Mongolian Bow vs English Longbow: 36% More Energy From the Same Pull

Which Bow Fits How You Actually Shoot: Mongolian or English Longbow?

It comes down to four things: where you shoot from, how heavy a bow you pull, which release you use, and how much care you will give the bow. A thumb-ring archer on the move belongs on a horn bow. A three-finger shooter with heavy arrows and wet weather belongs on a longbow. Everyone else sits in between.

How does the match tool score and estimate?

The split starts at 50/50 and moves with each answer: shooting style carries the most weight (up to ±30 points), then release (±18), maintenance (±14) and draw weight (±12). It is clamped to 6–94% so it never pretends to be certain. It is a planning heuristic, not a fitting.

Arrow weight uses a grains-per-pound target by style (horseback 9–11, target 8–10, hunting 10–12, warbow 15–18 GPP) at the middle of your weight band. Speed comes from this page’s bow model (see the force-draw calculator). The spine window is a starting point for wood shafts: roughly your draw weight at your draw, −5 to +10 lb for heavy heads. Confirm it with the wood arrow spine calculator and a bare-shaft test.

Did Mongolian Bows Shoot Faster Than English Longbows at the Same Draw Weight?

Yes, by about 15 to 20 fps at 80 lb in my model. The horn bow stores 36% more energy, but horn and sinew waste more of it as heat, so it converts 66–72% into the arrow against 72–81% for the yew bow. The lead is widest with light arrows and narrows as the arrow gets heavier.

Modeled, 80 lb at 28″. KE in ft-lb (grains × fps² ÷ 450,240); p is momentum in slug·ft/s (grains × fps ÷ 225,218). Downrange decay assumes a heavy bodkin-style arrow losing about 6% of its speed over 100 m, the figure used in a well-sourced review of war-arrow energy loss; lighter shafts lose a little more.

Two things in that table surprise people (the arrow weight vs speed guide explains the first). First, heavier arrows carry more energy, not less: at 18 GPP the horn bow puts 8% and the longbow 12% more energy into the arrow than at 10 GPP. Second, the horn bow’s 15 GPP arrow still beats the longbow’s 18 GPP arrow on energy at 100 yards (61.4 vs 52.4 ft-lb). That is what a third more stored energy buys you.

My opinion, for what it is worth: the Mongol advantage was never about the first volley. A 1,200-grain arrow at 161 instead of 146 fps drops noticeably less over 200 yards, and on horseback, shooting while moving, flatter is everything. The arrow trajectory visualizer will show you the arc difference in a minute.

One caveat the forums skip. Nobody wrote down Mongol draw weights in pounds, so every “Mongol bows pulled 160 lb” claim is a modern guess. What survives is distance: a 1226 inscription records Esungge, Genghis Khan’s nephew, hitting a mark at 335 alds, roughly 536 m, on the stele now kept in the Hermitage. That is flight shooting with a light arrow, not a war volley. It still says a lot about the bow, and about the legendary archers who grew up on it.

Which Bow Has More Hand Shock?

The longbow, on paper. After the arrow leaves, whatever energy is still moving in the limbs has to stop somewhere, and a good part of it stops in your bow hand. At 80 lb with a 10 GPP arrow my model leaves 16.2 ft-lb moving in the longbow’s heavy limbs against 13.4 ft-lb in the horn bow’s. That is about 21% more to absorb.

The horn bow gets rid of its extra through a different door. Horn and sinew are damped materials: about 19.6 ft-lb turns into heat inside the limbs against 3.6 in yew. So the longbow tends to “thump,” and the horn bow feels crisp but can slap if the string is too light or the siyahs hit string bridges. A heavier arrow shrinks both: at 18 GPP the leftover drops to 10.1 and 8.0 ft-lb.

I would not put a millisecond figure on either bow’s vibration. That depends on the string, the tiller and the archer’s grip far more than on the material. The energy split is the part the physics can defend.

Could an English Longbow or Mongolian Bow Penetrate Steel Plate Armor?

