This thread looks long defunct, but I'll toss a thought in anyway. I've been shooting for about 13 years now, compound and traditional (recurve/longbow - Hawkeye uses a recurve). They have very different action, that is, the string behaves is a very different way as you draw it due to the mechanics of the bow's limbs. A recurve gives you smooth action with increasing weight back to your anchor point, while a compound's action is stiff and mechanical with an abrupt let-off that lets the archer anchor and hold for minutes at a time while they line up their pins. This is another difference, not an absolute, but generally true: compounds tend to be fitted with an array fiber optic pins for aiming, with traditional archers opt for "instinctive" or "natural" shooting with no sights (the big exception is Olympic competition, which features recurves fitted with sights, stabilizers, etc., hence the sense it makes for Hawkeye to be referred to as an olympian in the Avengers film, and us a recurve with sights).
What this all comes down to, I think, is that Hawkeye favours a bow over, say, a gun. Why? Tradition, training, image, who knows? Maybe all of the above; it's all written into canon somewhere. But the recurve vs. compound answer is pretty simple; to use guns as a reference point, one is a pistol, the other's a sniper rifle. A compound is useless is close-quarters, reflexive shooting but perfect for taking a perch and lining shot after shot of supportive fire at range. The quick, smooth action of a recurve is good for most of the kind of shots we see in Avengers, but because of the way draw weight stacks it just isn't practical for the kind of time you need to hold and aim if you're sniping.
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