Bow International is the world's only specialist target archery print magazine, and within each issue you'll find news and reviews, new gear, technique, advice and tips; plus exclusive interviews from the world's greatest archers.
Welcome to Issue 183, the Xmas Special. As good a time as any to get your body, mind and gear in top shape! The Bow team wish you good health and many merry moments with meaningful people in your life over the winter holidays. We are releasing the Xmas Special a little earlier this year in the hope that it reaches everyone by Christmas. The issue aims to entertain and inspire. We begin with a few event highlights from the World Indoor series, the JVD Open, and summarise the outdoor World Cup final. To help keep holiday boredom at bay, John Stanley brings you his top 5 winter watches, and Felicity May teaches you how to distinguish real gear from counterfeit. You will find this Issue’s pages sprinkled with 2025…
The annual Indoor World Archery Series has begun! The main purpose of this series of indoor events is to generate mass participation of archers at the 18-metre line. Indoor archery is all about precision and, with no weather to contend with, archers bring their most well-tuned bows and put their skills and nerves to the test. This year the World Indoor series returns with six events from November 2024 to March 2025, featuring stages in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Chinese Taipei, France and the USA. The finals will take place in Las Vegas on March 8, during the most exciting “Vegas Shoot”, an event that offers the biggest money pots. Of the other major indoor events besides the WA series, three of the most spectacular are the abovementioned The Vegas Shoot, the…
Another tournament “with a twist” has come to an end - and it’s only getting bigger. After The Vegas Shoot and the Lancaster Classic in the US, the JVD Open is Europe’s biggest and world’s third largest annual open indoor archery event. All three events depart from the standard WA rules and offer their own variation, “a twist”, to spice things up, as the money prizes grow. The JVD Open competition format is based on an IFAA Vegas round; the tournament consists of three 30-arrow rounds with modified scoring. The shoot-offs are fast paced sudden-death rounds where anything can happen. Even though the JVD Open has recently moved to a bigger venue, the 2024 tickets were sold out in just three minutes, with extra shooting lines added. A total of…
The 2024 Hyundai Archery World Cup Finals in Tlaxcala, Mexico, concluded an intense and condensed season. The event took place on October 19-20, showcasing 32 of the world’s top archers who had secured their spots through a combination of World Cup stage wins and world rankings. After a long season of international archery, qualification and the Olympic Games, the recurve archers took the stage on Sunday after an incredible Saturday of compound archery. Let’s have a look at what happened! WOMEN’S COMPOUND – THE INIMITABLE SARA LOPEZ The women’s compound saw Colombian archer Sara Lopez extend her record-breaking run of wins. As the most decorated archer in World Cup history, with eight previous titles, Lopez entered Tlaxcala as a formidable contender. Lopez took her ninth title win on the Finals…
THE HOST [KOR. 괴물: GWOEMUL, 2006] GENRE - HORROR, SCI-FI The only movie ever, as far as I am aware, to feature a modern international archery competition. This is a genre-defying monster flick where archery plays a surprisingly poignant role. While the film primarily focuses on a dysfunctional family trying to rescue their youngest member from a creature terrorising Seoul, archery emerges as a key element in the story’s climax. Nam-joo, a skilled shooter, is introduced as a character whose talent has been overshadowed by her hesitation under pressure. Her archery skill is not glorified as heroic at first; instead, it’s tied to her struggle with self-doubt. Throughout the film, her reluctance to act becomes a source of frustration and a metaphor for personal shortcomings. In the climactic moments, however, her…
Hoyt’s new series is introduced under the slogan: “Delivering the one thing every shooter has in common: The X ring.” This is the longest riser ever produced by Hoyt (3 inches longer than Stratos), it promises the least rotational translation of any Hoyt target bows. The latter equals better tuning across arrow spines and diameters, allowing more forgiveness to the shooter. Concept X comes with SCTR Cam System with new CDM Mods and SPEC Mods; the former borrows qualities from one of Hoyt’s most winning SVX cam systems and promises maximum efficiency across all parameters; the latter are presented as the ultimate in performance with exacting specifications and +/- .25” draw length adjustments. Mike Schloesser, one of the greatest active shooters and current World Number 1, had this to say…
