Okay, if you were to shoot a longbow with a straight arm and a deep recurve grip it will not work as well for the shooting style. The Hill style bows that meld with the way Hill shot have a straighter grip that allows for the bent bow arm, the shallow sight window can make tuning stiffer carbon arrows in the lighter weights a bit of a challenge, but woods seem to go where you are looking with no problem, via the tilted head and canted bow. The exact shape of the limb, I do not believe is something to get hung up on. A string follow will have less shock with a dacron string than some reflex models, but with my yew/bamboo with a string added from Frankbullit (Steve Mcqueen) it has almost no perceivable hand shock and is as fast as my Super Kodiak of the same draw weight. Looking at old pictures I notice that even though they had a thicker core than today's recurves, there are some photos as well old Hill models from the 50s that I have limbs that were flatter than I would have expected, compared to my Schulz glass/bamboo bows. There is a remarkable forgiveness in the good Hill models that allows a very smooth and accurate fast shooting sequence. I was really impressed by a Tom Miller bow a while back. There was a smooth magic in that bow that made it seem like it shot itself. I will say that not all longbows are created equal and knowing what specs to order is as important as which bowyer to order from.