[Hades]

(01-26-2015 02:37 PM)aphelion Wrote:  

Well, of course it's too good to be true.

Here's why this bit is pretty much phony.

Obviously he still does a lot of cool things, but half of this stuff should be taken with a grain of salt.

Not a bad response, but the Archer's Paradox has nothing to do with why the European shooting style favors shooting arrows off the knuckle rather than the thumb. Properly spined arrows will shoot just fine from either side.

If the Archer's Paradox somehow had something to do with why you shoot arrows from one side or the other, then all archers would have to be either left or right handed.

[turkishcandy]

(01-26-2015 02:37 PM)aphelion Wrote:  

Well, of course it's too good to be true.

Here's why this bit is pretty much phony.

Obviously he still does a lot of cool things, but half of this stuff should be taken with a grain of salt.

Told you guys...

Quote:

Andersen then goes back to his emphasis on speed over accuracy, power or the avoiding of injury, asserting that “from old texts, we know that Saracen archers were expected to be able to fire three arrows in 1.5 seconds.” More interesting is the fact that apparently the Saracens had stopwatches. How Andersen arrives at this “fact” is anyone’s guess, but it’s a nice lead-in to his collection of circus tricks and stunts, most of which are also popular fare with magicians and martial artists, such as catching a very slow-moving arrow. Just as splitting an arrow can only be accomplished with the use of carefully-prepared equipment (using bamboo for the arrow to be split, for example), all of Andersen’s tricks require equipment modifications, careful camerawork and editing. Splitting an arrow by firing at a knife blade, for example, could only be accomplished by using an arrow without a point, which would require shooting from a distance of about 10 feet or less (an arrow without a point will decelerate quickly), and careful observation will reveal a camera cut between Andersen’s firing and the close-up of the arrow supposedly splitting (it looks to me like the arrow passes close beside the blade and doesn’t split at all, but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt). The second arrow was obviously shot from only a few feet away and was prepped to split. As for the supposed shooting at an oncoming arrow, he may have eventually hit an arrow fired over his head (not at him), but again, it wouldn’t have split, and in fact it probably didn’t. It looks like the arrow was deflected, then he picked up broken pieces already on the floor. I’d love to see Mythbusters demolish this fraud, and I’m only disappointed that so many people are so gullible as to believe it.

(01-24-2015 04:41 PM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

How can someone physically split an incoming arrow? I'm having hard time to believe its legitimacy.

EDIT: I'm observing that guys in the manosphere rushes so fast to praise men who seem to have accomplished something masculine that they don't stop for a second to question its legitimacy. The same thing goes for big-ballers. We are so quick to believe that a homeless man is sleeping with 150 women a year through game. I feel alone and 'that guy' for calling bullshit on such threads. We advocate critical thinking yet when it comes to fellow men who claim success we completely abandon it. If I start a thread tomorrow in Travel section about how I slept with 7 Polish girls in 10 days through flawless pipelining and veteran game, it's gonna get 100 likes and 10 rep points before it receives any skepticism. Greek Kamaki is a great example of that. Obviously we didn't learn the necessary lesson. The default approach for men who claim to be extraordinary should be ''What proof is there to his claims?'' rather than ''Why would he lie?''.

[Foolsgo1d]

(01-25-2015 07:43 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

(01-25-2015 05:52 PM)DChambers Wrote:  

(01-24-2015 08:16 PM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  

(01-24-2015 07:51 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

Mongols by far were the best I think. Then probably other steppe/nomad groups.

Wouldn't doubt that but can anyone go into details why they were the best?

I get the whole idea of being born and live as a hunter, your survival depends on the bow. But hunting alone wouldn't require you to have the kind of mastery like that shown in the video, and I bet mongolian archers were much more badass.

I mean, think about it, why would you need to learn to ride at full gallop and shoot 5 arrows in under 1 sec? What you being chased by a pack of panthers? A lot of the techniques in the video, like fast-shooting and shooting while moving and arrow catching are very battle-field oriented, not something that a hunter would need.

Then again there's a lot of tribal warfares between the nomad people, but those were never full scale and largely skirmishes. It wouldn't require a hunter to develop his skills with the bow into a fine art of deadly weaponry. If one was to become a warrior archer and his life depended on it like the samurai or English retinue longbowman, then I could understand why they would need to fine tune techniques with the bows.

