BARE THUMB SHOOTING

In the martial art Kuksulwon, they are only allowed to shoot bare-thumbed (some of them shoot rather high-weight bows, too).

Take a look at the book, 5,000 Years of Korean Martial Arts by Barry Harmon.

There was a well known Mongolian woman who shot a #60 Mongolian bow bare thumb. Her right thumb was twice the width of her left. She had a leather cover over the serving, This was sewn onto the serving.

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to ask for your own point view about a question, whether it is possible to shoot mongolian draw with a 70-80# powered bow for longer period without using a thumb-ring?

I'm really curious whether you you know a nation in history mongolian draw didn't use thumb-ring?

Thanks for your help.

The bowyer that I bought my bow from has a hybrid Turk that is 90# and he shoots that bare thumb.

Now I did not know if he was a freak of nature or what but it seems that the thumb could be built up and perhaps it would be necessary in the battlefield.

I was just wondering if anyone else has tried or know of any publications speaking of this.

well ... in here is a saying : "don't get drunk with cold water" . my bow is pretty strong . I can shoot bare thumb . once, twice ... but a competition of target shooting may last for 10 hours or so . it's very painfull even with thumbring covered inside with leather .
so ... I wanna see with my own eys that guy who shoot bare thumb a 90# bow for 10 hours in a competition . because this is really shooting bare thumb , not shooting for show off .

ps : if in the past archers shooted bare thumb .... what is the reason for inventing thumb ring ?

I agree with Osmiu and for the reason he states, I would not even consider it. Why would anyone want to walk around with a deformed thumb in order to shoot a bow for recreation?

Thanks!

For me it is important to know which was the ancient Hungarians? draw technique. It was Mediterranean, Mongolian or something else? I suppose that the Hungarians (during 9-10th centuries)used the Mongolian draw technique such like many other Asian nations and ethnic groups. But why didn?t find the archeologists in the Hungarian warriors? tombs any thumb rings?
Every thumb rings were made of horn and were destroyed during the centuries? They didn?t use hard thumb rings? Or they used other drawing techniques?

Tibor,

you may find the following link (in Hungarian) useful:
http://www.my-bow.hu/node/1350
There we tried to discuss the pros and cons of thumb draw and the early Magyars. Of course without solving the issue.
If you want to use your bare thumb anyway, please don't forget that we have a different lifestyle now. You can't go back in time and start learning archery at the age of 4... Especially with a stronger bow, your joints and tendons will have a lot of stress. As an alternative, you may try a leather thumb protector or even a glove...
Good luck, Szabi

Thank you, Szabi!

osmiu,

you make a great point. I did see him shoot this bow about 20 times with the bare thumb. And it was very quick shooting, not a long hold time.

Ten hours of constant shooting could facilitate some problems with the thumb. I do find that just a little tape over the thumb really make a big difference. I could potentially shoot all day at 64# with just a little tape.

I am just curious about the history of it.

I shot bare thumbed for about five years in my early twenties. I would shoot for about an hour or two and, at the end of it, I was blistered and bleeding. This usually happened about three quarters of the way through so if I stopped earlier, I might have just developed calluses. The translators of Saracen Archery thought that Taybugha might have preferred shooting bare thumbed. The problem I found was that the skin of the thumb went numb and I did not realise I was damaging it until after I finished shooting.

I think most thumb ring users could survive a few dozen shots bare thumbed if their lives depended on it just the same as three-finger users.

There is good information in art in earlier times and at least one eye witness in later times that the Magyars used two fingers to shoot. Bertrandon de la Brocquiere travelled through Hungary in the 1430s and reported a two fingered draw. Despite being a Burgundian, he knew how to shoot with a thumb ring as well as the Mediterranean release and he had just been through Turkey and witnessed Turkish archery.

Bede wrote:

There is good information in art in earlier times and at least one eye witness in later times that the Magyars used two fingers to shoot. Bertrandon de la Brocquiere travelled through Hungary in the 1430s and reported a two fingered draw. Despite being a Burgundian, he knew how to shoot with a thumb ring as well as the Mediterranean release and he had just been through Turkey and witnessed Turkish archery.

Yes, this is exactly what we see in the Illuminated Chronicle (Chronica Hungarorum, 1360). However, there were a lot of changes in the 400-500 years between these and the conquest of the Carpathian basin, so maybe the shooting technique changed as well... just wondering.
Szabi

I think the lack of buried thumb rings in Hungarian tombs where bone bow pieces survived is a nail in the coffin of the use of archers rings in among the Magyars. However, they moved into areas where thumb rings were used. The Byzantines knew about them. The hard question is why would they not use them when the Tatars and the Ottomans did. They were fighting them; they copied their bows. There are some beautiful signed Hungarian bows of the period of the Turkish wars so there is no doubt the Hungarians could duplicate Ottoman technology.

The simplest answer is that they had a traditional way of shooting, which they were both comfortable with and successful with as well. They updated their bows, but felt no pressure to update that one technique.

I shoot bare thumb. If there were any nerves in my thumb before, they're long gone now. But I never shoot with a heavy bow. 40-45# is sufficient for all my needs.

A point about Mongolian archers. It's common in Mongolia to build up the string below the arrow nocking point with leather to reduce the discomfort of shooting off a bare thumb. Modern dacron and fast-flight strings let you get away with thin strings on a heavy bow. But in times when natural materials were used, bow strings were much thicker. My Qing bow 'standard' strings are 5mm in diameter.

Building up the area just below the nocking point sounds like a good idea to me. An extra run of serving should do the trick.

