Yew bows to Whitewood bows

[PatM]

The story went that clear cutting all other trees on the West Coast and leaving the protected Yew meant that the trees could not cope with the sudden loss of shade.
 I still don't see how an understory type tree can be a dominant species though.

[wizardgoat]

From what I've read, the yew in the alps is more of a dominant tree when compared to our pacific yew. We did some hiking in the Swiss alps in 2012, and saw some magnificent yew trees. I read (I forget where) that there was once entire yew forests cleared for the war campaign. We have some English yews in a some local parks, and they are very tall, around 50-60' and only around 100-125 years old apparently.  But I've also seem 2000+ old pacific yews that are half that height.
I've cut some yew trees that were on the edge of a clearing. One was very large with very large growth rings. It seemingly didn't mind being exposed from the understory.
Don't mean to jack this thread, but I love talking yew!

[HoorayHorace]

Some some yew can be crap for making bows, I mean the stuff with really large growth rings?

[WillS]

Ring count can be completely irrelevant.  Plenty of good, heavy bows have been made with incredibly coarse yew, and some poor bows have been made from very high ring count stuff.

Sometimes you need to make them slightly wider to accommodate for very poor growth, but generally you can get good bows out of almost any yew.  Might take a bit more set perhaps.

[HoorayHorace]

Well, you learn something new each day 

It seems the accidents destroyed a lot of yew forests for yew bowwood when the need for battle did arise.

[mikekeswick]

People weren't stupid 'back in the day'.....I highly doubt wether whole forests of yew were destroyed. They would have cut the useable sections of useable trees not just cut the lot. They didn't have chainsaws and the mass timber cutting and moving machines we have now!!