"Northern Yew versus Southern Yew: Our testers compare at the Faire"

Funny you should mention that. Further to my point above, I found this - The best yew in the middle ages came from Spain and Italy, where it is grown at high altitude resulting in slow growth which ensures that the wood has a close grain which gives an extra spring to the wood. At that time barrels of wine imported in England had to be accompanied by a tax of yew staves. What I was looking for was some info on the tariff. I'm less than certain that the foregoing is entirely correct. There may well have been an import tariff on wine as well, but I'm sure there was one connected with wool export. There is also this, which has a slightly different view of the matter (and is unspecific on the tariff). I suspect that the "right" answer has a target area about that of a clout target! ;-)

P.S. In the UK at least, there were at least two national archery magazines 15 years ago (whether either still survive into the digital publishing age, I don't know). I'd be astonished if there weren't US equivalents...