The Great Shooting Debate of The 1930s \ Paul Comstock, Article 3\7

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The great shooting debate of the 1930s

In the early 1930s, American archers began to divide into two camps.

The issue was not one of instinctive vs. non-instinctive shooting (which would happen later), nor field shooting (at different ranges) vs. target shooting (at fixed ranges). It had nothing to do with bow wood, or flat bellies vs. rounded bellies, nor anything of the sort.

Instead, it centered on whether an archer should use a "relaxed" shooting style, or a style that was "not relaxed."

 I use quote marks on those terms, because -- as we shall see -- they are too vague to be really accurate.  

This is an issue which, on its face, seems of little consequence. It was not until I traced the debate to its very beginning that I began to understand what a deeply significant event it was to archers who were paying attention at the time.

To put it another way, to say only "relaxed vs. not relaxed" by itself tells us nothing. Understanding the issue requires a very close look.

I would rank this debate as a great forgotten story in the history of American archery. It had profound effects in the 1930s and it addresses issues which still exist.

WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

One might ask why a bowhunter or field shooter who uses wooden bows would care what fancypants target archers were doing 90 years ago. It has been said, or at least hinted, that a field shooter -- who shoots at varying ranges, like a bowhunter -- cannot make a great target archer. Maybe so. But long ago the best of the wooden bow era target archers showed they could make the switch to field archery very handily.

That happened because their understanding of how to shoot accurately was highly developed. And that happened because during the 1930s the NAA was essentially a large, living laboratory where ideas and techniques were refined and put to demanding tests by many. We'll start to look at that story here, and will look at it in more detail in the next article.

It's also true we can kill a deer with a wooden bow, without knowing much about past technique. My wooden bow interest is an overall archery interest. How bows were made long ago is only part of the equation. How bows were used after they were made is the other part.

One example is Art Young. A bowyer and hunter named Cassius Styles once wrote what it was like to watch Young shoot. His arrows, Styles wrote, chopped a fist-sized piece of paper to bits at 20 yards, arrow after arrow. Not plate-sized, but fist -sized. Without a miss. Long ago I wondered, "How the heck did he do that?" I wanted to find out.

We all make personal choices about priorities, and I respect the choices of others. To me, the promise of the best fun was to be as accurate and consistent as possible. Even though I never intended to shoot at game past 20 yards, then or now. From the beginning I did not doubt that I could be a better wooden bow shot if only I could understand how the best of the old-timers did it. It's a story I had to piece together from different sources.

To put it another way, nothing written after 1950 (and I have read plenty of it) helped me be a better shot with a wooden bow. Most of the post-1950 writing deals with aiming. My experience is that aiming is the easy part with shooting wooden bows. The rest of it isn't. Which brings us to relaxed vs. non-relaxed.

A MODERN DIFFERENCE

The issue of relaxed vs. non-relaxed has fallen into near-total obscurity, and evidence suggests the reason for that is fiberglass-laminated center-shot bows which have dominated the archery scene for 60+ years.

The wooden bow, as routinely used before 1950, was wide at the arrow pass. The arrow rested either on the archer's hand, or on a small piece of leather right next to the archer's hand.

Upon release, the string heads toward the center of that wide piece of wood, while the arrow heads (we hope) toward the center of the target. They are two different directions.

It's been said more than once that the arrow will "bend around" the handle of such a wooden bow. Yes, all arrows flex when shot. But that statement usually invites us to infer this can happen with no movement of the wooden bow itself.

For accurate shooting, that's not what happens and intelligent observers knew that 100 years ago. Early in his shooting career, Robert Elmer was convinced the flying arrow pushes the bow aside a very small distance, just enough to let the arrow follow its nose. Being a physician and well educated, he might have thought of Newton's first law of motion, which says in part an object in motion will follow a straight line unless some external force has the power to prevent it.

But Elmer put the idea to the test. He loosed a few shots with his bow hand next to a tree trunk, which prevented any movement of the bow caused by the arrow. He was right-handed, and each shot flew wide to the left.

By the 1940s, accurate shots had been recorded with high-speed, slow-motion movie cameras. They showed the small movement of the bow away from the arrow always occurs with an accurate shot, and those results eventually were printed in Archery, the Technical Side.

