Primitive Hunting with Long Arrows
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- Ryan Gill of HuntPrimitive discusses hunting with long arrows and the potential evolution of the bow and arrow from the atlatl.
The Newnan Video mentioned can be found here • "Newnan" : A Documenta...
Primitive Hunting Gear can be found at this link. gillsprimitive...
I've seen enough videos from this dude to realize that he has a PhD in Caveman
Hahaha that's a fact
Prof. Ugadugga
Yeah, but he uses copper boppers
I have some 4 foot long 5/8" dowels that are set aside for arrow making. When I decided on the project, I called them "orc arrows" after those seemingly massive arrows at the end of Fellowship of the Ring, which gave me the idea.
They carry so much weight
I.made a 60 sinew backed d bow with snake skins and 36 inch arrows . The bow perform very well. .However my first set of arrows was 28 inches and it shot poorly. I love the way my set up looks especially the long arrows . Hope to harvest a deer with it thank for all ur tips and research .
If you're using hardware dowels, make sure the grain runs parallel through length of the shaft and has no knots, or they can shear or splinter when shot or on impact.
Here in brazil, the natives use large arrows too, a lot of styles!!
I'm not a primitive archer but I have always been very very interested in the study of day to day life of ancient people. There is so much that has been lost and will never be known again. What I wouldn't do to be a fly on a tent wall 4000 years ago!
Awesome video. I will be getting some bamboo in a couple of weeks. A property that I went to help out on a job from my work, has a lot of bamboo growing in the back yard. The owner wants to clear out all the bamboo, so I will be collecting as much small diameter bamboo as I can.
I've always thought that the reason people in Papua New Guinea and the Amazon used such long arrows is because without fetching the added length helps stabilize the arrow in flight, where as a short arrow would be more unstable
You're exactly correct
@@arturravenbite1693 Maybe, though you can shoot bare shafts in any length, even off an overdraw.
@@HondoTrailside there's no point other than tuning.
Hello Ryan I still have your Newman spear points you made me glad to see your doing well I have to get around to order another point happy holidays🦃
I’m devastated…I gave the stone knife I bought from you to my son in Alaska. His house was just destroyed by fire. He was going to use it to butcher his moose this year.
praying for you bro 🙏
@Brian Laundrie The handle burned away and the flint shattered.
Having seen indigenous hunters in the Amazon using super long arrows I had wondered about that. One theory I had was the bows there are made easily and very robust with chonta palm which is strong but needs to be quite long as it can break easy if pulled too far, hence quite sluggish and therefore better compensated by heavy arrow.
Second thought they mostly use it to shoot pacu in shallow water and the long arrow stops the fish from getting away. Same for shooting monkeys in trees I guess.
I shoot thumb release long draw so long arrows for me hunting with my bamboo ash laminate hankyu from Sarmat.
Thanks for the video
I just read that it is because the arrow then doesn't need/needs less fletchings because the long arrow stays stable easier than shot ones without fletchings
@@GLITCHED1 Yeah, but if you have the idea of fletching, or access to feathers, when did it become easier to produce a long arrow, vs. slightly more fletching. Another answer would be that they needed the long arrows to get the spine they needed for the weight of bows they preferred. Or they found them easier to aim, which is something that is happening in barebow target archery. All of the answers are possible, yours is good.
I use long river cane arrows for bow fishing for that reason. Weight and its harder for fish to swim away with a 4-5 foot arrow sticking out of them
Your absolutely right! As an avid bowyer and archer myself I’ve experimented with all kinds of different bow and arrow combinations! I’ve found that for a basic survival bow made in the wild with limited materials 3-4 ft arrows seem to be ideal for maximum force delivery from a slow shooting medium to high poundage bow! I also find them easier to aim.
I use full length 36" wooden dowels from Walmart for beater arrows I keep them long and my reasoning was if the tip breaks I can potentially re point it and use it again but now that you mention it the arrows seem to hit harder when they haven't been cut down
In Franklin county Virginia it was discovered that native Indians used bow & arrows further back than once thought. They found bows & arrows as old as 12,000 years.
Super cool! Makes sense looking at it from an archeological / skeuomorphic point of view. Thanks for the interesting video! One thing I had a question about was the ancient paint these cultures may have used. What pigments did they find, and where could they find them? Besides red ochre and charcoal what other colors and pigments did they have?
Whatever they could find. If it made a nice and bright color after being mixed into a liquid, they'd use it. Plant chlorophyll, red clay, flower heads, improvise and see what works
Love the content. Keep up the good work.
thank you very much!
