Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Arrows => Topic started by: trail walker on December 25, 2017, 10:59:24 pm
-
Ok so i have been a little paranoid about something for a while and i need some opinions before i go nuts. So in reading the account of Ishi making arrows and several other sources nowhere have i found that the Native Americans spined there arrow shafts to exactly mach their bows. It seems like they take the time to make the arrow and then use it. :o , It has always confused me that so much attention is payed to arrow spine. So if i am reading correctly (you tell me) they did not wast tones of time making and rejecting shafts. So now the question i lay to you, how did they compensate?
did there alternative arrow releases change things?
shorter arrows?
Would they just get in closer to the animals?
Please i would love all the input i can get. I am a little scared this topic could start WW3, but like i said i have been going nuts!
-
I doubt that primitive man spined arrows as we think of it today but feel the spine of each shaft by flexing then getting them close. On my primitive arrows I only check spine to find the stiff side so I know how to line up the arrow. Stiff side goes against the bow. Many shoot and cane arrows are tapered at least slightly fo that helps plus, on mine I make them 30" for my 26" draw. I think the extra length helps the arrow get around the bow.
-
Anything I say here is just purely a guess. I have absolutely know knowledge of how the natives did or didn't spine shafts. I suspect like Pat says in that some makers could feel the spine fairly well and had a pretty good idea from feel what would or wouldn't match a bow well. I also suspect they became familiar with the materials they were using they probably had a pretty fair idea from physical size and weight. I also suspect that just like today some makers were more fussy than others and had a deeper understanding of how length, point weight, stiffness and weight F.O.C. Effected their arrows flight. It seems to me in my uneducated but unbiased opinion that many different levels of skills would have been scattered around the world.
Bjrogg
PS I also suspect some arrows didn't fly well and were discarded or tried with different bows.
-
PS I also suspect some arrows didn't fly well and were discarded or tried with different bows.
+1
-
ok that makes sense. how off does an arrows spine have to be to throw you off badly at like 40 yards?
-
By 40 yards the fletching has time to straighten the arrow out. At 10 to 20 yards spine is more critical I think. Most of us are hunting archers and 40 yards would be a very long shot.
-
I agree with Pat, its those real close hunting shots that you need a better tuned arrow for your bow. When I bareshaft I do it close. I like my arrow to straighten out it's flight in five yards or less. I'm sure there are much better shots than me on here but I think most guys Hunting are usually trying for that 15 yard or less shot without the animals knowing before releasing. At least that's my goal.
Bjrogg
-
In England and Europe where war bows are shot 100, 200 300 yards they don't spine their arrows at all.
-
Wish some ethnographer had interviewed about 500 to 1,000 Native Americans and wrote what they did regarding archery and hunting.
-
I had to reread Ishi's process of making arrows, and no where in there can I find mention of anything resembling a spine test or even a flexibility test.
-
If your life depended on your bows and arrows I guarantee you would be able to determine which arrows would shoot properly from your bow without a spine tester. Spining arrows is a relatively modern situation in the 12,000 history of archery, probably less than 100 years in practice.
-
Help clear something up for me. Pat said he puts the stiff side of the arrow against the bow. When you flex an arrow, the inside of the flex is in compression and the out side of the flex is in tension. Which is the "stiff side", compression or tension side?
-
The up side that has the highest spine value.
-
Thanks.
-
Maybe I can have some short bow shooters with short draw -24" back me up on this. A short bow with a short draw can handle any arrow as long as the spine is stiff enough. So a 23.5" arrow shaft with a 70# spine will still shoot well from a 50# bow. Other than that I would think if your mind was always on your game and bow and you had idle hours in the day to work on arrows. You would see what arrow shot best from your favored bow and mimic that arrow over and over. I understand same size shoot shafts don't have the same spine. No doubt they knew this too.
-
ok, thanks guys that helped clear some things up. :)
do you think that having the 9 - 12 inch flechings on the short plains bows might have been to stabilize the arrow within that 10-20 yard mark? because even though they didn't always hunt from horse back, when thy did they would need the arrow to stabilize in like 20 feet or less right?
-
I think the surface area is what helps straighten out the arrow and not necessarily the length. A 9"x1/2" arrow vs. 5.5" by 3/4". I haven't done the math so it's just a guess.
Some folks bare shaft tune their arrows. If a bare shaft flies well from your bow the fletching only helps when a broadhead is used.
