Compound Bow Archery

The compound bow is the only ancient weapon that was reinvented by a modern engineer. In 1966, Holless Wilbur Allen, a billiards-room owner in Missouri, was recovering from a back injury that made it painful to draw a traditional bow. He began experimenting with a system of pulleys and cables mounted on a wooden frame, filing a patent in 1967 for a bow that used eccentric cams to store energy far more efficiently than any recurve or longbow. The result was not an improvement on the bow; it was a new kind of machine.

The compound bow's genius is the let-off. As the archer draws the string, the eccentric cams rotate, and at a certain point near full draw the holding weight drops dramatically — often to 65 or 80 percent less than the peak draw weight. A bow that takes 70 pounds to pull can be held at full draw with as little as 14 pounds of force. This let-off changes everything: the archer can hold steady, aim with precision, and wait for the perfect shot rather than rushing the release before their arm gives out. The arrow leaves the bow at speeds that exceed 300 feet per second, flatter and faster than any traditional bow can achieve.

The compound bow's arrival transformed both hunting and target archery. In the field, the speed and let-off made ethical kills more achievable at longer distances. On the target line, the mechanical precision pushed scores to levels that recurve archers could not match. The compound was added to the World Archery Championships in 1995 and has been a fixture of competition ever since. Its critics call it a machine, not a bow. Its practitioners call it the most accurate shooting instrument ever devised. Both are right.