Not good steel plate hit square on. Tests put the energy needed to defeat 2 mm steel above 180 J, and even a 160 lb longbow delivers about 110–125 J at close range. Both bows can beat mail, textile armor and thin soft iron at short range. The horn bow has a clear margin on mail; the longbow is borderline.

The best recent test is Tod’s Workshop’s arrows-against-a-breastplate trial. Joe Gibbs shot a 160 lb yew longbow with 80 g (1,235 gr) wrought-iron-headed arrows, measured at 123 J at 10 m and 109 J at 25 m. The breastplate, modeled on a c. 1390 piece, was 2.5 mm at the center and 1.5 mm at the sides, in 0.5% carbon steel. The arrows shattered and dented it. None went through.

For thresholds I lean on Alan Williams’ figures as summarized in that same review of archery against armor: mail over padding failing somewhere between 60 and 100 J, 1 mm soft iron plate at about 30 J, and 2 mm steel plate withstanding 180 J. A 30° glancing hit needs about 16% more; 45° needs about 42% more.

Modeled at 120 lb and 28″ with a 1,000-grain arrow, impact energy at 30 yards: 123 J (202 fps, 0.897 slug·ft/s) for the horn bow and 97 J (180 fps, 0.798) for the longbow. I show the margin in joules instead of “millimeters of penetration” on purpose. Nobody has a validated formula that turns arrow energy into a depth behind steel plate, and a made-up depth would be worse than none.

Point shape matters as much as joules. A narrow bodkin concentrates the hit on one mail ring; a broad head spends energy cutting cloth. The guide to arrow and point types covers the shapes, and FOC vs penetration shows why a heavy, front-loaded arrow keeps going after the first layer. If you are weighing the other medieval answer to plate, the crossbow vs longbow comparison runs the same kind of numbers.

Why Does a Horn-Sinew Mongolian Bow Store More Energy Than a Yew Longbow?

Because each material does only the job it is best at. Horn on the belly handles huge compression, sinew on the back handles huge stretch, and a thin bamboo or wood core keeps them apart. A yew longbow makes one stave carry compression and tension together, so it needs length to keep the strain safe, and that length is heavy.

The yew longbow is cleverer than it looks. Bowyers keep a strip of pale sapwood on the back because it is good in tension, and the dark heartwood on the belly because it resists crushing. It is a natural two-layer laminate in one stave. Still, wood has a low strain ceiling; the compression strength of wood parallel to the grain is the number that decides how far a yew belly can bend. Ask it to bend further and the belly crushes or “takes set.”

So the longbow grows long. The longbows recovered from the Mary Rose run 1,839 to 2,113 mm (about 72–83″), D-shaped, roughly 35 mm wide and 33 mm deep at the center, with estimated draw weights of 65 to 175 lb and a peak near 110. One of those Mary Rose bows sits in the Royal Armouries collection today.

The Mongol bow was built from bamboo, horn and sinew bound with animal glue, wrapped in birch bark against moisture and kept in a leather case. Horn will compress far past what yew survives. Sinew will stretch far past it too. The catch is water: horn loses most of its stiffness and strength as its moisture content climbs, which is why the birch bark and the leather case were never decoration. So a 58″ bow can be bent into deep reflex, strung backward, and drawn 31″ without breaking.

Force-Draw Curve & Stored Energy Calculator

Slide the draw weight, your draw length and your arrow. The tool integrates each bow’s force-draw curve (the area under a force-draw curve is the energy the bow stores), then splits that energy between the arrow and the moving limbs.

What is under the hood of this calculator?

Force-draw curves: Mongolian F = W × ((x − 6)/22)^0.50, stacking from 30.5″ (+4 × (x − 30.5)^1.6 lb per 80 lb of rating). Longbow F = W × ((x − 7)/21)^0.95, stacking from 31″ (+3 lb per inch per 80 lb). Stored energy is the numerical integral of F from brace to your draw.

Arrow speed: v = √(450240 × E × k ÷ (grains + mv)), with a hysteresis factor k of 0.80 (horn and sinew turn more energy into heat) or 0.95 (yew), and a virtual limb mass m_v of 165 or 250 grains per 80 lb of draw weight. KE = grains × fps² ÷ 450,240; momentum = grains × fps ÷ 225,218.

