Depends when in history to be honest. Let’s say when the English longbow was still around but starting to fade:
Bullets Pro:
Cheap and easy to make
Guns are easy to use (less training)
Guns could be made more easily in a factory process
Longer direct fire range
Faster travel
Intimidating
Smoke could be used intelligently
High Power (makes up for lower pen if it hits target without hitting anything in the way)
Bullets Cons:
Lower penetration (lead shots likes to flatten out when it first hits something, even as weak as a tree branch).
Guns were unreliable, especially in bad weather
Lower effective range
Bad accuracy in general
Lower Rate or Fire
Smoke can work against you too
Arrows Pro:
High piercing power
Different Tips available for various targets (and fire arrows)
Volley Fire
Higher Effective Range
Better Accuracy (with enough training)
More reliable, but still bad in rain
Quiet
Higher rate of fire
Arrows Con:
Long crafting time for arrows and bows
Highly skilled archers required
Ammo bulkier
Slower travel speed
Less durable weapon
That is what comes to mind. Going later in history makes the guns better and better of course. For instance Napoleonic era (early 1800s, so quite late) rifles probably had longer or equal effective range to longbows, but could do so with direct fire. However these rifles could manage 3 shots/minute when rushed by highly trained soldiers verses 6 shots/minute for a trained longbowman.
The only reason history favoured the gun was because it could be easily produced and deployed en masse, unlike longbows (or equivalent). It wasn’t until there was both rifling and cartridges that the gun really became a truly superior weapon in the hands of two experts.
Of course, massed gunfire still had a role in late medieval and rennaisance battles. Mainly the wall of lead and intimidation effect to break a key point in the enemy’s line. Massed longbow fire would do this too, but was much less dramatic.
That got long somewhere….:D
I like you, however, going to incur~
The musket during the 1800s was actually favoured for the sad and simple fact that a kid could pick one up and kill somebody with it, a fact that remains apparent to this day. It was primarily affective in CQB because it caused more devastating wounds than the bow, was light in weight and with the bayonet could function as a pike.
Using the longbow effectively required extraordinary strength. The bow, made of tough yew wood, had a draw weight of 80 to well over 100 pounds, something only the strongest modern archers can manage. Training took years – English law long mandated that boys take archery practice starting as early as age of 7.
A skilled English archer could submit 15 shots a minute, with 10 the minimum acceptable rate. A newly-recruited musketeer, in contrast, would be lucky to get off 2 shots per minute, while the best a veteran could manage was 5.
