Bows! Archery! Dragons Would Probably Do Archery Mostly The Same Way Humans Do, Pull The String Back

bows! Archery! Dragons would probably do archery mostly the same way humans do, pull the string back and stuff. One slight issue is that dragons might have a shorter arm-to-body ratio than us humans, which can be an issue since a dragon might not be able to pull the bowstring as far back as required to effectively use the weapon… But that can be fixed with an extended grip! Which then creates a new problem as the dragon would lose or at least be limited with their ability to stabilize the arrow with their talons… so then you could get an arrow shelf to hold the arrow! Problem solved!

You can also fix the short arms problem by just, like, using certain art styles— Like, my art style for dragons has them have really long friggin arms, but a dragon in joy ang’s style is probably gonna have stubbier arms and thus a far harder time using a bow!

Now for flight archery! I think horse archery would be a good parallel to shooting a bow whilst flying since both involve shooting bows at fairly high speeds. there’s a bunch of horse archery styles and techniques in the world, so I’ll narrow it down to Mongolian horse archery since they’re the most famous!

Mongolian horse archers typically use a different style of shooting than how most modern archers, where instead of using the Mediterranean draw where you pull the string back with your index, middle, and ring finger, they’d instead pull the string back using the knuckle and thumb in something called a thumb draw! (or eastern draw/Mongolian draw/Turkish draw/—I’ll just call it thumb draw)

Mongolian horse archers also placed their arrows on the outside of the bow (that being the right side of the bow arm facing outward if your right handed and vice versa) which makes it easier and faster to knock arrows.

Both of these techniques, the thumb and placing the arrow on the outside, when paired together actually help stabilize the arrow. The thumb draw provides a constant torque/force against the arrow which helps keep it pinned against the bow arm which makes it less likely to get knocked about. This can be rather useful when shooting from an unstable and shaky platform like a galloping horse, or in this case, a flying dragon!

That doesn't mean its impossible to use the mediteranean draw on the standard olympic side on horseback of course, as proven by Lajos Kassai, a Hungarian bowyer who exclusively uses the Mediterranean draw due to a thumb injury he sustained!

The parallel between horse archery and flight archery isn’t perfect though, as in horse archery the archer is independant from the horse, meaning that the archer can shoot in whatever direction they want whilst also being able to move in a straight line at the same time.

For a dragon however, the direction of their flight is directly tied to the rotation of their own body, as their wings are connected to their torso. So if a dragon twisted their torso to the right, then the angle of their wings would also be changed and the dragon would begin to veer towards the right.

And In order to pull a bow, it has to be around perpendicular to your torso, meaning that you can only fire an arrow from your left or right flanks.

So for example, a human horse archer could just twist their body and shoot straight forward, and the horse would continue to run in the same direction. If a dragon wanted to shoot at a target that was directly in front of them however, the dragon would have to twist their torso about 90 angle or less either left or right in order to get the bow lined up with their target, which would then cause the dragon’s flight path to veer off course.

Of course, a dragon could probably just reorientate themselves right afterwards and continue on with their straight flight path, though it might slow down their speed a bit. That might not sound like too big of a deal, but in a scenario where the dragon is pursuing another target, it could become a bit of a hindrance as the dragon would be forced to slow down or make their flight path longer every time they fired their bow!

Also, it also might be practical for a dragon to learn how to be ambidextrous with a bow. For example, if the dragon was holding their bow in their left hand and wanted to shoot at a target to their right, they might find it faster to switch the bow to their other hand, rather than turning around in the opposite direction just to aim at the target.

A dragon also can’t exactly flap their wings whilst drawing a bow, as the bow would get in the way of the wings when being aimed. So a dragon would most likely have to glide whenever firing a bow to avoid accidently clipping their wings.

There’s also a problem with aiming, as most WoF dragons have helluva long necks, so their eyes aren’t going to be as aligned with the arrow. It’s not impossible to shoot an arrow like this, but its definitely trickier! I suppose the dragon could technically twist their neck down to the arrow and aim it regularly, though that does sound rather uncomfortable and there’s probably a good chance the string might slap the dragon’s cheek or ear whenever it’s released, which can be a problem if your use a heavy draw weight bow.

Oh, also one final tangent that isn't too relevant but I thought was cool, a WoF dragon bow would be really big. According to that one official Rose and Smolder measurement chart, adult dragons can be like around 17 ft/5m tall. Long bows can usually be as tall as humans, so if you upscaled that to a dragon height you could probably end up with a bow in the 15-20ft range depending on the type of long bow, that's basically a seige ballista right there! Imaging getting hit by that? You’d just immediately vanish! Poof! Gone! Nothing!

…Yeah that's about all, cheers!