Finally, the Scythians were fucking badass group of steppe nomad, but if I remembered correctly they got ass kicked by the romans. Why?

As far as I know the Scythian never faced the Roman Army in any pitched battle. On this same subject, the Roman Legions that the Scythians faced would have been far more professional than what the Huns, in effect the Mongols, faced.

Had the Huns faced the legions of Cesar or Marius they likely would have been crushed far easier than they were against Arminius.

The legions of the late Roman Empire were a pale shadow of their former selves.

You really can't compare steppe tribes over periods like that and deduce their capabilities.

Mongols were far better at asymmetric warfare and integrated foreign expertise at a significant level. They learned and adapted fairly quickly and learned skills like how to siege european style fortifications which was previously unfamiliar to them. They were also pretty good at subterfuge (spying) and diplomacy unlike the Huns and Scythians.

The Scythians were not the Huns were not the Mongols. Each were very different. The only thing they had in common was horse archery.

I believe the Mongols captured Chinese siege engineers to create their own versions. They were unable to starve out the first city they encountered with massive walls and fortifications.

[Blobert]

(01-25-2015 10:45 PM)Hades Wrote:  

For a general PSA, traditional archery is more science than art these days.

(01-25-2015 09:01 PM)Blobert Wrote:  

Not to be a spoilsport, but that video has a lot of bullshit info in it. It gives the impression that ancient archers fought similarly to how this guy fires, but in reality firing those fast bursts, you have no power on the draw to do damage. In combat you wanted to have a heavy bow, and draw it fully. That bow of his wouldn't penetrate historical gambeson+mail, unlike shown in the video - if that was so easy why would people spend their whole lives practicing their strength to draw as powerful bows as they can - or alternately why would people have bothered with armor if it was so useless?

Bows are good obviously, but it's not an ultimate weapon - a lot of extremely succesful armies did not utilize bows much, or used crossbows instead and so on.

This is extremely impressive trick archery, integrating some historical, forgotten techniques, but it's not the same as training like a historical archer. Sensationalism is understandable when doing a hit piece like this, but it should be put into proper context still by the viewers.

Contemporary accounts of English longbowmen suggest that they didn't often exceed shooting six arrows per minute in battle (wikipedia).

The bolded comment makes little sense. Are you suggesting that holding a bow at full draw will somehow increase it's stored kinetic energy? The opposite is the case.

I'm not saying you should ever hold the bow at full draw. You shouldn't. What you should do is actually draw the arrow properly to the ear, what the man here mostly doesn't do.

Quote:

Even considering the "trick shooting", deer can be killed very effectively using a 40 pound bow and a 400 grain arrow (10 grains/pound of draw). I wouldn't doubt that this guy is using something similar (though likely lighter arrows), so given decent hunting arrows at medium to short range it would definitely be a man killer, provided they're not armored. If you put this Danish guy in a mini mall of pedestrians he could surely rack up an impressive kill count in short order.

He couldn't, not as much as a gunman anyway. Arrows are nowhere near as lethal as bullets, since they don't tumble in the body. Hunting depends on hitting the deer perfectly, or it runs away for a long long time before dying, and a human can suppress bleeding with their hands and clothes unlike a deer.

Quote:

Crossbows themselves were developed as a response to armored knights. Staffing an army of vassals had a lot more to do with economics than actual combat effectiveness.

It was much cheaper and more effective for feudal lords to arm low ranking peasants with crossbows and teach them how to kill knights than it was for them to house and provide for expensive knights (or archers) to counter other knights. Low skill ceiling, relative ease of ammunition production, effectiveness against armor, interchangeability of crossbowman, lots of factors for why crossbowmen are an attractive option for any feudal lord, particularly in times of siege when fire rate is not a huge concern.

I'm not sure if crossbows were a response to armored knights. It's not fully known how effective exactly bolts were vs different types of armor, how big part of the time they could wound a man they hit in mail, plate, or whatever armor. But crossbows became popular before plate armor did. Their spread may be due to the invention of better ways to make them - composite and then steel insteadof just wood - and them then being better in terms of range, armor piercing, and such than conventional bows, maybe as a response to armor getting better and more widespread... But as a response, a hard counter to knights specifically, I'm not seeing that, at least it's not that simple and straightforward. If that was the case why didn't the English have employed crossbows more?

They were not really weapons used by peasant levies so much, if that was the case why would anyone pay premium to hire expensive Genoese crossbowmen? It was an expensive and somewhat difficult to maintain weapon.


