While it is true that there is no one “correct” way to draw and release a bow, certain methods are appropriate for certain contexts and equipment and some simply won’t work at all. For example, the way Katniss draws her longbow in the movies with a very low anchor is really more appropriate to someone shooting a modern recurve or compound bow with sights at long distances. I say this with some reservation because Asian archers did and do draw their bows in a very similar way, but they are using a different technology than Katniss is using and they are almost always shooting at long distances.

 When shooting a bow without sights, holding the bow straight up and down can obscure your sight picture because the bow gets in the way. The main reason to hold a bow vertically is if you have a sight to use or if you are simply shooting for distance without needing to be accurate. This was certainly true for most military archers in medieval England whose job was simply to fling arrows downrange in volley “fire.” They weren’t aiming at anything. Most, but not all, instinctive or traditional shooters who do not use sights will cant the bow to improve their sight picture.

Archers the world over have used a wide variety of releases. In the Americas, native peoples often pinched the arrow nock as they drew, sometimes supporting this with the second or third finger on the string. Archers can shoot with three fingers below the arrow or split-finger with one finger above and two beneath. Asian archers still commonly use a thumb ring, which works well for their style of shooting.

But an archer will train using a particular draw, release, and anchor point and employ them consistently. To vary the release and anchor point would be like changing your rear gunsight every time you took a shot and yet, Hawkeye in the The Avengers movies appears to use at least three different releases for no apparent reasons, and sometimes his arrow isn’t even on the arrow rest. It appears that he is just grabbing at the string any old way—which he probably is, since he is filming and not actually shooting arrows. The arrows are added later with computer graphics.

In the real world, this won’t work. The archer needs to be consistent. If you are grabbing the string in your fist, you won’t get a clean release. Your arrow will be off target and will lose considerable cast from the drag of the string on your fingers as you release. This is particularly offensive in Hawkeye because he is supposed to be a sharpshooter with supernatural ability. No expert or sharpshooter would willy-nilly change his anchor or rear sight in the middle of combat—unless he had a death wish or a specific reason for doing so. Some archers do vary their anchor point from a high to a low anchor depending on whether they are shooting short or long distance. But there is a method to what they are doing and they have trained long and hard to do it well.

Also, the release needs to be appropriate for the weight of the bow. Pinch-style releases cannot be used on very heavy bows, such as the medieval warbows that drew from 80-120 pounds. But they can be used on lower weight bows and were used effectively by Native Americans, like Ishi.

The point is that a character’s drawing technique needs to be appropriate for the time and place, the technology and the culture, and it needs to be consistent. An archer that is constantly adjusting her/his form and release for no reason will be inconsistent in her/his accuracy.

Cheers,

James

For more on archery in fiction see The Writer’s Guide to Archery: A Practical Guide to Bows and Arrows in Fiction.