Target and beginner archery - Petron take-down recurve kits made in the UK, and Barnett youth compound and recurve kits for children coming into the sport. Arrows alongside them.
Hunting with a bow is not legal in the UK
Worth stating plainly, because a good deal of the archery content online is American. Bowhunting is prohibited in the UK. Everything on this page is for target shooting, field courses and club use, and nothing here is offered as hunting equipment.
Take-down versus one-piece
The Petron S1 and S3 kits are take-down bows: the limbs unbolt from the riser. That matters for two reasons. They pack into a fraction of the space, which is the difference between a bow that travels and one that lives in the garage. And as a beginner gains strength, you can fit heavier limbs to the same riser rather than replacing the whole bow.
The S3 is a shoot-through design, which gives a cleaner arrow flight past the riser than a conventional shelf.
Draw weight and getting it wrong
The usual beginner mistake is buying too heavy. A bow you cannot hold at full draw for a few seconds, steadily, teaches you nothing but bad form and a sore shoulder. Start light. You will out-shoot someone on a heavier bow within a month and you will not have spent the first month flinching.
Draw length matters as much as weight, and it is set by your arm span rather than your height. Get it measured before ordering arrows - an arrow cut too short is dangerous, and one cut long is merely slow.
Left-handers
Two of the Petron S1 kits are built left-hand. That is not a small point: a right-hand bow shot left-handed puts the arrow on the wrong side of the riser and the sight window facing away from you. Buy the correct hand, which is decided by your dominant eye rather than your writing hand.
Youth kits
The Barnett range runs from the Lil' Buck recurve for ages five to eight up through the Centreshot, Tomcat 2, Wildhawk and Quicksilver G3 compound kits. They come as kits with arrows, which is the sensible way to start a child - one purchase, nothing missing on the first afternoon.
Related
Arm guards, rests, bowstrings and the straw boss are in Archery Accessories, with the full ranges under Petron and Barnett. Paper and reactive faces are in Shooting Targets.
