190 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Forest and Stream is Official Organ of the National Archery Association 
What A Good Bow Has Done And Will Do 
By Will H. Thompson 
T HE press of duties has caused me to neglect 
'for some days answering your recent 
favor, in which you request me to give 
my opinion as to the reasonableness of the four 
different tests you have contemplated applying to 
the Boy Scouts as measures od skill in archeiy, 
and I desire to answer as follows: 
Number One.—Any boy with a pocket knife 
cutting a mere green sprout of any tree can make 
a bow that will shoot a distance of one hundred 
feet with fair precision; but no boy, unless he 
be a trained expert in the management of tools, 
can make an arrow that will shoot with fair 
precision at that distance, or practically at any 
distance. Any bow that is reasonably straight, 
will drive an arrow straight, but a good arrow 
is the most difficult thing to make in the world. 
So difficult, indeed, that the trained arrow makers 
o.f London and of Edinburgh, who have spent 
lifetimes in the making of arrows, have never 
yet been able to sell me a dozen out of which I 
could get six perfect arrows. Of course, the 
words “fair precision’’ will cover a multitude of 
sins. Almost any boy could make an arrow with 
which one could hit the side of a barn at one 
hundred feet. But a iboy of fifteen, with a rea¬ 
sonably trained mind and handy with tools, should 
make an arrow that would fly sufficiently straight 
to keep on a four foot target at that distance. 
Number Two.—With good arrows, a fifteen 
year old boy, with a year’s training, should be 
able to make the score of three hundred and fifty 
with sixty shots. 
Number Three.—A boy of fifteen with a year’s 
practice and reasonably good arrows, should 
accomplish the feat of scoring three hundred 
with seventy-two arrows, using standard forty- 
eight inch target at fifty yards. 
Number Four.—No boy of fifteen, nor man of 
any age, race, time, or with a record for previ¬ 
ous condition of servitude, ever could perform or 
ever has performed the feat of shooting “so far 
and fast as to have six arrows in the air at 
once.” Of course, the legend of Hiawatha fur¬ 
nishes such a supposed instance, hut poets are 
not responsible, and we will let Longfellow off 
with only a slight reprimand. Seriously, after 
more than fifty years of the bow, and much ex¬ 
perimentation, I have never been able to keep 
these arrows in the air at one time but have 
come so near it that I feel sure it might be done. 
I feel equally sure that no man ever has, ever 
will, or now can, keep four in the air at one 
time. The difficulty does not lie in the lack of 
power, in the bow, but the difficulty, amounting to 
an impossibility, of placing the arrbws upon the 
string, drawing and loosing and replacing the 
second and third arrow upon the string. The 
nocks of good arrows are made so narrow as to 
exactly fit upon the nocking place of the string, 
tight enough to bear the weight of the arrow 
without dropping off the string when pending 
perpendicularly, and the putting of an arrow upon 
the string, is a delicate and particular matter, 
which requires the archer to observe the nock and 
nocking point carefully. A very slight increase 
of speed might be secured by having large open 
Mrs. Burton Payne Grey, Woman Champion 
of America. 
nocks in the arrows, so that one could quickly 
feel the arrow on to the string, but the gain 
would not be sufficient to get an additional arrow 
(over three) into the air. 
I fed like adding by way of postscript, that 
the bow is a much more powerful and reliable 
weapon than it is generally conceded to be, and, 
upon the other hand, has limitations that 'the 
poets and novelists reck nothing of. The re¬ 
doubtable Locksley (Robin Hood) never split 
the wand at one hundred paces, and never in¬ 
tentionally split Hubert’s shaft by aiming at the 
nock while the arrow was in the center of the 
target, nor did William Tell ever shoot the apple 
from his boy’s head. Nor did Robin Hood ever 
shoot an arrow a quarter of a mile. Those 
legendary feats are pleasant to read of, especially 
in our boyhood days. They are like the story 
that the old lying by-stander always tells us arch¬ 
ers when he wanders upon our shooting grounds 
about the wonderful shooting that he has seen 
done by the American Indians, nicking a penny 
out of a split stick every shot at one hundred 
yards. Yet no Indian ever lived who, with the 
weapons with which he was able to arm himself, 
could shoot one-half as well as the least skillful 
of our lady archers of the present day, not be¬ 
cause he was an Indian, but because he had no 
two arrows that would shoot straight. I have 
tested their best 'many times, and never have 
found even a fair shot among them. On the 
other hand, the killing power of a good bow 
with a thoroughly well made arrow is far above 
the belief of the average person. An ordinary 
fifty pound yew or lancewood 'bow in the hands 
of a good archer, with a thoroughly well made 
arrow having a steel point an inch and a half in 
length by an inch in breadth, thin, needle pointed 
and razor edged, will drive such an arrow through 
an ox or a horse. Only last fall I paddled a 
canoe for Mr. Z. E. Jackson, of Atchison, Kan¬ 
sas, in northern British Columbia waters, and 
saw him with a fifty pound yew bow drive a 
much inferior arrow to the one I have described, 
though both shoulders of a deer, passing just in 
front of its heart, slicing into the aorta, and kill¬ 
ing it almost instantly, the shot having been 
made from the delicate poise of a high seat 
across the gunnels of the canoe at the prow, 
diagonally upward to the mountain side at a dis¬ 
tance of over sixty yards. 
The historical stories of the polished steel mai] 
of knights being cloven through and through by 
a cloth yard shaft, are no doubt true, and could 
be easily repeated by many strong archers of 
to-day. 
ARCHERS, TAKE WARNING! 
Though the season for real archery, and regu¬ 
lar out door practice has not arrived, there are 
some things that we can do in order to be in 
good condition when we can get onto the range. 
After a winter’s rest, and in some cases real 
hibernation, our muscles are in no condition to 
do good shooting. About a month must pass 'be¬ 
fore we can take up the sport where we left it in 
the fall. This is nothing new; nor is the advice 
which follows. 
You have probably been resting all winter; but 
it is not too late to do yourself lots of good. Be¬ 
gin to-day; and every day do free, or light 
gymnastics. Keep a bow in your room and draw 
it once or twice daily, for ten or fifteen minutes. 
Rest as often as you wish to, use first one hand 
and then the other. You will not do this when 
