Hi Folks, today I'm going to craft one of the most effective wilderness survival weapons that I have ever used. This is the primitive stick bow, so let's get started.
As an emergency survival weapon, the bow needs to be fast and easy to craft. The key to a fast bow build lies in selecting the right wood. First, find a green hardwood sapling with a certain set of attributes. The sapling must be at least as tall as my height, it also needs to be relatively straight, flexible, and no more than 1.5 inch in diameter).
Once the sapling is harvested, Carefully make a mark on one side of the sapling as an indicator that that side is the belly side, the opposite side would be the back side. It's important to only remove wood only from the belly side and never from the back side.
Now using the saw, proceed to make a series of quarter inch deep grooves on the thicker end of the stave, keeping about 6 inches between each groove. Once this is done, large slabs of wood can be quickly removed from the bow via battoning. Now cut two quarter inch deep, 45 degree grooves on the tips of the bow stave, this is the string notch.
Then take a length of cordage equivalent to your height and make a bow line knot on each end. Once that is done, proceed to string the bow. Make sure to listen carefully for cracks when stringing, sometimes a bow stave could snap in 2 and cause injuries.
Once the bow is strung, take a look at it, and mark the hot spots along the limbs where it's not bending in an arch. We want to then remove wood from the belly side of these spots, this process is called tillering. Since this is a survival bow, there is no need to give it a perfect tillering. As long as we remove enough wood from the hotspots such that the strung bow looks roughly like the letter D, it's good to go. Now for the final step, saw a quarter inch groove into the center of the bow, and then carve a figure 7 notch with a knife, that will be our arrow shelf.
Now onto the arrow, first we need to find a straight, flexible, and knot free hardwood shaft. It needs to be at least 3 feet long and a quarter inch in diameter. In my area, it take significant amounts of time to find good arrow shafts. Now remove all bark from the arrow shaft with a knife. When doing so, be careful not to cut into the grain of the shaft as that would compromise the strength of the arrow. Once the bark is removed, proceed to straighten the arrow shaft by bending out any areas that are not straight. It's a good idea to go slow and be gentle in this process. Bending too hard could introduce internal cracks that would cause the arrow to break. Once the shaft is reasonably straight, the next step is to add fletchings. Now Fletchings can be made from a number of natural materials such as feathers, birch bark, pine needles, or even tufts of grass. Finding natural fletchings is often a very time consuming process. So for this arrow, we're using duct tape fletching. It's fast to apply and works very well. After fletching, proceed to carefully cut the arrow nock into the end of the shaft. Be sure to go slow and watch for any splits in the shaft. Finally, we carve the arrow head, a green wood point that is fire hardened works just fine for hunting small game.
The finished survival bow took 30 minutes to build and has a 15 pound draw weight at 28 inches. Ironically a single arrow took me 45 minutes to craft. Now let's test out this weapon.
Now the primitive bow offers a number of advantages as a wilderness survival weapon. While shooting the bow is still instinctive, both the power of the shot and the angle of fire is controlled mechanically by the bow itself, making this weapon much easier to learn when compared with other primitive projectile weapons such as the rock sling. Arrows are small enough that one can carry many of them for follow up shots unlike weapons such as the throwing stick or the bola.
The firing of the arrow requires minimal movement on the part of the hunter unlike for example the Atlatl spear thrower. This reduces the chance that prey will see that movement and bolt while the projectile is in flight.
Finally, specialized arrow heads allow for the taking of a wide range of prey. Small game, birds, fish and frogs, and even deer if you can get close enough.
These advantages combine to make the primitive stick bow an invaluable hunting tool in wilderness survival situations. And I have to say that the bow ranks as one of my all time favorite primitive weapons. Anyways thanks so much for watching, If you like this video and want to see more please like, share and subscribe to my channel. See you laters, bye.
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