Archery World

a bow ,an arrow and some targets preferably put on a pillow to soften the landing

There’s also a third option in archery that few people know about. You have traditional, you have compound, then you have olympic recurve. It uses a recurve bow like a traditional shooter do, but you add a sight to it. Makes it pretty much the best way to get started. What the sight does is take away one huge variable when you’re just learning. When you’re just learning to shoot you have three huge variables, one is your form, the other is your aim, and the last one being the equipment. If you miss the target, at the beginning you don’t know which of the three is causing the miss. Putting a sight there takes away the aiming variable. The best way to get into traditional shooting is actually to shoot with a sight first, and then later on once you got the form down you can take the sight away and learn how to aim without it.

I don’t know where you’re at, but if you’re in the US, my first suggestion is to head over to and see if you have a range nearby. They might have equipment that you can borrow. Our ranges here in Los Angeles, for example, give out a free beginner class and then once you’ve gone through that, you can use our equipment also free of charge.

If you have no range around, then these are the equipments you definitely need to buy

Bow, you need to determine first what your draw length is. Go to an archery store they can measure it for you. Or you can do the rule of thumb and get within the ballpark. You stand like a cross, arms spread, have a friend measure your wingspan fingertip to fingertip. Take the measurement and divide by 2.5. That’s your approximate drawlength. Then you need to figure out the poundage. If you’re not going to hunt, there’s no reason to draw heavy bows, other than bragging rights. For starter, specially if you have no coach, I wouldn’t go higher than 25 pounds, even 25 pounds is pushing it. You need to be able to really feel what your body is doing, not easy to do if you’re struggling with the bow. Even Olympic champions drop down their poundage to 15 pounds when they want to change their form. Get a recurve, a takedown like an Internature Bullseye is great because you can buy the riser and then buy the limbs separately. When you want to go up in poundage you just have to buy the limbs. Drawback is the resale value is not very high on the bow.

String, bows usually don’t come with string, a dacron string is the best to start with, about $10 should buy you a string. The length of the string is usually around bow length minus 3″.

Stringer, need one of these to string the bow safely.

Arrows, a good set of aluminum is best. It is a bit more expensive than wood but it’ll last so much longer and are more consistent. A dozen aluminum from Easton go as cheap as $40 already made.

Finger tab, about $7 can buy you a simple leather tab.

Arm guard, buy a long one that protects your entire arm to begin with. About $15 I think

Quiver, to store your arrows, a tube quiver costs $10

Arrow rest, $3 will buy you the world class Hoyt Super Rest.

Optional

Sights, like I said above it’ll make it much easier to get off the ground so to speak. You can get a very cheap one, which is good only for light weight bow, any heavier than 20 pounds and the cheap $10 sight will rattle loose on you every few shots or so.