Is that established? If I recall most of the shots were against foam targets. Given leather armour or even a heavy tunic I’m not sure those rapid-fire shots would be enough to incapacitate an opponent in combat, and when he takes time to draw back further he may not be appreciably faster than traditional archers.
Another issue with the arrow speed and the lighter bow is the aspect of avoidance, as he demonstrated those arrows were moving slowly enough to catch. The reason this technique was lost to time might be because even in close skirmishes it wasn’t as effective as a bigger bow with slightly slower shots.
The other part of the backlash is a lot of stunts were oversold. The arrows he catchers or shoots from the air are probably travelling much slower than usual, a fact he didn’t really make clear. And as for things like his spin around and shoot shots he basically admitted it was just many takes and luck as opposed to reproducible skills.
I do admit he does some cool stuff that you can’t do using traditional techniques, but there’s still the fact that when people get the feeling they’ve been duped (or you’re trying to dupe them) there’s going to be a real backlash.
I think the only problem with this discussion, inside and outside BoingBoing, is that some seem to believe experience playing Dungeons and Dragons counts as experience in hand to hand combat. Put down the d20 and back away from the keyboard.
