May your arrows always fly true and strike their mark...

You can't see my arrow in this photo, but trust me, nothing but bullseye...actually, it split another arrow that was already there...yeah, okay no it didn't. It did hit the target though, I swear. Actually, accuracy wasn't as important in a massed formation of longbowmen as sheer volume of fire was. There really wasn't anywhere to run from a mass volley of bodkin arrows raining down from the sky, "blotting out the sun" as it were. Actually, for ease of access you'd just stick your spare arrows into the ground at your feet. Now the soil of the average medieval European field is probably not the most hygienic of substances, seeing as how they fertilized with manure, but while you were waiting you'd probably need to pee. Where better to do so than right at your feet? So if you were unfortunate enough to be struck by an arrow, you were probably looking at some septicemia at the very least. That's just insult to injury, getting shot with an arrow soaked in pee and excrement...yum. Also, a real longbow is taller than I am so yeah I'm really just pretending with this target bow here. I don't think I could even draw a real bow properly, much less fire it with any degree of skill or accuracy. This is why we invented these newfangled compound bows. The nifty pulleys help shoulder some of the burden of a two hundred pound pull.