The Yankton 2026 World Archery 3D Championships sees individual and team competition in the familiar classes of compound and barebow; standard recurve setups are not part of Worlds competition.
Less familiar to archery fans around the world are the traditional bow and longbow classes also shot here, both of which could be described as modern expressions of traditional archery, with their own specific rules. The World 3Ds is the only ‘major’ tournament for these bowstyles governed by World Archery.
We spoke to Great Britain’s Steven Allam, competing at his first World 3Ds after an appearance at the European 3D Championships last year, and asked him to explain the traditional bow class, known as ‘trad’ and formerly called the instinctive class.
“The trad class is truly ‘bare’ bow, nothing can be attached to the bow except a simple plastic rest. No weights, stabilisers, plunger, clickers – nothing! The riser must have a wood based construction, but can use ILF limbs of any type. Risers are now custom made and internally weighted, but this must be done during the manufacturing process,” said Steve.
How do you aim the traditional bow? “For most shots we are using the tip of the arrow to aim, placing that at a specific gap above or below the target in order to hit it. The gaps gradually increase as the distance to the target increases, reaching the maximum gap at the height of the arrow trajectory and then reducing to nothing at the point-on distance, which is the distance where the arrow hits the target when you are pointing the arrow at the target.”
“For me that’s around 32 metres, so my maximum gap is when a target is about 16m away.”
The longest distance unsighted bows shoot at the World 3Ds is 30m, while compounds shoot at up to 45m.
