Traditional archery is a unique branch of archery, and one that’s growing more and more in popularity among not only seasoned archers, but those completely new to archery as well.

When you’re shooting a traditional, wooden bow with wooden arrows drawn from your back quiver, you’ll feel a connection to history, and the thousands of archers throughout time that have practiced this noble art.

Whether you’re new to archery, or an experienced archer and you’re interested in traditional archery, this guide will give you all the details that you’ll need to get into the sport and to get started shooting as soon as possible.

Traditional Archery: Where to Start?

The good news is, traditional archery is probably not only the easiest and least expensive type of archery to get started with, but it’s possibly the most forgiving as well. Not only do you not need as much (or as pricey of) equipment as you would in other styles of archery, traditional archery is generally easier on those brand new to archery, too.

If you were to start shooting a compound bow in either target archery or field archery, you would need to pick up quite a few different pieces of gear. You would need to buy a bow, some arrows, a bow sight, stabilizer, arrow rest, binoculars, and possibly a peep sight – and that’s just for starters.

On the contrary, with traditional archery, all you’ll need is a bow, some arrows and something to shoot at. Just head out to your local, safe shooting spot and you’re ready to go.

Sure there are some other pieces of gear and optional equipment you could buy, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But as far as getting started in the sport, it’s far faster, easier and all around more cost friendly than any other form of archery.

Not only that, but as I mentioned before it can be much more forgiving and far easier for newer archers to shoot traditional archery as well. This will depend on what type of traditional bow you decide to go with.

Part of the idea of traditional archery is that you’re only using traditional, historically accurate gear – the kind that an archer may have used hundreds of years ago. That means only using classic wooden bows.

In traditional archery most people tend to shoot one of two types of bows: Longbows and Wooden Recurve Bows. There are other types and styles of bows, such as the Asian horse-bows that are used when shooting at targets while on horseback – but for this guide we’re just going to stick to the two most common types of bows.

Wooden recurve bows will require you learn proper form when shooting, the same as when shooting modern recurve bows. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it will take a bit of time and commitment to get accurate with a recurve bow.

On a recurve bow, the bowstring hits the limbs of the bow when the arrow is released. This is why there’s a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to learning to shoot recurve bows.

On the other hand, longbows will allow even brand new archers to learn to shoot accurately, much faster and easier. This is due to the bowstring, which doesn’t make contact with the limbs of the bow.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not knocking recurve bows – not by a long shot! I personally shoot a recurve bow, as they have some benefits that outshout longbows which I ‘ll get to later.

I just think it’s important for those who are brand new to archery to understand that they might really like shooting a longbow with less practice required.

Traditional Archery Accessories

One of great things about traditional archery is that unlike other types of archery it’s not a strict sport with lots of rules and regulations – at least not as far as I’m aware of. Rules and the like will vary and are ultimately down to your local clubs or traditional archery groups.

So unlike many other styles of archery, you can buy as much or as little gear as you want. There are some optional accessories that you might find make your traditional archery shooting a lot more fun.

If you only buy one extra piece of equipment for shooting traditional archery, it should probably be a quiver. Unless you want to walk around with a back pocket full of arrows, you’ll definitely want to pick up a quality arrow quiver.

These days, you can buy a decent quality quiver for not a lot of money – if you shop online. You’ll just need to decide what type of quiver you want t use: The most common types being back quivers, hip (or belt) quivers and bow quivers, respectively.

And if you want to keep with the traditional and historical feel, there are a lot of nice leather quivers available at reasonable prices like this one.

Keep in mind that these will cost a little more than a standard quiver, but they’re well worth it for a quality made, leather quiver. If you treat these with care they should last you a lifetime of shooting.

An arm guard is another optional accessory that you might want to pick up while you’re at it. An arm guard stops the bow string from slapping into the inside of your bow arm. While this only happens if you’re not shooting with proper form, most inexperienced archers have not yet developed good form – so arm guards are recommended for those new to archery.

You’ll want to at least consider getting a bow stringer as well. These are super cheap and make it both safe and easy to string and unstring your bow. This helps to prevent accidentally breaking the bow while stringing, which can be dangerous.

Should I Buy a Longbow or Recurve Bow?

As I mentioned before, there are many benefits to shooting a recurve bow. While a longbow may make it easier for beginner archers to get started shooting, recurve bows have many advantages over longbows.

Recurve bows tend to not only have more speed, but are more powerful – while longbows can be more comfortable for some people and are quieter and more stealthy.

I won’t go into all of it here, but if you’re wondering which is the better bow for you, I’ve written an in depth comparison of longbows vs. recurve bows here.

