>>687046>I'm unclear on what a "good" brand of bow is.Obligatory Samick Sage
>>687046>What gives?Part of it is name brand. Part of it is wood. Part of it is whether its imported or not. And lastly all the good ones aren't made in the factory. They are hand made, custom, one at a time, every detail built exactly for the user by a master. Expect those to start at $1,000 and go up from there. By the time you're considering one of those, you're in too deep.
http://www.bigjimsbowcompany.com/>>687046>Anyone have good info?https://www.youtube.com/user/Greyarcher1This guy is probably the most legit recurve archer on youtube, although ironically you'll see his videos rarely break 1k views. Pretty sure he lives somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Scandinavia, and the kinds of shit he does, while not OMG UNREAL, is still pretty crazy.
If you're looking to get into traditional archery, my best advice is simply to find a tutor if at all possible. Like throwing a baseball, you can monkey see / monkey do by watching youtube or reading shit, but there's only so good you're going to get at throwing by watching videos and reading books. You have to do it.
Moreover when you do it, you have to do it reasonably correct. A coach or tutor or just someone good who can teach you will correct loads of little mistakes and hopefully give you a solid mechanical base to start from. After that, you might still have some personal tweaks and shit, but Recurve especially can work with and around that, since recurve is a lot more forgiving than a compound bow. Why? Because there's all kinds of little shit and corrections you can put into the draw or release to tweak where the arrow goes.
Meanwhile a compound is a lot closer to shooting a gun. It will almost always go exactly where you tell it to. Shooting a recurve is like throwing a baseball - it's just something you do. Eventually you don't even aim. You do aim, but it's so subconscious that it requires no focus.