This detail has implications that have vexed many wooden bow shooters. Archery, the Technical Side also tells how photography showed the release of an accurate shot sends the bow handle moving backward very quickly (an estimated 20 or 30 thousandths of a second) for a tiny distance, caused by the initial recoil of the limbs flying forward.

When this happens, the arrow nock is still on the string. The same is true of the bow's initial movement to the right for a right-handed shooting -- which also was captured by slow motion film. These details create the possibility the shooter can interfere with both movements, spoiling the shot.

This error is easy to make with a wooden bow. Both the relaxed and non-relaxed doctrines are designed to prevent it.

With center-shot handles, the arrow and the string follow the same path. Problem solved. One question is how precise does the center-shot have to be to allow this? 

A paperback called The Complete Archery Book was printed in 1957, and has something of an opinion on this. It shows two bow handles. One is wide at the arrow pass, like a traditional wooden bow. The other is labeled "center-shot," but the arrow remains slightly to the left of the centerline to which the string heads. Today we'd say it's close to center-shot. The book shows the illustration as part of a discussion on ways the different handles act. It also suggests center-shot handles as used since the 1960s took a while to evolve.

Many these days will cut a deep notch into the side of a wooden bow at the arrow pass, perhaps getting quite close to center. Because mainstream archers did no such thing in the 1930s, we'll talk about what they did do.

THE PAST UNFOLDED

The first clue I had that relaxed shooting existed was when I talked to Gilman Keasey in 1991, when he was 82 years old.

Keasey is still recognized for making yew longbows well into the late 20th century. But not everyone knows that at one time he could lay claim to the title of the most accurate longbow shot in recorded history. That's because he set two new records in the Double York rounds in 1935 and 1936, scoring 1,486 and 1,549 respectively. He did it at two National Archery Association national tournaments.

At the time, with some good reasons, no such score was taken seriously unless it was made in competition. The theory being, no doubt, that otherwise an archer had 365 days a year to try to set a good score. And pressure was intense at national tournaments. Archers might be heckled by others standing only a few feet away. They might have to wade through mud, or shoot in unfavorable wind, under clouds or in blazing sunlight. Women shot in their own classes, and could compete against the men if they wished. Anyone who thought he (or she) could outshoot the best in America was welcome to show up and give it a try.

During one of those tournaments, Keasey put five of six arrows in a 9-inch gold ring at 80 yards. (Only two men, Pat Chambers and Larry Hughes, set higher Double York scores until World War II put a permanent end to NAA national events. More on this later.) 

I telephoned Keasey to interview him about his shooting. He mentioned that he shot in a relaxed style. When I asked for details, he referred me to a book he co-wrote in 1936. Eventually I got a copy of the book. It's written for those teaching archery classes, for example at a college, and the text seems typical for books of that era. For a long time, I was making guesses and assumptions about what relaxed shooting meant.

Those assumptions came crashing down when I got a copy of "Shooting the Longbow - Relaxed Method," written in 1930 by Chester Seay.

I could hardly believe what I was reading.

For example, Seay wrote, "Shoot by throwing both arms outward, slightly upward, and to the rear with the utmost far reaching abandon." 

That sentence also blew people's minds in 1930. Seay was a Californian, and many archers in that state quickly adopted his method. They traveled to the NAA national tournament in Chicago in 1930, where they shot with the arm-swinging release. Among the flabbergasted onlookers was Robert Elmer.

He told the story in the 1933 update of his 1926 book "Archery." He admitted, "Those who shot in that manner made very good scores." At the 1931 national, he added, "The more pronounced operatic gestures were for the most part discarded."

That happened because the arm-flinging release was not an integral part of Seay's method, but instead a way to train for it. Those crafty Californians of 1930 probably decided to use it at the national to intimidate the competition.

The real heart of Seay's advice is that one does not merely let go of the string on the release. Instead, he advocated, the release is accomplished by a separation of the bow and drawing hands. The hands act together to accomplish this, he said, making it an intuitive movement. So much so, he wrote, that he was convinced it was a method used throughout history, and was not something he had invented.

