How Far can You Shoot Crossbow? What’s the Maximum Shooting Range

Hey Crossbow lovers! Hope you’re doing well, today we are going to unveil the most fascinating thing about crossbow hunting while addressing a quite common query of our crossbow hunters and that is how far can a crossbow shoot?

The shooting of a crossbow can vary from each other based on variable draw weights, shooting strings, shooting mechanisms, cam mechanisms, featured risers, and physical dimensions because these specifications are massively varying in every crossbow.

Although the range of a high-impact crossbow is sometimes compromised due to influencing factors that can affect the speed, accuracy, and precision. Whereas shooting angle can also influence your crossbow’s shooting range along with wind speed.

How Far Can A Crossbow Shoot?

Let’s move forwards towards a bit of in-depth knowledge about crossbow shooting ranges. Along with that, we will be showing you people a comprehensive flashback regarding the development of the crossbow that has given us such an amazing hunting weapon.

Whereas we will also be discussing the factors that are responsible for achieving the maximum shooting range of a well-built and high-impact crossbow along with the factors that can reduce or compromise the shooting range of your crossbow.

Before we move further, we would like to add a bit about the modern crossbows that are considered quite efficient and lethal these days and are featured with a shooting pace of 400 FPS with a shooting range of 5000 ft at a 45° angle.

If the crossbow comes along with precise balancing and level then you might have a shooting range of 240 ft, straight with the shooting speed of 400 FPS, though we will be adding the mathematical equation to find your crossbow’s shooting range.
Evolution of Crossbows
As we all know, crossbows are not an innovation of the modern world because the crossbow was invented back in 1st AD whereas it was quite a popular weapon since its invention although, in 1066, the crossbow was a common battle weapon.

Although the initial crossbows were crafted from whole wooden structures, the shooting range was too good as it was used for packed and closed combat. Though moving on further, crossbows began to develop gradually.

Chinese Era

As China is considered the oldest dynasty and civilization, though according to a Chinese military strategist crossbows were first invented in China about 25 centuries before. According to his book, ART OF WAR crossbows were their favorite despite being a weapon of slow firing rate.

But the main reason why Chinese commanders have always considered crossbows a much more lethal and efficient weapon was the shooting range that can take down their enemy at 1 km or half a mile almost.

According to Chinese generals, their bloody wars were primarily dependent upon the number of crossbowmen troops involved in a company or a battalion because a hundred crossbowmen over a mountain were enough to restrain thousands of infantry soldiers.

The era of Classical Europe

While searching for more information regarding crossbows within the literature and history of western we came across the era of classical Europe and found a weapon named Gastraphetes that was not exactly like a crossbow but it can be called the initial phase of the crossbow.

The Grastraphetes were the weapon commonly used in 420 BC, some of them are still preserved in museums. This sort of weapon was crafted by the Greeks and Romans commonly as a hand weapon and sometimes as a mounted weapon.

Medieval Era

After the classical European era, the crossbow weapons became redundant for a long time until the medieval french era began because France in the medieval era began to use crossbows on a large scale.

Afterward, the crossbows have begun to gain more and more popularity and affection by the soldiers and hunters as well because some fine tunings and alterations with Gastraphetes have given birth to a whole new spirit in crossbows.

Moving on further, crossbow weapons have been a hot topic for all the hunters and soldiers until they became the hot cake of today’s crossbow market and hunter’s community due to their accuracy, precision, and range.

If we talk about the structure and make of medieval crossbows then these were firstly crafted with wood, and then the crossbow structure was added with the steel plates and bindings for increasing its strength and durability.

Modern Age Crossbows

Now comes the modern age crossbow that is the apple of our eyes and the most loved hunting weaponry. These crossbows are an amazing fusion of lightning-fast speed and immaculate precision and accuracy.

Whereas these crossbows are finely crafted with high-grade building materials such as fiberglass, carbon fiber, aluminum, and polymer. Although the building material featured in modern crossbows is synthetic but possesses high durability.

In the formation of modern crossbows then you have two main formations that are reverse and compound. The compound crossbows are just like the vintage crossbow, whereas the reverse crossbows have inverted limbs. 

• Based on the shooting speed and efficiency both the compound and reverse crossbows are quite good but the reverse sort of crossbows are considered much more efficient and have a higher shooting speed.

On the other hand, concerning appearance and handling then modern crossbows are considered much more attractive and sporty along with their ambidextrous gripping that provides convenient handling throughout the session.

As a whole, these crossbows were first used for security forces but later on, these crossbows were limited to hunting purposes only for bringing down the use of firearms and promoting safe hunting weaponry.

Impactful Crossbow Range

Having a crossbow that can mark a range of 2000 ft doesn’t mean youre having a hunting weapon that can take down the game 2000 ft away from you.  The efficacy of shooting impact gets dull as the bolts mark the distance. 

Factually speaking, a crossbow with effective and impactful shooting speed can take down a game at several meters only whereas the impact and lethality get dull with the increase of distance between the target and the hunter.

