Giving boo a try. some questions

[aero86]

thatd be sweet!  if i was close id come help you!

[Hillbilly]

If I was rating the ones I've tried in order of my preference, I'd say:

hill cane
switch cane
river cane
Sasa palmata
Japanese arrow bamboo
tonkin (HD plant stakes)
Chinese golden bamboo

There are plenty of other ones that I haven't tried, like the Bambusas and more of the Sasas. One thing to remember also, is that quality can vary a lot within the same species. River cane, for example, can be very excellent or not very good depending on how picky you are at cutting shafts, local variations, what part of the culm you cut the shaft from, etc. Hill cane is great, but it's hard to find culms big enough for shafts. Tonkin seems much more brittle than the others, but it's still way ahead of wood shafting in my book.

[recurve shooter]

hillbilly, of the half dozen i finished up last night (first batch ever  ) i believe two were river cane and the rest tonken. one thing that i noticed is that where the little branches or whatever you call them come out of the river cane there were like big notches just above the nodes, and every piece that i cut, no matter size, what year growth, ect, it was always like that. dont get it, but they still fly well so idk. 

[aero86]

yeah, they all have that if they have the branches.  doesnt affect much

[Hillbilly]

To get river cane without those , you need to crawl back into the middle of the patch and get the shoots that are growing in the thick stuff, and use the section from the ground to the first branches.