An assessment of skills.....

[Yew Selfbow]

Three archery friends are shooting indoors. They decide to shoot a Portsmouth round. One archer has a Full recurve setup, the second has a Compound and the third has a longbow. They all score personal bests of 500 for the round.
In your poinion.... with all the three friend having achieved personal bests, which of the archers posessess the highest level of archery skills and why?

[Alex Greig]

That is like asking who is the best driver, a Formula 1 or a Rally driver.

All three archers are of an equal level as each type of bow has different expectations put on them ( I am assuming that the scores were respectable for each type of bow)

Personally I could not shoot a long bow as I could not handle the frustration of missing. But then a again if I score a 7 on a Portsmouth face then I am probably as equally mad as the longbowman is for getting a petticoat.

[Furface]

You cannot tell. If a skill is "aptitudes and competences appropriate to a given job" (Chambers) none of them need have any skill at all! Can they replicate what they have done? Do not confuse scoring level with skill. In cricket, a tail-end batsman may lash out and hit the ball for six, while the skilfull opener would be more circumspect, reducing the risk and taking a single. We have all known archers who, by merit of brute strength, can regularly shoot high scores without displaying "aptitude or competence" because their bow is strong enough to compensate for mistakes. And, for your three, the "given job" is different, so the "aptitude and competences" are different.

[Adam]

I think I'm beginning to detect a bit of a longbowmen-are-REAL-men-and-the-rest-of-you-are-wimps theme developing here.

Adam

[morphymick]

As FF said, consistency is the key here. If the previous PB's were similar, then their abilities would be similar.

It's all relative IMO.

Mick

[Marcus26]

The longbowmen is clearly a god and should be worshiped by all for his vastly superiour talent
The recurver clearly must do some work on his technique
The compounder clearly is missing both arms

[Shirt]

And is probably blind to boot.

[Jerry Tee]

I dont think that I have ever seen or heard of a long bow 500 on a portsmouth

[Shirt]

There's a bloke down the road that does 500 pretty much every other time he shoots... it's somewhat worrying when you see a longbow shoot a 6 arrow end at a Portsmouth and get 58...

[Field Archer]

UK records for Portsmouth longbow
Ladies – 510
Mens - 547