Bowyer indicate that only a minority of men in these cultures ever made bows. In the United States, many bowyers were inspired by Ishi, the last member of the Yahi, who lived most of his life outside modern culture. Ishi first contacted US citizens in 1911. His friend Saxton Pope learned some of his skills and spread them to bowyers including Howard Hill, Ben Pearson and Fred Bear. Bowyer A bowyer is someone who makes bows. Bows are used for hunting and for archery. The development of gunpowder and muskets slowly led to the replacement of bows as weapons of war
Chinese archery target. Ritual archery served as a counterpoint to the typical portrayal of archers, who were often skillful but brash. Confucius himself was an archery teacher, and his own view on archery and archery rituals was that ""A refined person has no use for competitiveness. Yet if he cannot avoid it, then let him compete through archery!"" Although civil archery rituals fell out of favor after the Zhou dynasty, examinations inspired by the Zhou-era rituals became a regular part of the military syllabus in later dynasties such as the Han, Tang, Song, Ming and Qing. These exams provided merit-based means of