Making Traditional Wood Arrows

Field expedient means you are dropped in the woods with a knife and some paracord. Feed yourself with an expedient bow. No tools just the knife. No food to sustain you while you build it perfect it and kill with it. My point in all this is survival. Can the average man just walk into the woods with a knife and some para cord or his boot laces and make an accurate bow, And kill an animal with it before he starves to death. I have yet to see it done. Im not talking about traditional archers like yourself xls. A self bow is not an expedient bow. There are videos all over the net on how to make a bow in minutes from expedient materials in the woods and yet none of them also show these bows taking game. They are selling loads of horse crap. Anyone buying into it is going to starve. The last thing I would try and do is build a bow in my area. I would look for other foods, water and shelter. This notion that people can walk out into the woods with a pen knife and some cord and make a bow that will kill something is way off base. Given time with tools and the right materials yes.

Scott Moore's bows and arrows took years to make and perfect. That is my point. Years not three days before you are weak and starving. Field expedient means you are lost and you make it with the materials at hand. I have seen bundle bows, saplings, split limbs, andhave seen zero kills made with any of them. I also agree, tracking is everything but you have to hit the animal first and drive the point deep enough to cause enough blood letting to kill. That means power and accuracy. Ive taken over a humdred deer with bow and gun combined. Close to 50 with Bow alone and have used a recurve, a compound and now shoot a Wicked Ridge Crossbow. I got a nice 5 point this past fall. He went 40 yards. The blood trail was three feet wide. I killed my first deer with a take down Bear 45 pound survival bow which was no more then a target bow. I killed two deer with it getting about 6 inches of penetration with a two blade bear stamped steel broadhead. There was very little blood and I was lucky to find those deer. Only because I knew the area was I able to recover them both. The lack of penetration made me buy a Bear White tail II 65 pound compound IN the late 1980's. I killed 43 deer with that bow with mostly pass through double lung shots. Even then some of them went 100 yards. So I am very experienced with bow hunting deer. Power and accuracy are everything. This is why I dont buy into field expedient bows that can actually be used to survive in the wilds.

 

Kingfish, well said, sir. Point taken, indeed. In a real survival situation, time is life-I too would rather spend it thinking smart rather than trying to pull a Rambo, Predator out of my @$$.
To die trying is more honorable than simply trying to die, doing foolish stuff like you described.

Epitaph: John Doe, the great prepper tha...Just wasn't ready.

Or

Here lies John Doe, with his hands full of sticks and his belly empty, starved and frozen; wasn't even smart enough to burn the bow.
(just a bit of humor).

 

However I do have tons of respect for guys who take the time to build self bows and cane arrows, cedar arrows, hone that craft and are able to take game on a regular basis. They are true woodsmen who know full well just how difficult it is to do this. KF

 

I have respect for them as well, I built my first made now at 14-15 after reading a article in a magazine.
I thought it was cool"the old way" when compaired to the compounds I had since age 9 . To this day and 100's of attempts , they are just that, attempts . I have made may functioning bow but not a one would be called beautiful. My hats off to that kind of craftsmanship.