Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant
Agreed, especially for nobles, gentry, and folks who grew up in less disease-prone areas and had access to a high-protein diet.
I was trying to back-scale likely ST from height, based on vague memories of the bodies of the Mary Rose archers and the likely draw weights of longbows associated with the wreck.
Foot archers, especially elite longbowmen, tended to be taller and stronger than average. Horse archers could be smaller and more wiry in build. Either way, maximum draw weight topped out at ~200 lbs.
I'm of the opinion that an archer with an effective ST of 14-15 (or maybe, 16-17 due to skill + Strongbow) could probably handle such a bow, although he'd need to be much stronger to keep the bow drawn for long periods of time and he might want to go to a lower draw weight if he was going to be shooting all day.
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Thing is you don't keep heavy draw bows drawn for long periods of time (precisely for the reason you give).
Horse bows could be pretty heavy draw as well,
I found this talking about Manchu bows, some of the cites are a bit fanciful "transfixing two opponents at once" but a lot of the rest seem not only reasonable but well sourced and consistent. The main points for this thread IMO are:
1). there seems to be pretty consistent agreement that there was a range of bows and ability to draw them
and
2). Getting up to heavy draw involved practice:
"Caution is advised. In 1727 the Yongzheng emperor noticed a trend among his men to proceed too quickly and get injured in the process:
“If there are those who wish to learn how to use a hard bow, they should practice naturally, gradually increasing the strength of the bow. How can one go to such extremes as to take medicine? Unless one knows the nature of the drug there is the chance that people will be hurt. Besides, using a hard bow on horseback is difficult, so what is the advantage? A bow that is of strength six [80 pounds] or greater is enough.”
Those who were eager to master the use of hard bows were in the emperor's view all "ambitious" (心上进之人), and for that reason the greater the pity that they were wrongly harming themselves. "
This chaps got more,
this is quite an interesting link re the construction and performance