re: #163 The Ghost of a Flea

That’s really interesting.

I know nothing about bows or bow-hunting, so the explanation is really cool. It’s one of many, many things where I wish I had time to try it. I grew up on Hindu myths, where bow combat was the height of martial skill, so it’s always been in the back of my head as something neat.

When people here talk about stickbows, or compound bows that use pulleys to reduce the pull, they’re talking about long, straight, hold-at-arms-length-and-pull-back-to-the-ear European bows.

In India, IIRC, they mainly used short, recurved, composite bows, where you hold the nock to your chest and then basically punch with the bow. You can get a much higher instantaneous pull than trying to hold the arrow back to your ear while you aim.

Of course, punching in the right direction and releasing at just exactly the right instant is also tough….