Stephen Selby wrote:

I shoot bare thumb. If there were any nerves in my thumb before, they're long gone now. But I never shoot with a heavy bow. 40-45# is sufficient for all my needs.

Mr. Selby
How long are you shooting sessions? Approximately how many arrows would you shoot during a average session?

I really feel that if the thumb is built up that one can be or in tune with the bow and the arrow, and because of this would allow an opportunity better accuracy and quicker reload.

To go from one to the other in my limited experience is an adjustment, and it seems to me that the ancients especially during battle would not want to make that adjustment during a war.

Given the time and the energy it would require to make a thumb ring using ancient tools, it seems so practical that the soldiers would indeed be accustom to shooting bare thumb or leather coverings.

I just don't know if the bare thumb allows for long shooting sessions.

I bare thumb shot in the early years but the heavy pull of the string and tight string angle always pumped the tip of my thumb with blood, making my thumb easy to chaff and cut. No matter how much callous I would still get cut up. Sometimes I would even have the callous rip right off.

I advise using at the very least a thick hard leather gaurd, and advise using a thumb ring. Thumb rings can be made very easy and materials are common. Light weight bows and short shooting sessions may make bare thumbing possible, but for me short shooting sessions are not enough to satisfy the archery impulse.

Hermitking wrote:

Thumb rings can be made very easy and materials are common. Light weight bows and short shooting sessions may make bare thumbing possible, but for me short shooting sessions are not enough to satisfy the archery impulse.

That is pretty much the common sense approach that I was looking for. I do shoot about 100 arrows a day, and a little tape works well but a ring works better.

I was looking for any long term effects of shooting bare thumb with a heavier bow and I believe that you pretty much summed it up there.

In the early years I really hated having extra, "stuff," to carry around. I wanted the simplicity of nothing but bow and arrows. A thumb ring was just another thing to make, break or loose. I also wanted to be independant from aids in shooting, sort of a grab your bow and arrows and go shoot... like the minutemen of the American revolution.

But after awhile it sort of sunk in that the thumb ring was not that much of a burden, and frankly it makes a good status symbol. I sometimes use the wrist thong of my thumbring to hang the thumb ring around my neck to show off in public display. I also started using a thumb glove for the bow gripping hand, for I use the thumb as the shooting shelf. It was easy to make a leather thumb sock and kind of looked nice.

In Iowa I had to buy horn to make rings, not having heard of the pool ball idea. Now I have an abundant source of ring material in Moose antler. The base where it attaches to the skull is almost solid all the way through for several inches and can yeild about 3-4 good solid rings. A large deer antler base can give one or two probably, and is pretty common.

ravenbows wrote:

Mr. Selby
How long are you shooting sessions? Approximately how many arrows would you shoot during a average session?

I shoot until my thumb gets sore. :D

Normally I'm fine shooting until my muscles start to protest, which is around 30 arrows, Then a 15 minute rest and a cup of tea sets me right for some more. My thumb is never the first thing to give out.

With horseback archery, what with all that goes on, you don't get to spend so much time pulling the bow, so the problem doesn't arise.

Bede wrote:

I think the lack of buried thumb rings in Hungarian tombs where bone bow pieces survived is a nail in the coffin of the use of archers rings in among the Magyars.

Well, I would say, the absence of evidence...
Best, Szabi

Szabi,
You are right that the absence of evidence has less validity than its presence. However, when you add together eye witness accounts, artistic representations and the absence of evidence then I think that absence has more impact than if it was used by itself.

The Magyar invasion of Pannonia was comprised of several tribes, some of whom had contacts with Khwarezm (Choresmia in some sources). It is possible that some people used thumb rings, but usually you have to prove something that has no evidence by finding something to support it. If someone finds a burial with a thumb ring from the Invasion Period, I would not be surprised, but I am not counting on it happening.

Much discussion of archery equipment was started in the nineteenth century when neither the archaeological discoveries we have today were available nor knowledge of the spread of technologies. Some of this entered the historical dialogues of the time as if it were fact instead of conjecture. Many historians were interested in the "big picture" and were not too worried about details. We in our times look back for source material and innocently assume that earlier historians had the same standards of evidence we are used to.

Bede, I completely agree with you, just playing the Devil's advocate a bit. My concern is the 400-500-year-long gap between the arrival of the magyars to the Carpathian basin and the eye witness and artistic records. We know that very big changes happened during this period (religion, way of life, warfare, weapons, etc). Just wondering about Sahname, my copy shows nice illustrations about thumb draw while we know that the Sassanids used a different technique (I wrote about that some time ago and we discussed, but maybe it's good to bring it back again).
Szabi

When Firdousi wrote the Shahnameh, everyone in Iran was using the thumb draw. Artists who illustrated copies usually painted the things they saw around them rather than tried to recreate the past. In some areas they followed the text. For instance, Rustam nearly always has his tiger skin coat and Feridun's mace is usually in the bull's head form. However, in a Safavid painting, the Iranians will be wearing the taj, the red Safavi cap with a tall baton on the crown, under their turbans no matter what part of the book is being illustrated. No one thought about the fact that neither Shapur or Khusrau would have ever seen that type of head dress. Everyone is using stirrups too despite the fact the Sasanids did not use them.

The paintings are historical documents for their own time, not the time of the story they are illustrating. Even in archery literature, the Sasanian release had been forgotten and various types of the thumb draw were attributed to people like Bahram Gur. The famous silver plates, which we base our theory of Sasanian draw upon, were still buried in tombs at the time mediaeval books on archery were written.