RE: best heavy longbow?
Good stuff about the bows guys, thanks.
Sorry to hear about your shoulders, Arthur. Nice to hear that you can still shoot though. What kind of arthritis do you have, specifically is it osteoarthritis (OA)? If so, it couldbe bow related (I am not trying to pry here, but it does matter and as a physician who has read thousands of shoulder x-rays and MRI's I am trying to determine if it is related to shooting a heavy bow). OA certainly can be caused by overuse syndromes, especially if you are shooting heavy poundage continually like apparently you were. Even so, that doesn't mean that you will develop OA. Often times it takes a combination of individual genetics (bad genetics in this case) combined with prior injury that causes joint injury and secondary joint incongruity/laxity. I have not seen any of the discussions/articles mentioned above about shoulder disease in archers but I would certainly be interested in them. Interestingly, the stress applied to the right vs left shoulder is different when shooting. Arthur, is your arthritis equally as bad in the left as the right shoulder? My intuition tells me that the pulling shoulder should be worse, if it is OA. This discussion prompted me to xray my own shoulders as I have been doing a heavy workout for 19 years. Fortunately, no signs of arthritis yet.
Other arthritis (Rheumatoid, gout, psoriatic, etc.) is not related to overuse.