Seay linked several concepts together. Before the release, the hands exert a "line of force" between bow and string, and when the release breaks the line of force, the arms continue a "line of movement." Such a line of movement maintains the line of force uninterrupted during the release, sending the arrow flying straight. When the hands separate at the release, he said, the line of movement sends the bow hand to the left and the drawing hand to the right for a right-handed shooter, with the shoulder and back muscles involved.

That -- at any rate -- is the theory at work for those who can master the method.

Timing is critical, and Seay spelled out a training program to achieve it, using a very weak bow and the exaggerated arm movements. The first exercise was to point the bow not at a target, but to the left for a right-handed shooter, with no arrow on the string. The archer pulls the bow to his (or her) left and the string to the right. The next step is to release the string by separating the hands in the opposite directions, throwing the arms far to the side.

Once adept at this move, Seay said, the next step is to shoot arrows from the same weak bow, with the same wide swinging arm movements. (This is the "the utmost far reaching abandon" quoted earlier.) The bow arm, he said, should not be as extended as far as it can go before the shot. In other words, the bow arm should have a slight bend at the elbow.

When it came time to shoot a bow of normal weight, Seay said to keep the slightly bent elbow of the bow arm. The arm movements on the release now can be toned down considerably, moving only slightly. The ideal, he added, is that by now the separation of the hands on the release happen subconsciously. Throughout his instructions, he suggests that the bow arm not be fully extended before the draw, but instead the hands separate from the very beginning of the draw, with the bow moving forward and the string backward, to reinforce the separation concept.

A REVOLUTION BEGINS

While his name is nearly forgotten, evidence suggests Seay's book hit the NAA archers like a bombshell in 1930. Even more than what he wrote specifically, his significance is the fact he was the first to specifically spell out "relaxed" shooting as a defined technique. It was a highly influential development.

Seay was responding to what some saw as a tightened, rigid style that others seemed to advocate, with muscles flexed from head to toe. Robert Elmer once made such a suggestion. But more frequently he spelled out the non-relaxed idea a little more directly, which we'll get to in a minute.

Another archer named Stanley Spencer won the NAA national in 1926, and in 1933 he wrote a book on how he did it -- "The Spencer System of Shooting the Bow." He also called his style relaxed. And the fact he waited seven years after his national title to write it suggests his book came out because Seay proved people were interested.

Spencer is better remembered because his book had a press run.  Seay's looks like it was typeset with a typewriter, suggesting it was not widely printed. Both books are worth reading if you can find them, but Seay's book is very hard to find. If you find a copy, please take good care of it. 

Both Seay and Spencer advocated a slightly bent bow arm. Spencer recommended that instead of arbitrarily gripping the bow, that the archer instead let the bow settle itself into the bow hand as it's drawn. This is a leading element in his advice.

Spencer also hinted at agreeing with Seay's "line of motion" idea -- that the bow hand will spring forward and the drawing hand backward, both at least slightly. While Seay supported the idea it could be done intentionally, Spencer said the archer should be passive and let the movements happen by themselves.

It was Spencer who Keasey credited in the forward of his book.

While Seay would be the first to say relaxed and non-relaxed styles existed long before his book, he nonetheless created a relaxed revolution in the mainstream.

Many shooting books of the era were designed for beginners, Boy Scouts and college students. Such books seem mainly interested in helping their readers to at least not miss a four-foot target, and virtually none tried to break new ground, like Seay and Spencer. Yet by the mid to late 1930s virtually all of them cautioned against a fully extended bow arm, advocating that the bow arm be slightly bent, or "almost straight."

That is the one element that characterizes all relaxed-style instruction of that era. Seay and Spencer sought to present a complete system which could readily be adopted. But Spencer observed the weakness of that approach: That an archer trying any new system will give it only an hour's test, and pronounce it useless without immediate success.

For the record, both Seay and Spencer said their systems were perfectly suited for hunting.

Many, maybe most, of those who stuck with the relaxed system modified it in some way to suit themselves, or to facilitate teaching to beginners. Pre-1950 wooden bow shooting techniques involved shades of gray from shooter to shooter. The human tendency is to be attracted by absolutes, because they seem to promise reassurance and don't require analytical thinking. With wooden bow shooting, analytical thinking is our friend.

Relaxed shooting sometimes evolved to include modifications of Seay's intentional, dynamic moves. One, for example, was the idea of making a pushing motion toward the mark with the bow hand on the release. 