It's very hard to get a full picture of how exactly military technology and organization exactly affected each other, how and why it all evolved the way it did. I can't say I have definitive knowledge on the subject, but there's a lot of blatant bullshit out there that's demonstably false, in credible looking sources (including wikipedia).

(01-26-2015 07:12 AM)Dalaran1991 Wrote:  

Can a mongolian horse archer firing a recurve penetrate mail armor?

Here's a great source on that and more:

http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showthr...ur-FAQs&s=

Relevant quote to that specifically

Quote:

The Franciscan friar, John of Plano-Carpini (who was an envoy to the Mongols) described the Mongols making armour-piercing arrows by heating the heads red-hot, then quenching them in salt-water. He then recommended that "doubled mail" be issued to knights to protect them from these arrows. One can infer several things from this passage. Firstly, that it wasn’t normal practice in Europe during this time to harden arrowheads. Secondly, it was believed that hardened arrowheads stood a greater chance of penetrating mail. Thirdly, a type of mail known as “doubled mail” was considered arrow-proof, even against arrows specifically designed to be armour-piercers.

[rebelofbabyloin]

I'm loving this thread. I've hunted/killed many game.... But nothing was as exhilarating as still hunting a deer with a bow.

[scotian]

As you can imagine, hunting is huge in Canada and every November my facebook news feed is full of guys who "GOT ME MOOSE!", no matter how big the animal is, by far the most impressive are the guys who land them with a bow!

[rebelofbabyloin]

Right on.

[RawGod]

This guy really brought out the haters...he must be truly great to have such a bunch of loser ren faire types losing their shit.

[Hades]

(01-26-2015 09:07 PM)Blobert Wrote:  

I'm not saying you should ever hold the bow at full draw. You shouldn't. What you should do is actually draw the arrow properly to the ear, what the man here mostly doesn't do.

I'm not defending the guy's god awful form (the guy limp dicks most of his shots with his goofy elbow extensions), but he's drawing back far enough. Many archers draw only to the cheek. Pulling all the way back to the ear (30-31") is generally a bad idea unless the bow was designed for that draw length.

Not to mention that drawing to the ear might be impossible with his setup, as his arrows look to be no longer than 28".

[Phoenix]

Just been watching this stuff again, it's pretty cool. I always heard that the "Mongols used to hold multiple arrows between their fingers", but it's awesome to see someone resurrect the art. He really put the rest of the YouTube speed-shooters to shame.

He doesn't explain the technique (it's his secret sauce), but it looks like the standard mongol thumb-draw, using wide nocks, and awesome finger dexterity. He has to simultaneously thumb-draw the bow, keep enough friction on the side of the arrow so it stays knocked as he draws, and keep all the other arrows gripped between his fingers and out of the way of the draw.

What strikes me the most though is people's arrogance. The entire internet thinks that just because they have an opinion, they're experts. Speaks volumes about the validity of democracy. He's spent years practicing old combat archery techniques, and in an instant, everyone who's read a few webpages or seen another YouTube video thinks they're qualified to 'debunk' him. Unbelievable.

He should have included the following in the video description:

Quote:

If you didn't have an opinion on this topic before you saw my video, your criticism is meritless, so just shut the fuck up. Enjoy the video without touching the keyboard. Thankyou.

Everyone's criticism about draw length and weight is beside the point. He's just showing the theoretical maximum speeds, obviously it's going to be a bit slower if he fully draws every arrow with a heavy bow, and obviously he's too weak to draw a heavy bow anyway.

[teh_skeeze]

Quote:

More interesting is the fact that apparently the Saracens had stopwatches. How Andersen arrives at this “fact” is anyone’s guess, but it’s a nice lead-in to his collection of circus tricks and stunts...

This faggot comes off like a snarky feminist. Has he never heard of an hourglass? Where does he think the colloquialism "Sands of time" comes from?



I'll make the same challenge to him that I made to people who would talk shit about my demonstration breaking routines. Let's see you do it.

[Tytalus]

I read some comments from the archery community that "he was doing nothing new, and nothing everyone didn't already know about". If that it is true, then it's still awesome sauce, because for years the archery community could have made legolas and movie special effects look second rate and no one had the smarts to market themselves and their skills.

My take? His professional critics are just having sour grapes because they didn't think to monetize this old skills first.

[Gmac]

Great find. Thanks for posting this.