Mounted bow range

[pezhetairoi]

How far were you shooting / throwing?

Well, my memory may betray me, this was about 2 years ago.
With the javelins we started pretty close to the target, and kept moving back as the day went on. We also did a contest for distance and one for accuracy. We had a true Achilles among us who could hit the hay bails at more than 35 meters with the throwing loop. Maybe 20 meters was my best, and at that range I'd be lucky to hit a school bus ... (The foot race with armour was my best chance for the laurels).
The bow, maybe 30 to 40 meters. I could hit the target occasionally. It was a replica skythian bow, and it had a pretty heavy draw. We tried a "zen" method, which encouraged staring at the target rather than aiming, with a very quick pull and release. It worked pretty well, before we began I was convinced that I would hit nothing.

[grahambriggs]

I think that is an untenable statement and, in fact, in some cases the reverse is true. Thinking about a couple of examples that spring to mind:

1. Bronze age warfare - here the noble maryannu types are equipped with the then cutting edge composite bow and only the best infantry archers are so armed with the rest left with a traditional, fairly short, self bow.

2. Steppe horse archers of nearly all periods are noted as having powerful bows, which get more powerful over time - c

3. The Chinese by the time of the Tang use the same Turkic bow for their cavalry and their foot archers, and this is the one used by their steppe opponents as well.

I recall during rules development I argued, unsuccessfully, that mounted bows should have a 6MU long range like foot bows - I can't recall the exact reasons for rejection, however

Maybe the actual bows are not more powerful, but surely the shooting from a certain number of foot troops over a given time period will be more effective than the same number of mounted troops. I would think this would be true for a variety of reasons -
More stable shooting platform

Some mounted shooters used stationary shower shooting techniques - Sasanids, ghilman at times, etc. - which I suspect for a trained man and mount would be pretty stable. Also, I believe, that when moving if you shoot at the highest point of the horses gait it is, effectively, a stable point.

It sounds unstable and difficult to us but we don't ride all day. To someone who is learning to drive, changing gears on a car seems difficult, as all four limbs are doing different things yet have to coordinate. Once you've driven for a while, it's second nature. I suspect the same was true of mounted horse archers.

[hazelbark]

It sounds unstable and difficult to us but we don't ride all day. To someone who is learning to drive, changing gears on a car seems difficult, as all four limbs are doing different things yet have to coordinate. Once you've driven for a while, it's second nature. I suspect the same was true of mounted horse archers.

Back when I was a lad in summer camp with horse and bows. We had crazy instructor who let mix us the two classes until he got fired for pot smoking. In about 3 days of an hour a day. We had a solid portion of us hitting a target (large hay bale at about 20 yards at a bounciey slow trot. Western saddle, so you could hug tight. Yes no one was shooting back yelling, but we were like 12 years old.