Awesome shot ! Im realy impressed !
Incredible shot on that buffalo in the intro.
This just popped up on 09/11/21 don't know why so late ? Gotta see some more of that and i just gotta say , YOU KILLED MISS PIGGY 🤣👍👍🇺🇸
Very impressive. Judging by how much of the fletch end was still to go that would have been a complete pass through with a shorter arrow of similar weight. Thanks for doing this important work. Looking forward to the book.
Hey man what kinda range are we talking? 30 yards is about max for me with heavy or light arrows and 30 yards is to far for my atlatyl I figure ancient man stayed around that range and it influenced the bow. Like you say from the atlatyl.
cool channel. Have you ever hunted with a shepherd sling ?
If you sold these on your website, I would certainly purchase them.
Do you find the longer and heavier arrows noticeably quieter?
The people in the humid tropics using the long arrows, seem also to be using long bows with low brace heights--due, perhaps, to the high moisture content in the bow stave. I wonder if the longer arrow produces better accuracy with the very low brace heights?
I feel like the longer arrow definitely accommodates how light a stone point is as far as flight
That is the issue, with carbon, you can basically eliminate arrow weight, and put most of it in the head, and that works best. But by the time you get to that point in technology (you don't actually need the carbon) you have passed the point where bows mattered.
@@HondoTrailside Yes but even in some thick diameter wood long arrows you needed a heavy weight front to get the wood bending around the riser part. These are the stiff arrows using Ash or Siberian/Chinese Elm to use on really heavy bows that some Asians used like Chinees, Mongolian, or some Asian Russian tribes that needed the heavy arrows for the bows styles they had in these Asian bows when shooting the war models or big game models.
Great video Ryan
Nice video and hunt. What draw weight are you shooting with those longer arrows? Do you have bigger fletching on them? Thanks, Daniel
....and again a nice video that really makes sense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great video! Thanks! 👍👍
Thanks again for your insights.
I’ve been wanting to try this hoping that arrow spine won’t be as critical.
From (admittedly limited) experience it isn't as critical to spine a really long arrow.
Would the fluting on a clovis point prevent some of that tilting to the side as seen on the recovered point? It seems that a "side tilt" immediately after impact could reduce penetration as intended.
I wonder if the long ones help the wooden board heads some jungle tribes use to get adequate penetration, after all getting a big chunk of hardwood through a pig must take a good amount of energy to achieve, especially as they're using wood for broad heads in humid places
Always love seeing a new video
Draw weight on this bow?
Muy buena explicación.
Really enjoy your channel and the knowledge you share. Wouldn't you say horse culture also had a profound impact on the shortening of bows and arrows? Thanks!
yes for sure, especially in that region. Lot's of bows from places not heavily influenced by horses shot some pretty short bows as well. I would attribute much of this to having a naturally short draw style like I do and being able to have a shorter bow as well
I would consider myself a survivalist and have spent alot of time learning primitives. I always feel a draw to simplicity of a bow and arrow and managed to become an excellent shooter and have taken game with fully primitive equipment. But the utilitarian in me cannot leave the crossbow at home. Same as my steel knives vs the bone/stone ones i have made. People are always more impressed by my primitives, but my modern gear feeds me better. Good skills to have no doubt... but in the interest of being as effective as possible i haven't been able to fully commit to primitive gear even though my heart yearns for it.
Love your videos.. Like another guy mention you really have a PhD in caveman... Not bad skills to have seriously. Learning about nature, hunting, plants, survival should be more taught in my opinion at least
haha thank you very much. thanks for following along
PhD level yes, though "caveman" is likely less accurate. We enjoyed the surface of the earth in much larger terrains back then compared to most today. Looking at the houses and buildings we spend much time in, it's almost like we modern folk are the "cave" people, and they were the open sky roamers of the earth...Ryan's videos show this as well.
Absolute awesome intro...killer job💪🏹
Which came first, smaller points or shorter arrows? Even with the same bow materials, my guess is reworked points, especially with fore shafts
can you try to make a father and son bow to bow with a smaller bow in the front
So the jungle tribes use really long arrows because the material they use is really light. I myself like my arrows 30-34 inches and 36 is plenty as well for me. I only draw 26-28 inches but the added length gives me better flight and also more weight. I use 4-5 ft river cane arrows for bow fishing and like them that long for that reason. The weight combined with 4-5 ft arrow makes it hard for fish to swim away with the arrow.