-
amount of surface area makes sense Pat B, but why go do you think to the trouble of making the feathers longer then? because if you have 1 arrow fleched with 10 inch skinny feathers with the same ones you could do 2 arrows with 5 inch wide ones?
-
Trail Walker this is just a guess, but I suspect a nine inch fletch cut from 3/8 to 1/2" would be quiter than a 5" fletch 1"to 1 1/2" . Just st a guess though. I do know tall fletch is noisy
Bjrogg
-
With Native arrows tradition probably plays the biggest role. With modern man, personal preference rules.
-
From Ishi in Two Worlds , I don't recall any mention of how accurate Ishi was from great distances, but many examples noted how stealthy and patient of a hunter he was. This gave me the impression that his shots were within a relatively close range with 40-45lbs bows.
I haven't learned if the same is true for Eastern woodland tribes, yet.
-
amount of surface area makes sense Pat B, but why go do you think to the trouble of making the feathers longer then? because if you have 1 arrow fleched with 10 inch skinny feathers with the same ones you could do 2 arrows with 5 inch wide ones?
Ok, to broaden your questions, why did Siouxan people use long and low fletching when Cherokee peoples used full feather two fletch? I am going to hazard a W.A.G. and say that "style" had a lot to do with it. That and tradition.
Boy howdy, did you ever hit a sore point with me! It really is a pity that ethnography is a modern concept and came into the picture very late in the game. There is so much information that would come in handy from medicinal plants, to philospophy, to culture, to food ways, to technology, etc....we are often left guessing because while much was stamped out, quite a bit was simply abandoned along the way as well. We often forget that culture is never truly static, it is dynamic and ever evolving, too.
Wish some ethnographer had interviewed about 500 to 1,000 Native Americans and wrote what they did regarding archery and hunting.
-
Just thinkin' out loud. If you had feathers that you could only get one fletch out of why not use the whole feather. If a little is good a lot must be better, right.
-
DC, fletching steers the arrow with drag. Ideally you want as small of feathers as you can get away with and still get good arrow flight.
I sometimes make 3 and 4 feather tangential fletching using whole 4" feathers tied around the shaft, with the inside of the feather facing up.
-
I was trying to think like a Native would have, they may not have known all that stuff. Longer feathers would straighten flight quicker but at the expense of cast. For hunting they may not have cared about cast.
-
I was trying to think like a Native would have, they may not have known all that stuff. Longer feathers would straighten flight quicker but at the expense of cast. For hunting they may not have cared about cast.
And when hunting bison, they were on horseback, inside or alongside the herd, shooting at very close distance (sometimes measured in feet).
-
Ishi used hazel shoots for arrows. I've made 5 arrows from hazel. They were not matched by weight, spine, diameter or even perfectly matched by length. I was still able to shoot tight groups at 10 yards.
-
I agree SixRabbit. Most of my hardwood shoot and cane arrows are like yours. If they shoot well at hunting distance they go in my quiver.
-
In the 1960s, early '70s, arrows were sold as "for bows up to" some poundage--35, 45, 55 etc.
No one even used the term spine before the 1920s and then they didn't mean only stiffness. The term came to it's current meaning sometime after the mid 1930s, when Klopsteg and Hickman and their fellow experimenters were threshing out the concept.
Howard Hill is said to have shot a new batch of arrows to see which ones went where he wanted them. The ones that didn't, he broke so they wouldn't get mixed in with the good ones.
With no spine tester, Horace Ford set a record in the York round in 1857 that was not beaten until 1943! Spine, swine, wish his score was mine, to hark back to Charlotte's Web.
-
I know I'm a little late to reply but my 3 tribes are all within regions of discussion I've seen here, Klamath (Californian) Apsaalooké ( northern plains bordering the sioux) Chiricuaha Apache (Southwest sometimes southern plains). Through the older members of my family oral tradition has consistently shared the motif that you just find the arrow shaft that shoots best and when you find it you look for as many similar shafts on that same plant or shrub etc. and that there is no specific science to it. You sort of just go by instinct and what feels trustworthy. As for long fletching on plains style arrows I cant speak for every one, but the men on my grandfather's side (apsaalooké) just said that the fletching was long to account for the lost height and that you didn't want the fletching to be to tall because in the majority of cases the arrows are designed to pass through your prey and if the fletching was tall then it would likely break or get ruined. As for the southern style like the cherokees and others I havent had as much experience so I cant answer why they kept the fletching tall.
