Archery à l'ancienne

The European championships for prehistoric thrown weapons was held just down the road from us this weekend.  We moseyed on down after our guests had departed this Sunday afternoon, to have a look.

The weapons concerned are the bow and arrow, and the atlatl.  I had to look up atlatl.  By the time we got down there, it was bows and arrows only, fired at a series of targets on which were drawn pictures of prehistoric prey.  These pictures were distributed around the site, to be fired at from various distances.

It was a low-key affair, with perhaps 15 competitors.  It could be of course, that there had been more, and that those eliminated went home yesterday.

I didn't get the impression that the weapons were especially powerful.  It's easy enough for me to say, and I'm not pulling the bow, nor am I on the receiving end.  But I think that although the turkey would have probably ended up in the pot, the competition with, say, the bear, would have been less one-sided.

To my untrained eye, the guy in the foreground above was the best and the most on-target.  He had a smooth technique;  He didn't spend any time aiming with the bow drawn:  he lifted the bow and drew it in the same movement, and loosing the arrow immediately at the end seemed like the natural culmination.