I was always taught to draw a bow using the tips of my first three fingers with the arrow between the first and second. I keep seeing video of people drawing a bow with the the arrow or string pinched between the thumb and first knuckle on the first finger.

Whats the difference and is one better than the other.

Hallo Dork,

when you started with european styl, it can be difficult to change to asian styl, for example the arrow is on the other side os the string, besause you release the string to different sites. Japanese use special leather gloves for release, chinese, korean and mongole people use thumb rings made from jade, brass, silver leather, bone ore horn. If you use a long bow the angle of the string is big enouh to use three fingers, if you use a verry short bow like an korean ore osmanian horsbow, you have a verry small angle at the string if you draw out the bow, here the thumb style is better. Normaly you can say if the stretched(?) bow is shorter than 42"  at an draw length than 28", its better to use the thumb style ore use a release. I am not good enough to use the thumb style and with 123# on 30" draw length and a bow length of 45", the thumb style is verry painful, so I use three finger. On the of me and my bow you can see one of the prolems: The arrow curved by the pressure of the fingers. The arrow isnt drawn full length.

Greetings Michel

I use something like this:

To reduce wear on the bowstring, I have one of these on.

In my youth my friends, family and I was primitive pinch release archers.  Three finger release, I remember seeing pictures of it, and discussing it, but we could never comprehend it.

But, I know how to do it now

That thumb thing?  No!
timann

Mechanical releases and thumb rings are both used for much the same reason...Short bows.   Short bows (such as the composite bows favored by Asians) result in an extreme string angle at full draw, which means pinched fingers if you use the three-fingered approach.

Longbows have a rather gentle string angle at full draw, so the three-fingered draw is comfortable.

A lot of primitive archers that use the pinch-grip modify their arrows, using a swelling or grooves at the nock end to make it easier to hold on to.

Steven wrote on Feb 2^nd, 2010 at 1:42pm:

Why do you need three flap things?