Archery was historically used for hunting and combat but is a sport about precision and requires practice to gain skill with the bow and arrow.
There are many different types of bows and arrows, and what you use depends on the type of archery you will be participating in.
But technique and form are fairly general, here’s an outline of archery and competitive archery:
Shooting Technique and Form
Aiming
Target Archery
Field Archery
3D Archery
Clout Archery
Crossbow Archery
Flight Archery
Ski Archery
Shooting Technique and Form
You hold the bow in your opposite hand from your dominant side, called the bow hand and the arm is the bow arm. Your stronger hand is the drawing hand or string hand. Right-hand/eyed archers hold the bow with their left with their left side is facing the target.
To shoot an arrow the body should be at right angles to the target and the shooting line, with the feet placed shoulder-width apart. As an archer progresses from beginner to a more advanced level an 'open stance' is developed. Each archer will have a preference but mostly this term means that the leg furthest from the shooting line will be a half to a whole foot-length in front of the other.
To load, the bow is pointed toward the ground and the shaft of the arrow is placed on an arrow rest. The back of the arrow is attached to the bowstring with the 'nock' (a small plastic component). This is called nocking the arrow.
The bowstring and arrow are held with three fingers. When using a sight, the index finger is placed above the arrow and the next two fingers below. The string is placed in either the first or second joint of the fingers.
The bow is then raised and drawn. The string hand is drawn towards the face, where it rests lightly at an anchor point; this is consistent from shot to shot and is usually at the corner of the mouth or on the chin. The bow arm is held outwards toward the target with the elbow rotated so that the inner elbow is parallel to the ground; Archers with hyper extendable elbows tend to angle the inner elbow toward the ground. Some bows will be equipped with a mechanical device, called a clicker, which produces a clicking sound when the archer reaches the correct draw length.
The arrow is typically released by relaxing the fingers of the drawing hand. This type of release aims to keep the drawing arm rigid and move it back using the back muscles, as opposed to using arm motion. An archer should also pay attention to the recoil or follow through of his or her body, as it may indicate problems with technique.
Aiming
There are two main forms of aiming in archery: using the sight picture or not.
The sight picture includes the target and the bow, as seen at the same time by the archer. With a fixed anchor point and a fully extended bow arm, successive shots taken with the sight picture in the same position will fall on the same point. This allows the archer to adjust aim in order to achieve a good standard of accuracy, it can’t be used with short bows. Modern archery equipment usually includes sights which mark the predicted impact point. It allows good accuracy to be achieved after a moderate amount of practice.
Aiming involves the same sort of coordination between vision and motion that is used when throwing. With sufficient practice, archers can normally achieve good practical accuracy for hunting. Aiming without a sight picture may allow more rapid shooting.
Target Archery
Modern competitive target archery is governed by the International Archery Federation; Olympic rules are derived from FITA rules.
Target archery competitions may be held indoors or outdoors. Indoor distances are 18 m and 25 m. Outdoor distances range from 30 m to 90 m. Competition is divided into ends of 3 or 6 arrows. After each end, the competitors walk to the target to score and retrieve their arrows. Archers have a set time limit in which to shoot their arrows.
Targets are marked with 10 evenly spaced concentric rings, which have score values from 1 through 10 assigned to them. In addition, there is an inner 10 ring, sometimes called the X ring. This becomes the 10 ring at indoor compound competitions. Outdoors, it serves as a tiebreaker with the archer scoring the most X's winning. Archers score each end by summing the scores for their arrows. Line breakers, an arrow just touching a scoring boundary line, will be awarded the higher score.
Different rounds and distances use different size target faces. These range from 40 cm (18 m FITA Indoor) to 122 cm (70 m and 90 m FITA, used in Olympic competition).
Field Archery
Field archery involves shooting at targets of varying (and sometimes unmarked) distance, often in rough terrain.
Three common types of rounds are the field, hunter, and animal. A round consists of 28 targets in two units of 14.
