Hello all, nice site you have going here! Always nice to find another good forum.
15 years or so ago I was in junior high and fascinated by bows, particularly crossbows. I grew up on a family farm, but no one in my local family were hunters and my parents knew better than to spend already scarce money on my latest interest as I would be on to the next within weeks. An uncle was kind/foolish enough to let me have his old compound bow, but at 60lb draw I (a skinny punk at the time) couldn't swing it.
After eight years in the USAF I'm beginning to get myself fairly well sorted and I find that archery is one of those interests that has actually hung on for the long haul. This time around however, I find that it is the simplicity and craft of stick bows that holds the most attraction for me.
I have read the newbie article and a good variety of posts here and I am fairly confident about these things:
-I want to learn the basics right from the beginning. For me, that is probably going to mean finding a person to teach and critique me as I am not self-disciplined enough to learn well from books/video.
-I will likely be shooting at targets, just for fun for years before I ever take up hunting.
-I am right handed, but left eye dominant. Nonetheless, I intend to at least start out with a right-handed bow as a left-handed shooting position feels constrained somehow (a mental block I should work on at some point.) I will almost certainly be shooting instinctively anyhow as my eyes are not really up to precision jobs. I fail certain varieties of depth perception tests and when I went through some of the eye dominance tests I had difficulty getting things to resolve to just one image. Ah well, I wasn't looking to get into competitive shooting anyhow. =)
I'm in the habit lately of buying the best quality that I can reasonably afford, so my first inclination was to get a good idea of draw length/weight and order a new Martin Savannah or Howard Hill as both are great looking bows to my eye and seem to have plenty of fans among more experienced archers. However, when I finally took a good look in the classifieds here I realized that I could easily get more bang for my buck there than in buying new.
I think that at 6'1 and in reasonably good shape, I could handle a 40-50lb draw to start out, perhaps a little more. I prefer longbows for aesthetic reasons and I think that I'm probably looking for a fairly long-limbed bow due to my height and the fact that I won't be maneuvering in the woods anytime soon. I know that I will be told to try before I buy, so my first question and the main reason for this post is to ask whether there is anyone reasonably close to this area (I'm in Belleville, IL just across the river from Saint Louis) who wouldn't mind letting me do just that? (Or perhaps north-central Ohio? That's home for me and I'll be in that area over the holidays.)
I also have a second, less immediate question: is there any reason (aside from personal preference, yours or mine) that you would recommend against a Savannah or an HH as a first bow?
Thanks!
Topic: Anyone in SW IL or StL area? (newbie has some learnin' to do) (Read 458 times)