THE CASE FOR NON-RELAXED

As Seay was the first to pointedly identify relaxed shooting as a method, by default he added clarity by identifying non-relaxed as a separate method. 

Robert Elmer was the earliest writer I've found who identified the basic elements of non-relaxed shooting. Between 1917 and 1946, his descriptions were consistent. "Raise the left arm stiffly, with elbow locked, straight away from the body, like a pump handle. ... I can assert positively that without a firm elbow no one will ever reach to the greatest heights," he wrote in 1926.

He wrote that, of course, pre-Seay. But I quote him here because if my decades of working with this stuff mean anything, the locked elbow defines the heart of the non-relaxed system, with all other aspects negotiable. And the easiest way to lock the elbow for most is to keep the bow arm straight and fully extended. Some will benefit from flexing the muscles of the bow arm (but not necessarily the hand) to keep it rigid.

Raising a stiff bow arm with elbow locked from the beginning of the draw, I admit, is not exactly 100 percent mandatory.

For some, it could shave valuable split-seconds from the process, which Elmer was interested in. Evidence suggests the best of the old-timers didn't waste time in getting off a shot by the mid-1930s. Elmer and others routinely started what we would call pulling the string as the bow was being raised.

After Seay and Spencer, some other authors implied or directly said the relaxed method was superior. Elmer didn't think so, only that relaxed was an option. I happen to agree with him.

I think the truth is most people will be best served by using one method or the other. There is evidence to support this view.

The most accomplished non-relaxed wooden bow shooter of the NAA was Larry Hughes, who shot an all-time NAA Double York record of 1,637 in 1941. To put it another way, the most accurate shot in the long history of those grueling events did not shoot relaxed.

Hughes used the rigid bow arm with locked elbow, Elmer wrote, and gripped the bow so tightly his knuckles turned white. Maybe it helped Hughes keep a rigid bow arm. Yet that tight grip isn't mandatory for non-relaxed; Elmer always used a fairly loose grip.

Luckily, film exists of Hughes shooting. I've seen it and others might recall seeing it. His bow hand bumps forward ever so slightly on the release, and his draw hand does the same backward. This shows those involuntary movements Spencer cited don't require relaxed shooting. 

When Keasey won the 1935 tournament, he had to beat Hughes to do it, and it wasn't easy. It was a hard-fought shoot-out between relaxed and non-relaxed. In his 1946 book Target Archery, Elmer tells how Keasey beat Hughes in the Double York by a single point, 1,486 to 1,485. To give an idea of exactly how close a fight it was, consider that a Double York required shooting 288 arrows, half of them at 100 yards.

To me, this underscores that the choice between relaxed and non-relaxed is a question of which works better for whom.

SOME FINAL DETAILS

As Spencer predicted, I would expect that immediate improvement is far from guaranteed for anyone who runs outside to give relaxed vs. non-relaxed a try. That's because many other variables will have a huge impact on the proceedings, and the best choices among them will vary among individuals. Variables include how the bow hand holds the grip, and how the drawing fingers hold the string, among others. In other words, what I've written here are the basics, not every single detail. 

For those interested, Elmer's Target Archery includes pages on a system developed by Marvin Schmidt, who cataloged the main variables with ideas on how they work in combination.

One detail is that Seay's movement of the bow arm to the left for a right-handed shooter requires a footnote. If we search hard enough, we'll find very old footage that shows shooters making the move. The glitch is Seay's idea of separation of both hands on the release isn't perfectly simultaneous. The right hand must release the arrow a split second first, so the arrow is off the bow before the left hand makes its move. This could help explain why Spencer's ideas had more staying power than Seay's (at least in print), and why some advocated only moving the bow hand forward.

Another detail is Elmer's rigid bow arm is designed to remain stable under the ever-increasing weight of the draw. Consciously stretching the fully extended bow arm toward the mark, by comparison, might be less reliable.

The good news is the men and women of the NAA had other tricks up their sleeves, easier to manage than learning what Seay taught, and about as forgotten or misunderstood. Evidence suggests smart instructors started beginners off with these other techniques, which helps explain why some beginners got crazy good very quickly.

We'll give them a look in the next article.

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Paul Comstock can be reached at thebentstick@gmail.com  

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