- Field rounds: are at 'even' distances up to 73m using targets with a black bullseye (5 points), a white centre (4) ring, and black outer (3) ring.
- Hunter rounds: use 'uneven' distances up to 64m, and although scoring is identical to a field round, the target has an all-black face with a white bullseye.
- Animal rounds: use life-size 2D animal targets with 'uneven' distances reminiscent of the hunter round. The rules and scoring are also significantly different. The archer begins at the first station of the target and shoots his first arrow. If it hits, he does not have to shoot again. If it misses, he advances to station two and shoots a second arrow, then to station three for a third if needed. Scoring areas are vital (20, 16, or 12) and non-vital (18, 14, or 10) with points awarded depending on which arrow scored first.
One goal of field archery is to improve the technique required for bow hunting in a more realistic outdoor setting. Fatigue can be an issue as the athlete walks the distance between targets across sometimes rough terrain.
3D Archery
3D archery is a subset of field archery focusing on shooting at life-size models of game and is popular with hunters. It is most common to see unmarked distances in 3D archery, as the goal is to accurately recreate a hunting environment for competition.
On these animals there are 4 rings, there is a 12 ring inside of the 10 ring, inside of the 8 ring. Anything on the target that is outside of the 8, 10, 12, or 14 rings is a 5. If you miss the target, you score a zero.
Clout Archery
Similar to target archery, except that the archer attempts to drop arrows at long range (165 m for the men and 128 m for women), into a group of concentric circular scoring zones on the ground surrounding a marker flag, the flag is 30 cm square and is fixed to a stick. The flag should be as near to the ground as is practicable.
Archers shoot series of six arrows then, when given the signal to do so, archers proceed to the target area. A Clout round usually consists of 36 arrows. Clout tournaments are usually a 'Double Clout' round (36 arrows shot twice). They can be shot in one direction or both directions. All bow types may compete.
Scoring: a rope with a loop on the end is placed over the flag stick; this rope is divided into the scoring zones of the target: Gold (5 points), Red (4 points), Blue (3 points), Black (2 points) and White (1 point). The rope is 'walked' around the target area and arrows falling within a particular scoring zone are withdrawn and, on completion of the full circle, are laid out on the rope on the corresponding colours. The designated scorer would then call out the archers' names and the archers would (in turn) call out their scores as they pick up their arrows. The scores must be called in descending order as with target archery.
Crossbow archery
Field-crossbow archery takes place on open sports fields or in sports halls using portable archery target buttresses.
Crossbow archers shoot from the standing position and they must draw the bow string by hand without mechanical assistance.
At outdoor competitions Bolts (arrows) are shot in series of 3 at multi-coloured 10-zone archery target faces. A time limit of 3 minutes is allowed per 3 shots. After a sound signal from the official in charge of shooting, all competitors walk forward together to score and collect their bolts from the targets. This sequence is repeated until the completion of the competition round. Shooting takes place from three distances 65, 50 and 35 meters using 60cm archery target faces (40cm three-spot face at 35m). If scores are tied after 10 Final shots the competitors concerned continue shot-by-shot until a winner is declared.
Flight Archery
In flight archery the aim is to shoot the greatest distance. It requires a large flat area.
Modern rules have flight archers shooting in various classes and weights. Generally they shoot six arrows in each series and then search for all of them. Only four series are usual in one shoot. At the end of the shoot, archers stay by or mark their furthest arrows while judges and their assistants measure the distances achieved.
Flight archery relies on the finest in performance equipment, optimized for the single purpose of greater range, and the search for better flight archery equipment has led to many developments such as the development of carbon arrows.
Ski Archery
The athletes ski around a cross-country track and there are two stances in which the athlete must shoot the targets: kneeling and standing.
During competition the skis must not be removed at any time. The athlete may unfasten the ski when shooting in the kneeling position but must keep the foot in contact with the ski.
The shooting distance is 18m and the targets 16cm in diameter. In certain events, for every missed target, the athlete must ski one penalty loop. The loop is 150m long.