You’re stranded in the woods and you want to make a bow and arrow for survival, both to hunt with and for protection. How do you do it? What wood do you use? How fast and strong does it need to be? We’ve got you covered. For my research for this article, I actually went into the mountains where I primarily hike, hunt, and fish and I found everything I needed to make this bow and arrow.
My Go to Bow Wood
My favorite wood to make a survival bow comes from a plant that grows near waterways all over the western United States and Canada (see the map below). The wood is called water birch or river birch. It is also sometimes called the Western Red Birch and the scientific name Betula Occidentalis. It has a bark that is from a red to a silvery purple, and grows in bunches near waterways, similar to willows. In fact, I usually find these growing mixed in with willows, which is extremely handy because that’s the main wood I use to make arrows. If you find some of this water birch, you’ve probably got all you need right there to make a weapon.
I was first introduced to it by a survivalist when taking a course in the deserts of southern Utah, and he just called it mountain mahogany. It holds its spring really well and can last a really long time. My brother still has a bow he made from the wood about 15 years ago. I built one at the same time, when we were both teenagers. I made the mistake of leaving it at my parents house and they threw it out, so here I am making a new one for this article.
Working with Green Wood
Remember, when you’re picking out which stave to use, green wood is more supple and bendable. The drier the wood is, the more stiff it becomes. With this in mind, depending on your survival situation, you may want to pick a stave that is already a bit dry. If you pic one that is pretty wet and green the draw weight will get heavier and heavier. I put this bow together gradually over about 2 weeks. As the days went by, the draw weight did indeed get heavier on my survival bow.
Other Good Types of Bow Wood
Other types of birch also are great for making bows from, with Yellow Birch being especially popular. (This link is to a Reddit thread on making bows from birch).Some think birch can be a bit brittle. Other popular types of wood include ash, oak, and cedar. What you want to look for is a wood that is still relatively bendable when dry. When I was a kid, I would make a bow and arrow out of green willow limbs. These would have great spring from the wetness of the wood, but would become extremely brittle and break after a week or two of use. If you’re in a survival situation, depending on the time of year, you may be able to pick up a green springy piece length of wood and use that until you’re able to get to safety.
Shaping the Survival Bow
If I’m making a survival bow in the woods, I don’t shape the bow very much at all. All I really do is cut it to length and add little notches on either end to help hold the string. I add the bow string and test draw length and draw weight. My draw length is about 29″, so I want to be able to pull the bow back that far without being at risk of breaking. I also want it to have a heavy enough draw weight so that it shoots fast enough to take the game I’ll be hunting in this survival situation.
For this bow, I intentionally cut the wood long so I would be able to cut it shorter as needed. As you can see in the picture below, the wood stave I cut was about 7 feet tall (shown leaning against my jeep for comparison). It’s final height after I trimmed it down was about 6 feet tall. Initially, at 7 feet, the bow had a really light draw weight, so I cut a bit of length off of the more narrow end (the top of the stave). If I needed it shorter but didn’t want to increase the draw weight by as much, I’d cut a bit from the thicker end (base of the stave).
This stave was pretty green, so I was wanting the bow weight to end up at about 40-50 lbs, so I tried to make its green draw weight around 30-35 lbs. Throughout the US, the minimum draw weight for legal hunting big game is between 30-40 lbs. I aim for the low end of this spectrum, both for simplicity, and because I would most likely be primarily hunting small game with the bow, and perhaps deer.
I also tried to pick out a stave that was about the same thickness the whole length through. Naturally, a plant is generally thicker at the base and tapers as it goes up, but some taper less than others. The stave I was able to find is less than 1/10 inch difference between the thicker end and the thinner end.
Stringing the Survival Bow
I strung my survival bow with paracord. I am never in the woods without paracord. You should always have some in your backpack, and I usually have it in more than one place. Paracord is incredibly strong and has many applications. It’s not the best material for a bow string, but its a good material, and it just plain works, both as a bow string, and in a lot of other survival applications. I never have enough of this stuff and I’m always buying more.
If you’ve never strung a bow, it’s really not that hard. I recommend the step through method, where you use the muscles of your entire body to string the bow. If you’ve never done this, I’ve included a video below. It’s pretty straight forward.
Finished Survival Bow
For all intents and purposes, your bow is now dangerous. I went out and tested it. I would say that it is lethal at up to 20 yards for big game if you’ve got good arrows. I’d rather get a deer within 15 yards if it were me though. A survival bow is only about 1/3 the speed as a modern compound bow.
