Stickbow Target Archery Forums

The Simple Art of Winning by Rick McKinneyn
The Heretic Archer by Vittorio and Michele Frangillin
Understanding Winning Archery by Al Hendersonn
The above are the best in my opinion. I don't do archery fiction.

Dave

I just read and liked Larry Bassham's "With Winning in Mind". Although he was an Olympic champion only in rifle, his principles sound like they can be applied equally well to archery.

Dave T,n
What's The Heretic Archer about? I tried an Amazon search with no luck.

"The Heretic Archer" is a book on FITA shooting technique (for Olympic style recurve competition) by Vittorio and Michele Frangilli. Michele has two Olympic medals, two medals from the World games, and World Champion titles, etc.
This book and Kisik Lee's related book, "Total Archery," are both hard to find and really geared towards a specific type of archery at a very high level--they are not beginners books in the least. "The Heretic Archer" is available from Lancaster Archery, though you need to phone them since it doesn't show up on their website. "Total Archery" is available from USAarchery.

I'd add to the list the "History of Target Archery," a non technical book on target archery from Medieval times through the social era of target archery in England and America, and up to the 70's. It is an especially appropriate book for this forum. But it is out of print. The new book The Crooked Stick: A History of the Longbow" also covers some history of target archery.

As for fiction, there is the "The Archer's Tale,"
by Bernard Cornwell. It is the first of a trilogy.
From Publishers Weekly (via Amazon): "The young archer Thomas of Hookton joins the forces of King Edward III to fight against France in Cornwell's latest, which takes place in the mid-14th century at the beginning of the Hundred Years War."n
The trilogy was a decent read, but archers may cringe at parts that seem more than a little far fetched...

Good book by some fine Italian archers (father and son -- the Frangillis) that debunks major archery 'myths'.
Interestingly enough, this debunking is in agreement with a Korean archer, Kisik Lee, who also agrees that much of what has been taught is a myth.

One of the concepts is 'continual motion' -- as I remember it, both of these books say it is a myth. And there are others.

Good book.

a bit of description can be seen atn

I agree with Gerard's description. Although I don't shoot that style, I found very useful info in it. In particular, I've seen Howard Hill's swing draw, as well as the draw of the Korean archery goddess, both of which appear to have no stops in them, and have heard knowledgeable level 4 coaches advocating 'continual motion', and have just had a terrible time moving in that direction. It was refreshing to hear the perspectives on the Frangillis and Kisik Lee on the subject.

ArcCaster,n
Have you read "Become the Arrow"?n
What did you make of it?n
I've seen one of Ferguson's shooting videos, and some of it was absolutely astounding.

"Become the Arrow," I thought, was better than I'd expected based on the many criticisms of the book I've read in threads. It isn't a very detailed book for target shooters, though. But, I found Feruson's advocacy of Gap/POA shooting to be better for me than, say, Fred G's instinctive shooting--but that is based on preferences rather than writing style. Also, Fergusen is specifically a longbow shooter, Fred G. is a recurve shooter.

I liked "Become the Arrow" very much -- as I remember it, Ferguson advocates an upright stance, head tilted to whatever degree is necessary to get it over the arrow, regular blank bale shooting to get the feel of the shot, and a mix of gap shooting and trajectory shooting. He is right on the money. I'd almost call him the McKinney of traditional archery.

This book was written in the 70's, but I read it for the first time a couple weeks ago, and am finding it makes my shooting easier, better, and more enjoyable: The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey.

Inkslinger, please tell me more about the astounding Ferguson videos.

ArcCaster,n
The trick shooting video of Ferguson's that I have is "American Shooter presents Byron Ferguson's most amazing archer shots."n
In it, he shoots disks out of the air, puts and arrow through the center of a diamond ring, shoots and aspirin out of the air, snuffs a candle, shoots a cigarette out of the lips of a dummy, and so forth.

I am a fulltime freelance writer, and I interviewed Ferguson for Traditional Bowhunter and he is, as nearly as I can tell, the real deal. He's very friendly, personable, and has some great stories to tell. He once popped an 8-inch balloon at 200 yards.

My story will appear next summer in TradBowhunter. I believe you can order his videos and books at

Power Archery - Dave Keagy(sp). Older book and somewhat hard to find, but a very relevant book and better than most of the trad books out there IMO.