The site-wide conventions behind these formulas are on the calculator methodology page.

Calibration: the longbow model gives 173 fps and 70 J for an 80 lb yew bow and a 772-grain (50 g) arrow, against the 53 m/s (174 fps) and 70 J that E. McEwen reported. At 160 lb with an 80 g arrow it reads about 7% hotter than a measured shot (see the armor section). The Mongolian model gives 172 fps at 60 lb with a 50 g arrow; Kooi’s replica Tartar composite drawn to 81.3 cm shot the same arrow at 51 m/s (167 fps).

Run the default 80 lb, 28″, 800 gr case and the pattern is plain. The horn bow banks about 133 J and the yew bow about 97 J. Yet the horn bow puts only about 66% of that into the arrow against 72% for the longbow. Horn and sinew are lossy. They win anyway, because they start with so much more.

Why Do Mongolian Bows Have Rigid Wooden Ends (Siyahs)?

Siyahs are stiff levers at the limb tips. Braced, they sit almost in line with the string, so the short working limbs load up fast. As you draw, they rotate toward 90° to the string and the lever gets longer, so each extra inch adds less weight. The bow feels heavy early and soft near anchor.

Think of each siyah as a crank arm. Draw force at the string equals the limb’s bending moment divided by the effective lever length. Early on the string pulls almost along the siyah, the lever is short, and the limb has to work hard. Near full draw the string meets the siyah close to square, the lever is at its longest, and the same limb moment turns into less draw force. Hence the “cam-like” feel people describe.

It only works up to 90°. Past it, the lever shortens again and the bow stacks. My reference Mongolian bow reaches that point at 30.5″; a real bow reaches it wherever its bowyer set the siyah angle and length. Mongol-era bows had smaller siyahs and less prominent string bridges than later Manchu-style bows, which is worth knowing before you buy a “Mongolian” bow that is really a Qing pattern.

There is a mass story too. A rigid siyah is light and does not bend, so the working limb is short and quick. A longbow limb keeps flexing all the way to the nock and carries its own tip mass through the shot. In my model that is 165 vs 250 grains of virtual limb mass at 80 lb. Every grain of it steals energy from a light arrow.

Why Are English Longbows So Long Compared to Composite Horn Bows?

Because wood cannot bend as far as horn and sinew without damage. To keep the strain in a yew belly safe at a 28–30″ draw, the bowyer spreads the bend over six feet or more of stave. Shorten a self-bow and every inch of limb has to bend harder. It takes set, or it breaks.

Thumb Ring vs Mediterranean Draw: What Changes at Full Draw?

A thumb draw hooks the string with the thumb alone, locked by the middle finger and protected by a ring, and the arrow sits on the thumb side of the bow. A Mediterranean draw uses three fingers. The thumb puts one smooth contact on the string, so a short bow’s tight string angle stops pinching.

That single contact point is why a Mongolian bow can be short. A three-finger hook squeezes the string between fingertips, and the sharper the angle the harder the squeeze. With a ring there is nothing to squeeze. Mongolia still shoots this way at Naadam, the national festival where archery is one of the three contests. The thumb lock presses the tip of the thumb against the side of the middle finger, the index finger rests on top, and the arrow sits on the knuckle of the bow-hand thumb, on the opposite side from a Mediterranean shooter.

I use the same string-angle model as the rest of the site: 104° + 1.75° per inch of bow length over 52″ at a 28″ draw, minus about 2.5° for every extra inch of draw.

How much of the thumb draw’s speed comes from the release itself? Less than you’d think: in the thumb ring vs three-finger speed and string pinch case study, about 16.6 of an 18 fps gain is simply the longer anchor.

Pinch index is 100 × sin 52° ÷ sin(θ/2), the same scale as the composite bow vs longbow comparison: 100 is a 52″ bow at 28″ on fingers. The Mary Rose arrows point to 28–30″ draws. Mongol arrows ran 80–100 cm (about 30–40″) long. Arrow length is not draw length, but nobody cuts 36-inch shafts for a 28-inch draw.

