Defining Barebow

*The video from Samo's YouTube channel

The blurred line...

There are many people shooting barebow in Malaysia long before I discovered archery. Most of the pioneers would lay low and hardly took part in competitions.

What is interesting, is the fact that barebow archery has gained keen interest from the traditional archery community here in Malaysia. 

Even so, if you lug a modern takedown recurve target bow to a paid range, people would generally frown at you. You'd probably fall under the category of people who howl at the moon and practise some gong-banging ritual.

Again, there are many interpretations on barebow archery. Most of the folks here would lump a guy with an Asiatic bow and a guy who shoots a minimalist modern target recurve together. 

But they missed out on one point: trad archers either shoot off the shelf or with their hand as a rest.

Trad vs Barebow

Two years into archery and countless of local tournaments including two international gig, I saw the shortcomings of being a trad archer. 

You shoot off the shelf, you better be good to maintain consistency and narrow down the variable.

With an arrow rest and a plunger, you reduce the margin of error. But, that said, it's the credo: "Its the archer, not the bow" that determines your advancement in a tournament. Having seen the numbers, trad archers tend to drop out as the tournament reaches a climax. At a trad/barebow meet, the barebow archer would be triumphant.

Going full barebow...

The odd are building. How to reduce it? Well, inevitably, it will be going down the path of setting up a full barebow rig and shooting three-under. You get the picture...