Would be awesome if you did some collaborations this hunting season with someone/channels like MulletMan, MeatEater, Kaitlyn Moss, Chris Bee, John Dudley or even like a BlueGabe or Flair! Really enjoyed this video, as always great content! Super interesting, educational & informative. Look forward to some hog, deer, squirrel, rabbit, turkey and even some alligator/fish hunting!
Excellent points as always Ryan. Concepts arise in a lot of ways - even as simple as shooting your buddy with a stick from a bow drill while goofing off around the fire.
Wow...thats actually a really good thought. That very well could have been how it started.
The long arrows are used also to keep the bow always ready to shoot with almost no serving distance and only after pulling some inches the bow starts to storage energy. Another aspect is that a heavier and longer arrows can pass trough the leaves without deflecting, and the same happens with the 7.62 caliber when compared with 5.56 bullets. And last, it's much easier to find among the bushes.
On the point of long heavy arrows, they tend to occur on thick jungles, where it's all short range. Very quiet, deadly against the biggest animal with the tickest hide. It downed many conquistadors and their horses. I believe that a heavy modern bow (+100lbs) and such arrows, it could hunt whales, a true hand ballista!
man Ryan that was a good video and I have to agree that theory makes a lot of sense.
Ryan, Would the heavier arrow be more efficient with a lighter bow weight, perhaps?
Are you talking about poundage of the string of the actual weight of the wood?
The way I herd it, archeologically speaking.
Was this.
After the ice-age there were not many good species of wood the wood was light so to gain more penetration they made longer arrows.
When you bend a stick you get a bow,... that's not very complex.
The shape of a limb is natures tillering.
You match each stick/ branch/sapling up you cut the small end at 1/2 in diameter.
And you cut the other at 1 inch diameter,...on this end you make a bias cut,.. so each will fit together.
When you join each end with glue and wrap it with string,.... its a naturally tillered bow.
It looks like a Paiute bow.
What’s the pull weight on your bow
Awesome work, as always.
Great video
8:16 if u wanted to skip to the hunting part
I think the “bow and arrow not evolving from atlatl” theory is due to the earliest arrow heads being found in South Africa (meaning the earliest bows were invented in Africa) and there are no evidence of the atlatl in use in any part of Africa. So I honestly think the bow and arrow came from the early bow string instrument and the weapon, like many other weapons, spread to Europe in all of the other areas of the world where humans evolved their own bow cultures. You can even see the similarities in early iron arrow head designs between European and African bows. Just a thought 🤷🏿♂️
I agree. In my opinion the bow came before the atlatl(at least in some parts of the world) or they were invented around the same time period.
how many meters were you from hunting ?
Dr Ed Ashby said that in New Guinea a tribesman was shooting a 4000 grain arrow! He asked him why so heavy? the man simply said "works best" lol
With all due respect, that's not possible. That would move way over into the arrow being so weighed down and so thick that it wouldn't penetrate. Maybe a spear could weight that and work if thrown by hand, but no bow on the planet could effectively shoot 4000 grains, especially not one made by a pigmy in New Guinea.
@@jammyface3041 all the information is on the Ashby Bow hunting Foundation 4000 grains is a little over half of a pound. Easily shot by a bow with at least lbs of momentum.
@@colbykinney5633 I went on Ashby and nothing of the sort, all I found through lots and lots of searching is an article on Archery talk that mentions it and states it just like you had remembered it but ashby has no such thing. Not calling anyone a liar I promise, I'm just saying I just searched for about 10 minutes and found zero. Someone may have been embellishing. A half lb arrow could not be shot from a hand bow with any kind of speed in order to penetrate an animal. The old War bows shot over a 100 lb pull and their arrows were very heavy. They didn't shoot anything close to half lb arrows. Those arrows were about 1000-1500 grains and were the heaviest arrows in history. Spears are one thing, but I'm sorry I can't believe in an arrow that heavy.
Awesome
How many pounds should a hunting bow be ?
40 as a min, and up. but depending on different laws in province's ( Canada) or states ( usa) could be as low as 30lb or up to 50lbs, most ppl tend to 45lb to 55lb I tend to 45 to 50 but have gone to 70lbs, oh yes I shoot ether longbow or recurve, I have no idea for compound bows. point weight plays a big part also. don't try be a speed demon with lightest arrows you can use, heavy is better, if to light , a rib could deflect it or stop it, were as a heavy arrow will blow right though the rib, I tend towards 600 grain Total arrow weight. 200 to 350 grain broad heads. and they will bust though shoulders on deer. also fixed broad heads are better for busting though things, as are 2 blade vrs 3 blade, 3 blades just have more drag as they go though the animal, so a good 45lb bow and around a 550 grain arrow is good penatration, and speed, arrow will probably be a 400 spine, at that bow draw weight, about all the info I can give in a short time. hope it helps .
