Monday, May 7, 2007

My New Arrows


My customized carbon fibre arrows finally arrived today...

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Close-up right side

Yes, this is a left-handed bow, that is to say, you draw the bowstring with your left hand and you hold the bow with your right.

Contrary to what you might believe, you don't choose a left-handed bow just because you're left-handed. You choose a left-handed bow if you're left-eye-dominant, as I am. I'm actually right-handed.

For more information on left-handedness or right-handedness in archery, visit here.

Close-up left side


Full View


My New Bow

I'm starting to take archery seriously. After a year as a novice at the University of Toronto's Hart House Archery Club, I decided to get my own equipment. This week, I drove all the way to Waterloo to visit The Bow Shop, Canada's premiere archery store. There, I picked up a Chek-Mate Falcon traditional recurve bow with a 34 lb draw weight (at 28") for $319. Along with carbon fibre arrows and other accessories, the total came to $491.68 Canadian, tax included.

The bow is a traditional recurve. I could’ve gone for a longbow but, frankly, I don’t like the handle grip in longbows. When choosing a bow, the handle is THE most important criterion because if you don’t like how it FEELS, you’ll never want to use the bow.

I’m a traditional archer, that is to say, unlike Olympic archers and most other archers in the world today, I do not use a sight device on the bow for aiming. Like Robbing Hood and William Tell, I essentially “wing it” with my naked eyeball. (This is also called “instinctive” archery.)