We regularly receive questions from our customers who need bows for themselves or their children. We often receive nothing more than the age and height, sometimes also information about the physical condition of the recipient.

Please bear in mind: probably nobody knows the new shooter less than we do :-) If it were possible to accurately select a bow based on a table of body size and age, then of course that would help us a lot. But in practice it doesn't work like that, there are a lot of uncertainty factors.

Children and adults develop differently and a key factor in determining the bow length is the shooter's personal draw (draw length). This is rarely known. The size of the hands should also be taken into account. A 19.5" centre section, which is used to make bows for older children and teenagers, is only slightly shorter than a 20" centre section, but it is much slimmer - made for smaller hands.

If the archer in question has already shot bows in a club, on holiday, etc., it would also be helpful to know what kind of bows are used. It would also be helpful if we knew what size this bow was, how comfortable the shooter felt with it and so on. Finally, the choice of bow size also depends a little on what you will mainly be shooting at. A bow for the 3D course is usually a little shorter than a target bow.

As you can see, there are extremely many factors involved in determining the exact bow data. We can only help to a limited extent here and ask for your understanding that we can only give qualified advice without knowing the shooter or having seen him/her. You will usually find decision-making aids with the products in question, which you can use as a guide. These look like this:

48" for children (special slim grip for children's hands and narrow limbs)
54" for children and teenagers (junior grip)
58" for larger children and teenagers (junior grip)
62" for teenagers or adults as a hunting recurve
66" as a disc bow for adults (smaller body size)
68" as a target bow for adults (medium body size)
70" as a target bow for adults (larger body size)