For archery, with a crossbow then you will have amazing range because archery has nothing to do with impact because it is all about hitting the target board. For archery, you do have to be concerned about shooting speed to cover maximum yards.

Let’s make it a bit more clear for you as for hunting purposes a crossbow can shoot impactfully within the range of 40 to 60 yards for the handling and shooting skills of the hunter and the quality of the crossbow.

So you can assume that the 40 to 60 yards of space is called a killing zone and that any game within this space can be taken down immediately as the bolt gets pierced within the game’s skin and organs impactfully without any problem.

For hunting, you have to understand that your shooted bolt needs to be pierced within the skin of the animal up to some specific extent. For example, a deer has a 10 inches thick fatty layer that needs to be pierced to rupture the organs.

Therefore, if the deer is outside the killing zone even the 10 inches then piercing the deer’s heart becomes inevitable and your time spent taking down the game will be wasted and you will turn back to your camp with barren hands.

Apart from that, if you shoot an animal that is not in the killing zone but you can’t make it through its heart and the animal survives and escapes then you have to make it count it’s a crime coz you haven’t harvested the breed but wounded severely.

A demonstration of “how far a recurve crossbow can shoot” by Bowshunter Planet

Factors Influencing Crossbow Range

If you have slight knowledge about physics then you must have understood that we will be going to address and aware you about coz hunting and archery are primarily related to physics coz speed and range both can be affected by the pressure of wind, etc.

First of all, you need to make it count that your crossbow is incorporated with the necessary types of equipment that will be taking down any sort of nocking and lagging within the crossbow while hunting.

Whereas secondly, you need to have a proper account of ambient wind because it can deviate your bolt a lot therefore youre advised to release the bolt when the wind pressure and speed are minimal.

Bolt Speed

Let’s dive a bit deeper into it and try to understand how a bolt’s speed is affected and dragged down from its actual pace and efficiency. The answer lies right there in our junior school physics.

Let’s have a look at the discovery of the action of gravitational force over marble and a gigantic meteor, by Galileo, it goes like Galileo stated that in this universe a meteor and marble of a few ounces are equally influenced by the gravitational force of the earth.

Moving on further, he came up with the equation that states that every object in this universe has a gravitational acceleration of 9.8 MPS (squared). Although Galileo’s equation can be used to determine the time of a particle to cover a certain distance.

   D= 1/2(G)(T^2)

Whereas in this equation the unit G is depicting the acceleration that is propagated by gravity though you can round it off to the whole 10, whereas the D is representing the distance that needs to be covered.

Example:

Let’s make it a bit clear with a real-life example, suppose youre holding a bolt and your height is 2 meters whereas we have the value gravitational acceleration after calculation you can see the bolt reaches the ground just in 0.6.

If you’re having any doubt you can do the maths again while this time you have to increase the distance and seek a professional’s assistance for recording the time. While jumping on a 5-meter stand and dropping the bolt, the time spent to reach would be 1.2 seconds only.

You might be tensed that how a horizontally falling bolt can compete with a vertically traveling bolt. If is it so then we would like to tell you, people, that in both cases the time spent traveling the distance remains the same because of crossbow shooting speed.

Whereas the traveling time remains the same but the lagging while firing with a crossbow is delayed because of loading the bolt that is not applied in case of vertical bows. Although the loading bolts and cocking of the crossbow take a bit longer that is why the bolts get delayed.

As a fun fact if your crossbow has a shooting pace of 400 FPS, then do you know how long it will mark in a straight direction as per Galileo’s Equation? Whereas you can do the math with the equation and you might be astonished to see that the bolt will reach 240 ft in 0.6 seconds only.

Isn’t it amazing?

Bolt Weightage

The time spent covering a certain distance during a projectile is massively influenced by the weight of the object. That is why we have stated before that the crossbow speed remains the same till we use the stock bolt or the same ones only because bolt weight dulls the speed.

Whereas if youre a pro crossbow hunter you would have great knowledge about the influence of bolt weights upon the speed of the crossbow.  Though the famous Kinetic Energy formula also depicts the same factor that the more the weight lesser will be the speed. 

Draw Weight/ Pull and Length

Can you guys recall the junior school physics lesson about pulley, fulcrum, and pivot principles same is the case here for draw weight and draw length and their impact on the shooting speed?

First, you guys need to understand that crossbow draw weight is designated with the  Right-Hand rule that states a change of 5 LBS within the draw weight of a crossbow would result in a difference of 8 FPS in its shooting speed. 

Whereas mostly the crossbows have static draw weight but there are a few adaptable draw weight crossbows that offer on-demand draw weight adjustment. But experts have advised restrains from alteration within the draw weight as it can break the shooting strings.

Moreover, in the case of draw length, the global principle is any increase in draw length would increase the draw weight increasing by shooting speed, whereas the same goes for the vice versa scenario.