Wowsa. H. Hill shot a 172# Longbow

[KSdan]

Watching this 1930's film on Howard Hill as a young man.  He shot a 172# Longbow.  That is crazy.  

 

Dan in KS

[Pine]

That hurts to just think about it .

[crazynate]

That's crazy. He said In his books his regular hunting bows were 80-90# LOL. Makes me feel weak shooting 50#

He also told John Schulz that he thought 70 pounds would do it all and acknowledged that glass backed bows were better performers.  He got more performance with his non glassed bows by going up in weight and reducing his GPP.  Also, according John Schulz, Hill quite often did not like bows that he put to much 'meow' into.  I take from that, he meant the bows came out too harsh and finicky.

[ozy clint]

how did they do the smoke tracer? i see fred bear had it on the cape buffalo hunt too.

[two4hooking]

Hill used white phosphorus.  I don't recommend trying that.!  Fred looked like he had a white powder on his fletch when he hit that buff in the butt lol

[Charlie Lamb]

Fred's arrow was equipped with a pod containing a powdered drug... That's what gave the appearance of "smoke".

My arrows fly so fast out of my longbows that they create their con trails.  "Look up in the sky. It's a bird a plane, no, it's just Pavan seeing how far he can make his arrows fly."

[two4hooking]

Ok Charlie,  he was testing the poison pods.  Makes sense.

I would scared to even handle the arrow if a poison pod was leaking that much.  It could have dangerous to handle an animal hit with a pod as well.  Yet I remember some guys got a hold of them for deer hunting here back in the 60s. They missed every deer that they shot at with them, so could never produce evidence of the pods effectiveness. They also caught so much grief from the other hunters that they kept a fairly low profile while they had them.

Not to stir the pot or anything, but that did not look like a very certified scale, with the hand drawn numbers and all!!!! It was a short film after all!

Bisch

You are stirring the pot.  I do not doubt that Hill had a bow that weighed 172 pounds that he used for flight shooting. But in the case of a black and white film he had to do something so the camera could see the numbers.  I read of a case where Hill made a super heavy bow that was longer. It took more than one person to get a string on it. It was stated that he pulled the arrow past the riser and let the arrow down on the other side of the bow.  It was assumed that he may have pulled around 200 pounds.  It is not all that hard to believe when one considers than even a guitar whimp like myself has pulled over 150 pounds and I use to use two 64 pound longbows and pulled them a number of times both left and right handed to my full draw at the same time, that was 128 pounds.  The heaviest bow that I ever shot was over 120 pounds at my draw, a guy built a longbow and badly missed the weight.  It had so much hand shock that my change flew out of my pockets.  He had measured the core of my 96 pound bow and then made a bulky limb with the thickest available glass.

[KSdan]

Bisch- I did notice that, and I realize Hill was also a bit of a showman.  I actually have wondered if someone in the "know" would post here with a critique of that film.  If he did pull 172# I say it again, "Wowsa."  

Dan in KS

[Rock 'N Bow]

I'm sure he was able to draw 172#. Gary Sentman surpassed that weight by 4# in 1976, setting a new record. The real question is if he shot the weight with consistent accuracy.

[Trenton G.]

I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that Hill held the record for drawing the heaviest bow for a while with that 172 pounder. I also wouldn't be surprised if the bow in the film is that bow. If you watch close, it seems as if he is struggling just a bit to pull it, so I would say it's legit. It also looks like the film pauses to make it look like he is holding it at full draw. I could be wrong though.

I bet that bow had some kick to it.  It took his feet right off the ground when he shot it.
 

[The Whittler]

Pavan, when you lift your back leg as you shoot it gives you quite a few more yards. :-)

It looks like the front foot has got some pretty good height as well.  That is one of things that I cannot do, is lift my right leg out like that, besides doing a vertical jump while shooting a bow.  I wonder if there wasn't a bit of a run to the shooting line to do that.

[Charlie Lamb]

Always wondered if all that was needed.

[Killdeer]

Well, he's a bigger man than me, but I'm good with that.

Killder