Only one living person I know of bagged a bison with a atlatl.
I saw a video recently where some tribal people in south America were shooting fish with their primitive bows and long arrows. I can see that as another advantage of longer arrows you can shoot a fish and the arrow is sticking out of the water enough to quickly retrieve it.
size of a short atlatl dart
Awesome video I think your right
How would people preserve the meat in ancient times?
jerky , pemmican
My theory I've developed using atlatls and traditional bow hunting knapping for 30 years. Is a guy had a few 7 or 8 foot atlatl hunting darts and was trying to figure out how to carry extra darts so he tied a piece of cordage to each end. And put it around his chest. Then he pulled on it and it bent and snapped him in the face. After swearing at the other hunters for laughing at him they went back to hunting. Later that night sitting at the fire eating the smart-ass in the group said something so he pick up his atlatl dart with the string and stuck a stick on it from the fire and flung it at him with the strung dart. Well it went flying over and stuck right in that jerks eye. Bing! Hey guys I got an idea. Go tie a string on a hunting dart and try it it works lol. Another great video thanks for sharing and shoot straight.
You are such a badass. Im proud my name is Ryan
I wonder, if some cave boy, with flexible fishing spears (cord on end) didn't tie the loose cord end to the tip for carry, pulled the cord over his head/shoulder, and discovered...
you never know. The possibilities of discovery are endless
Olá meu amigo sou fã do seu trabalho like garantido abraço do paquinha pescador 🇧🇷👏👏
Do u think u be able to hunt with a sling(not slingshot) ?with the Balearic side arm I feel u could hide ur body behind brush and just let them get used to the spin than snap the shot this also assuming you have a good mastery of the sling like the UA-camr (practical paracord)
Al L native americans used to hunt small game with them. I'm pretty sure the force from a sling is enough to kill a deer if it hits the head or at least cripple it, but its hard to get pinpoint accuracy with a sling. with a small animal it doesn't matter because it's probably going to die regardless of where it hits, but it would be pretty cruel to use it against a deer or something bigger. Chances of missing and causing a nonfatal wound are pretty high.
I guess these are closer to my area design. The way that I get the most damaging shot with my slower rawhide backed juniper bows is with a much heavier hardwood arrow. Yes I sometimes practice with modern carbon arrows, not hunt.
My chokecherry arrows are anywhere from 500 to 800 gn.
They fly just as fast but pack a much bigger punch.
4000 years ago? Get real! Bows and arrows are clearly well over 10,000 years ago. Were the bows very primitive 10,000 years ago? Certainly but. 3000 - 4000 years ago bows and arrow were well developed.
Hola
Very cool!
I thought it was illegal to hunt with stone tips now.Seems I’m wrong
Depends on the state.
seems like it is ok in most states, but it is not uncommon for a state to specify "metal edges."
i put a link up but the comment got deleted, by the spam filter i guess
It’s only based on ignorance where it is illegal.
Brooo! I'm making long arrows now!
Is there any primitive culture known to use atlatl and bows concurrently? Any evidence that primitive cultures that never developed archery (Australian Aborigines) had technology that mimics bows, like string instruments etc. ?
IIRC aztecs used atlatls for war and hunted with bows
Uhm buddy i think if you still gonna do that the animal's on our world will be endangered or will be extinct uhm i'm not saying that you need to stop hunting them but you need to let them reproduce do you get what i mean?
the hadza don't use particularily long arrows when they have an iron head
longer arrows are a way of making up for the lightness of wood
papuan use of long arrows even with iron tips is probably because they just kept the design of wooden arrows used until relatively recently
Musashi
I'm willing to bet that somebody's child was playing with a fire bow set and tried shooting the spindle at his.... Just because children have a different way of being the world...
मुकेश भिलाला
Can you make a movie? Like Iceman, Alpha or something of the like? I will totally start a go fund me or a kickstarter or something to fund it.
👍
I'm not sure I'm convinced that they tried to shoot heavy darts off a rather light, early bow. It's like thinking that a wheel was invented in pieces. Some concepts need to be grasped all at once.
I'd rather see bows growing from just a toy, to small game, then finally replacing darts for big game. Then, of course, they'd use long and heavy arrows, since only those would prove lethal.
It seems like a minor modification to your approach, but it still feels that little bit more convincing to me.
You don't know about long arrows.
You are sick - You need therapy.
How