For some of the survival bows I’ve made, this is where I stop. There are additional things you can do with it still. What added touches would I still add?
Wind Indicator
I like to add a little string with a feather to the top to help show me the direction of the wind. If you were just looking at it, you might think it is just a silly decoration, but its a very common tactic among bow hunters, one even used by Meat Eater’s Steven Rinella. That way I don’t need to do things like drop some dust or grass to see wind direction. Wind direction is crucial when hunting. You don’t want to have your scent blowing towards an animal.
Arrow bead
This is either a marking, a knot in the string, or some other way to make sure your arrows rest on the string in the same place for each shot. This improves consistency and helps you become more accurate. On the survival bow I made, I tied a knot in the string for an arrow bead, and I marked the string with a silver sharpie. You might not have a sharpie in your pocket in a survival situation, but you might have a pen, or some thing else. You can also use some blood from your first kill, or charcoal from your fire to mark your arrow spot on the string.
Arrow Rest
This helps ensure that your arrow isn’t tearing up your hand. I have a few scars along the top of my hand from the rough shafts rubbing along my hand. You build up a callus eventually, but a little bur on an arrow can take some skin off and is pretty miserable. On my survival bow, I made an arrow rest out of paracord Macramé to make a little tab for the arrow to rest on.
Grip
For my survival bow I made a grip from extra paracord I had. This is entirely optional. My hand grip is built in large part to help hold the arrow rest. If you don’t have or don’t want an arrow rest, a designated hand grip will also help make you more accurate. How? You’ll be grabbing the bow in the same place every time. Consistency is how you develop accuracy. If you’re holding the bow different, even by a half an inch, it can alter your shot.
Having a grip for your bow also just makes your weapon more comfortable to hold, especially because I’m not shaping or smoothing the wood at all. Bow makers often use leather to make a grip. If you’re a good hunter in your survival situation, you could replace your paracord grip and arrow rest with leather down the road.
Maintaining Your Survival Bow and Arrow
How do you maintain your bow and arrow in a survival situation? You might not have any beeswax for the string, or a good waterproof sleeve for the stave. That’s ok. Hopefully you won’t need your bow for a very long time. The purpose of a survival bow is to help you survive, either until you are rescued, or until you make it back to safety. That being said, I’m confident that my bow would last for several year, just as my brothers has, with proper care. Here are a few key tips for maintaining your survival bow:
Unstring Your bow
Your bow is springy because it naturally wants to return to its straight shape. If you leave your bow strung, you’ll start to train the fibers in the wood to stay in the bent shape. I made this mistake a lot as a kid. This doesn’t mean you can’t leave it strung for several hours at a time while hunting, or if you need to defend yourself. Over the long run, you’ll want to unstring it when not in use. This is especially true when the wood gets wet or green. If it dries in a certain shape, you’ll have trained the wood fibers a certain way, greatly lessening the spring your bow has.
Keep you bow dry
You may need to hunt in wet weather. The purpose of the bow is for survival, and you need to survive on wet days as well as dry days. As much as possible though, try to keep it stored out of rain. As I mentioned above, a wet bow can be trained to be bent a certain way. You want your bow to return to straight. Your bow can also warp from being wet, even if its not strung. This can change your shot, lead to less spring, or cause other issues. Another problem with getting your bow wet is wood rot. Wet wood can start to rot. Because of this, and all the other reasons, if you get your bow wet, dry it as soon as possible.
Wax or animal fat
This goes along with keeping the bow dry, and the string from fraying. if you find some bees wax, great. Use that on your string and on the wood. If you get a kill and have some grease from the meat, rub that into the wood and string as well. This helps keep the moisture from soaking in, protecting you from warping and the bow losing its spring.
Make Arrows
As I mentioned earlier, if you find water birch, you’ll probably also find willows, which is my go to wood for making arrows. Willow is much more abundant than water birch, so even if you end up picking a different wood for your bow, you still have good odds of finding willows. I wrote an entire article on making arrows from willows which can be found HERE. I also wrote another article on the many other uses of willows which can be found HERE.
Buy a Survival Bow
It turns out that you can buy a survival bow. This model is collapsible. The limbs can be removed so that it is more compact, which makes it a good option for storage or for a good bug out option.
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