When you shoot with a gun, one miss is just as vexatious as another. It is a miss -- maybe an inch, maybe an ell, who knows? -- and you gain nothing from it.

Your bird is missed, that is all. But with the bow it is the reverse.

Will's miss was almost as pleasurable as a hit -- the bird had such a hair breath escape -- the shot was so well sent.."

-- Maurice Thompson, The Witchery of Archery, 1879