Choosing the Right Bow

As a general rule of thumb, it’s better to start by shooting a lighter draw weight bow at first, you can always work your way up later on. Start by shooting a bow with a draw weight around twenty to twenty five pounds.

When you’re shooting, remember to focus on your form. You shouldn’t be struggling when you’re drawing back the bow, or when holding the bow at full draw.

When you’re shooting a bow with a light draw weight you can shoot for hours at a time, without fatiguing your muscles. Being able to practice for longer periods of time will help you to develop proper shooting form – which is everything when it comes to shooting accurately.

Just don’t make the mistake that some new archers do: trying to be a tough guy and buying the heaviest draw weight bow they can get their hands on. Let’s say you were to get a fifty five pound longbow, you’re going to be drawing back fifty five pounds on just three of your fingers.

This is especially true for those who have been shooting a compound bow for years, you’re not going to have your cams and pulley system holding all that weight for you.

Tip: You can use whatever bowstring comes with the bow (if there is one), or you could try using a Flemish twist string. Many traditional archers find that Flemish strings are more smooth and will make your bow shoot quieter.

Aiming in Traditional Archery

Because you’ll be shooting a bow with no attached bow sight, you’ll have to learn a few different shooting techniques in order to get accurate shots. The most common of these styles of aiming are instinctive shooting and gap shooting.

Instinctive Shooting and Gap Shooting

While I consider both of these techniques to fall under the heading of instinctive archery, they’re each unique in their own way. Instinctive shooting is more of a straight ahead, look and shoot style of shooting. While gap shooting is a way of judging the distances of targets with the tip of your arrow.

If you want to learn these two styles of shooting, I’ve written an extensive guide to learning to shoot them here.

String Walking

Another technique that some archers use is called string walking. In both gap shooting and string walking you’ll be using the tip of the arrow as a way of estimating distance.

In gap shooting you adjust the tip of the arrow to be either above or below the target, while in string walking you adjust the position of your shooting hand instead.

The arrow tip is always placed “point on” (meaning aimed directly at the target). By switching up how far below the arrow your shooting hand is, the angle of the arrow will change.

You will first need to determine your point on distance. That is the distance from the target in which your arrow will always hit the target – when you’re aiming directly at it.

Then you would move in ten yard increments, both closer to and farther away from the target. Moving your shooting hand up or down the bow string, you’ll have to figure out the position that hits the target and mark the position on the string.

Eventually you will have several markings on the bow string, each one used for shooting from different distances to your target. These are normally then marked with a little string, tab or even a nocking point.

This way you simply guess your distance from a target, aim directly at it and then find the point on the bowstring that is meant for shooting that particular distance.

There are even a few archers that will count the individual wrappings on their bowstrings, having memorized the given numbers for different distances.

Things to Keep in Mind When String Walking

String walking has been proven to be quite accurate when used by archers who are well practiced with it. This is so much the case that it is not allowed in many competitive types of archery.

There are some forms of competitive archery that will allow you to use string walking, but these normally make you compete in a separate division (called a class). This will mean that you’ll only be competing against other archers who use string walking.

If you are interested in shooting target, field or 3D archery, you will want to check out their rules and regulations – before you spend all the time it takes to learn string walking.

Also, most bows aren’t really ‘meant’ for string walking. Bows are made to be consistently shot from the same area of the bowstring. String walking can throw your bow out of whack over time.

Traditional bows may require less tuning than a take-down recurve bow, but if you want to shoot using the more standard techniques of shooting – you may want to skip string walking. String walking can screw up the accuracy of your bow when in comes to shooting standard techniques.

Arrows for Traditional Archery

Wooden arrows are about as traditional as you can get, and will really give you the most historic feel when shooting, but you could shoot other arrows as well.

The main difficulty when in comes to wooden arrows is finding arrows that have consistency in regards to their spines. Cheaper wooden arrows will have little to no consistency – while the best quality wooden arrows can get quite pricey.

A lower cost alternative would be to shoot either carbon or aluminum arrows that offer decent quality for a more reasonable price. You can find lots of these online, usually much cheaper than your local archery shop.

There are a few arrow manufacturers that have started making both aluminum and carbon arrows that are designed for use with traditional styles of bows.

I’m not going to go all out when it comes to every detail of choosing the right arrow here, you can check out the in depth guide to everything you need to know about arrows that I wrote for all the different styles of archery.

So I hope you’ve found this guide useful, I’ve given you the basics of traditional archery and few resources you can use to learn all of the other tips, tricks and techniques – so you’re off to right start. The great thing about traditional archery is that it’s so laid back that it can be a simple or as complicated as you want.

Now get out there and get shooting, be safe and have fun!