River Cane ?

[swamprooter]

Just got home from a week at my parents and had a blast. They have a bunch of chipmonks making a mess and digging around the foundation of their shed. I spent the last few days stalking the elusive and dangerous striped critters with my recurve, only got 2 but had a lot of fun and laughs with my dad. The bad part is I toasted 3 of my beloved 2016s which got me to thinking about river cane. I have the stuff growing right up to the edge of my backyard, I use it stake my tomatos, my dad used to make me arrows out of it when I was a kid and I have recently thought about trying my hand at making some now.

Question is, would footed river cane be safe to shoot out of my 55# tradtech titan? Fast flight string and all. I only pull about 26 or maybe 26.5 inches so that will be a little easier on the arrows but the last thing I want to do is put one through my arm. So what do yall think safe or not? Thanks, Chris

[horatio1226]

Absolutely safe. Cane is super strong.

[WhiteOaks]

Nature's Carbon Shafts.
Shoot em.

[Mechslasher]

for stump/chipmonk hunting, i'd use popular dowels from lowes.  river cane would more than stand up to the abuse, but is a lot of work.

[swamprooter]

Thanks guys I'll give em a try.

Mech, I'm not worried about the work right now, just cheap, I'm kinda between jobs so time I got. Chris

[americanhunter7]

+2 to what WhiteOaks said. I have made a few of them to shoot out of an osage self bow and have bounced and smacked em' off of all kinds of stuff. I've actually bent and broke BH's off of them and have seen no ill effects on the shafts. I've also used hardwood footings for the points and for the nock end as well to get a better platform for making and shaping a self nock and mounting points. Good luck, Cane is like most woodies (as Rob DiStefano says, "woodies are a labor of love"). Cane is great, wish I had more of it around here.