-
Hmmm good question,,,,,,but we still are finding artifact arrow heads all over the place,,,looks to me they shot a lot ,,,I'm just sayin,,sorry I have no answer jeffw
-
Is there a rough figure of how many arrows have been found so far? It would have to be in the thousands, right?
-
Arrowheads have been found in the millions I would imagine. Arrows rot, not so many of them I'll bet.
-
Good Discussion, late response.
I agree with Loeffler and Six Rabbit,
I shoot a short strong California style bow. I use button brush (willow) and elderberry for my arrows. The type of plant species determines spine. For instance I only like button brush, and stay away from all other willows as I find them weak in spine. I like to find shafts that are closest to the diameter I want, so I'm not sanding all day to get the desired diameter. When all this is completed, I will always get arrows with exact spine. Over the years I honed in on the appropriate dimensions. Now, my eye picks out shoots instinctively. Sometimes I spot shoots along the road as I drive. No doubt natives developed this skill early with their fathers teaching them.
When I started I would hastily pick 20 shoots I thought would be great. I would usually only get 10 -12 good ones. Now I pick five shoots with a careful eye and they will all reach arrow status. Every once in a while I find some bug damage.
Elderberry is a bit more troublesome, but if you find the right one - its great. I've noticed elderberry that's next to a good water source (spring) grows quickly with thin walls - no good. Bushes I find away from water sources develop thick walls. I frequent these same bushes over and over. When you find an elderberry with thick walls, but with overall narrow diameter, it outshoots any other arrow material I have used.
I also keep a few "perfect arrows" aside as reminders of the dimensions I like.
The stiffer and more narrow the better, as far as short powerful bows go... my opinion.
Don't doubt natives had tricks, skills, and knowledge we just don't know of. I've heard for some plants picking shoots at night in between moon phases produces the best shoots.
Ishi knew the results of this hazel shoots from making arrows his whole life. I would expect most of us would develop that instinctively over time and wouldn't have to measure, weigh, etc our arrows.
I don't know a darn thing about spining arrows, but I assure you my 25'' arrows fly real nice.
Also, as for the archers paradox, it plays no role in the style of shooting that Ishi had (and other California tribes). I only shoot like Ishi, and the arrow never touches the bow or my grip hand because of the twisting motion during the release which gives room for the arrow to pass. Again my opinion, but the paradox seems to be with European/American style shooting.
-
...there is no specific science to it. You sort of just go by instinct and what feels trustworthy.
I suspect that's true of most of what the native Americans did, as well as most "pre-industrial" people. You spend your whole life doing something, you just get a feel for it. I can tell my wife's mood when she's in the next room, and I'm not even totally sure how I know. Now, if I spent as much time with my bow as I did with my wife...well, that would be sort of sad, because frankly, my wife's a lot cuter. ;D But I bet I'd have all sorts of instincts about the flight of the arrow.
-
Maybe I can have some short bow shooters with short draw -24" back me up on this. A short bow with a short draw can handle any arrow as long as the spine is stiff enough. So a 23.5" arrow shaft with a 70# spine will still shoot well from a 50# bow.
I wonder if that's part of the reason that so many hunting/horseback cultures favor short-ish bows, when they have the materials to make them. The English seem to have used their longbows for long-distance armor piercing, but just north of the border, the Scots (who used bows mostly for hunting and guerilla-style skirmishing) appear to have favored shorter, lighter-weight bows. Perhaps, for close-range shooting where such things matter, a shorter bow just gives good arrow flight easier.
On the other hand, some of the jungle tribes in South America, who no doubt have their pick of bow woods most of us would kill for, make enormously long bows. Same goes for jungle tribes in New Guinea and India. So I might be completely wrong.
-
west coast natives made arrows that were works of art
-
Now, if I spent as much time with my bow as I did with my wife...But I bet I'd have all sorts of instincts about the flight of the arrow.
I would think this has a lot to do with their method, and a weaker arrow might require to be not drawn so much, and a stiffer arrow might be scraped down more...or otherwise modified to act weaker, in other words the arrows were "spined" by shooting them in,.... the modern concept of spine did not come about until modern manufacturing methods prevailed
I have read ethnological accounts that report much more effort was put into arrow making than bow making
-
Bow can be good, arrow must be great! There are still a lot of arrow artifacts to be found, I hope! Here in the high dry climate, there should be some yet to be discovered! The next cave or burial may prove to be the AHA, moment!
Hawkdancer