer JG and Good Shooting MM!!!

Stump

That makes a lot of sense, starting out just using one arrow and taking it slow.

I hear you on going through the 'journey' - I'd shot nothing but wood shafts up until a few years ago and it was much simpler then. For some reason, I decided I needed to figure out this whole carbon arrow thing and it really adds a whole new level of complexity regarding spine, point weight, FOC, bow tuning, how the sight window is cut (to center, past center, etc.) and on and on...

When I started bow hunting in the 1950's it was pretty much long bows, I can remember when the first recurve showed up at our club. I shot a long bow into the mid 1960's and then went to a Bear recurve. The recurve was lighter and more compact, I did a lot of still hunting so it was easier to sneak through the woods with the recurve. My dad stayed with the long bow for a long time, well after I left home and moved out of state. I'm getting back into bow hunting, I want to shoot some called coyotes with a bow. I have a compound now for coyotes but a recurve for bow fishing. The recurve is more accurate than the longbow in my opinion but for hunting I think it is more a personal choice. As a kid I put a lot of rabbits on the table with a long bow and blunts.

Recurves you can shoot with an open bow hand it is more like pointing at the target.

Long bow you gotta hold the bow and keep your wrist braced. I find it awkward.

Long bows tend to " stack" more and more hand shock.

But I have seen some impressive long bow shooting on T.V.

But I much prefer recurves.

50lb draw is a lot and too much to be starting out with. It is going to be tiring to shoot enough arrows for one. You are also going to increase the odds of starting bad habits. Not to mention that at your draw it is going to be over 50lb. The key to success with traditional archery is shooting a bunch of arrows daily. Actually that is the key to success with any type of bow, but a little more important with the trad gear. Swallow your pride and have them get you a 40lb draw.

Well I hope I didn't make a mistake going 50 lb.

I'm 6'3", 225 lbs. I can still nug out 100 pullups in about 30 minutes.

I don't really think a 50 lb bow is going to put my dick in the dirt. We'll see soon enough though, it's in the mail.

I shot 60 pounds, maybe more.

U will hopefully be fine.

If you can shoot accurately sitting down, sitting in 10 degree weather for 4 hours U b good!