Can You Hunt Whitetail or Elk With a Mongolian Bow or an English Longbow?

Yes, with either one, wherever your state’s draw-weight rule is met and the arrow is tuned. At 50 lb both push a 500–600 grain arrow through a whitetail at 20 yards. The horn bow flies flatter; the longbow is quieter and shrugs off rain. The release you already shoot matters more than the bow.

Here is what the model says for the hunting weights most of us actually pull, not warbow weights. Each arrow is zeroed at 20 yards, and the last column shows how far low it lands if the deer is really at 25 or 30.

KE in ft-lb, p in slug·ft/s. The longbow here is the straight 72″ D-section bow from the rest of this page. Most American longbow hunters carry a 62–64″ reflex-deflex hybrid, and that closes most of the speed gap; the composite bow vs longbow page runs those numbers. Check your state in the minimum draw weight by state table, and the draw weight & kinetic energy for deer guide for what those KE numbers mean on a whitetail.

Four inches at 30 yards sounds small until it is the difference between lungs and liver. Still, my honest take: nobody should be shooting a trad bow at an unmeasured 30-yard deer. Range it, or pass. Inside 20 yards the two bows kill the same. If you shoot without sights, the guide to aiming a bow without sights covers gap and instinctive methods for exactly this problem.

• Feathers, not vanesA true horse bow and a true English longbow both have no shelf; you shoot off the hand. Vanes skid off your knuckle and kick; the feathers vs vanes breakdown explains why. Use feathers, and a horse bow shooter on a thumb draw puts the arrow on the thumb side, so tune bare shafts before you trust any chart.
• Noise at the shotMany horse bows have string bridges near the siyahs, and the string slaps them at the end of the shot. Fur or leather silencers on the bridges and a heavier arrow quiet it. A long wooden longbow gives a duller thump, and on a jumpy whitetail that matters. The sound vs arrow flight time calculator shows how little 20 fps buys you against a deer that drops at the noise.
• Cold morningsA thumb ring over a glove rarely works. Most thumb shooters hunt with a bare ring hand or a thin leather glove sized for the ring. Horn bows also want warming before you string them; do it inside your coat, not on the tailgate.
• StringingUse a stringer on both. A heavily reflexed horse bow can flip a limb sideways if you force it, and the step-through method twists longbow limbs over time.
• Tree-stands and blindsA 58″ bow clears a pop-up blind roof and a stand rail where a 72″ bow needs canting. The shortbow vs longbow page has the clearance numbers.

For elk, I would not go under 60 lb and 650 grains with either bow, and I would want a sharp, cut-on-contact fixed head. Balance the arrow in the FOC & balance point optimizer before you pick the head weight.

What Are You Actually Buying When a Bow Says “Mongolian”?

Usually not horn. Most bows sold in the US as “Mongolian” or “horse bows” are fiberglass or wood-and-glass laminates shaped like one. Nothing wrong with that for a hunter; it just isn’t the bow in this page’s physics.

What Do Traditional Archers Say About Mongolian Bows vs Longbows?

The same debates come back every season. On ArcheryTalk: Mongolian bow or longbow for hunting, Mongolian horse bow, anyone and questions about the Mongolian draw. On TradTalk, a long thread weighing a recurve or R/D longbow against a Mongolian bow. Deeper history lives in the journal of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries.

These scores are my editorial synthesis of the threads above and the model on this page, not a formal survey. If your own range days disagree, tell me on the contact page.

Where I part ways with the crowd: people blame the horse bow for being “inconsistent” when the real problem is the arrow. A short bow shot off the hand, on the thumb side, asks a lot of spine. Run your shafts through the wood arrow spine calculator before you blame the bow.

Frequently Asked Questions

Before you order either, measure your true draw length with the draw length calculator and match bow length with the bow size calculator. Pick arrows from the wood spine calculator, then paper-tune the setup. Want the modern-hunting angle on horn bows? The composite bow vs longbow and yumi vs longbow pages use the same model. New tools come out through the email list at the bottom of this page, and if you want to argue which bow you would carry, bring it to the ArcheryEra subreddit.