Horseback Archery

Wow, VaticanVice. Thank you so much for posting. That's all very helpful. I find especially interesting the part about releasing from the inside, with the arrow on your left thumb. You're right, in standing archery you rest the arrow on the left side of the bow (when shooting right handed). Do you connect your reins to anything or just drop them on the neck? When I teach kids horsemanship and I take the reins away, I attach them to the horn with a rubber band so they don't fall and get a foot caught.
That's crazy that aim is nonexistent.
From the few videos I have seen, you run the horse in a straight line and shoot at a mounted target (or 3 targets facing in 3 directions). Are there any other configurations or set ups? Like a trail with targets mounted along the way?
Thanks again for sharing your info!

We drop our reins on the neck, simply because we're used to doing so for jousting. In a joust, you hold the reins long enough to come about and lay on, but must drop them as you set the lance and present your shield--even if the reins are long enough for the horse to be comfortable when you raise your hands like that, you run the risk of breaking the animal's jaw if you're unhorsed on impact, especially in heavy armor jousting, when you and your equipment likely weigh in excess of 300 pounds. Because we do both, our reins are short enough to be dropped at the neck without running much risk of getting underfoot. That said, there's absolutely no reason (that I can think of) not to secure the reins to the saddle or elsewhere prior to doing a mounted archery run, since you don't need to turn around in the list prior to starting the track. In fact, it's a very good idea--our troupe just hasn't implemented it thus far.

I've personally seen a few different set-ups for a mounted archery track--one involves going all the way around a track along the rail of an arena, shooting half a dozen or more targets at different heights and angles. The Kassai course is a simple ninety-nine meter list, with a single target that rotates during the run to face the rider. The director of our troupe set up a course along some of the trails on his property with targets at various heights after seeing Brave. That one was fun, but a serious challenge, because the targets were also on both sides of the path. That complicates things significantly--it's REALLY hard to move the bow back and forth across the horse's withers, awkward to twist toward your draw hand, and I don't think I would ever want to do it with people watching, because I only hit about a quarter of the targets.

Awesome!! I was just reading that some people will tuck the tail end of their reins into their belt loop, the guy said he called it a 'pig tail'. It sounded to me like the western romel reins. I bet you don't have belt loops in jousting armor though, lol. That trail course sounds awesome! Difficult, but awesome. I can't wait to try it. My brother has a bow I can use, it has a 55 lb draw weight though. Do you guys use special arrows? Or a particular type of fletching? Like plastic vs. feather? Pros/cons? I don't own a horse right now, I use a lady's horses for teaching lessons and she lets me ride her horses, I don't know how she would feel about me proposing mounted archery with her horses. Haha, she might think I'm crazy. "You wanna do what now?" hahaha

We use wood-shaft, feather-fletched arrows. Partly because it looks better in shows, but also partly because our farrier is also a fletcher and he makes them for us.

A 55-lb draw is pretty heavy! Jeremy (three-arrow-per-pass-guy) uses one that heavy, but the rest of us have bows between 30 and 45 lbs. Mine is 38 (weird number, but it's a replica Mongolian horse bow). Still, if you learn on a 55, you'll be able to use almost anything else with ease! Good luck!

We have a few ma n' pa hunting shops around that I will check for arrows. Woo!
Yeah, heavy bow. Way to look at the positive though, anything after this will be that much easier. Haha. I will get a good bow eventually, but I'll work with what I've got for now. That will make me appreciate a well-suited bow that much better.
Thanks again for all your help!

Just found this and thought I would share

Here is how I'd wind up doing this......

Hahahaha!! I know right? Me too. Except I'd probably take out some innocent bystander in the process. Haha!

That had me laughing pretty hard Adam. I think I would drop bow and all my arrows in the first 30m, fumble for the reins in the second 30m and fall off my horse about 1m into the last 30m.

LOL All kidding aside, this looks like it would be pretty fun to try!