How fast can you make a survival bow, and with how little materials...

[toomanyknots]

Scenario: For unexplained reasons, you find yourself deep in a north american temperate forest, without any hope of contacting the outside world or civilization. Despite the fact there may or may not be better things you could be burning precious calories doing to help the likelyhood of survival, your obsession with primitive archery compels you to do one thing: Craft a usable survival bow. Now, how fast can you make a serviceable bow, and with how many materials? How effective will this bow be at taking game, and how many shots will this bow last? This is always a question in the back of my mind that creeps up now and then. I have thought about it, and I hate watching videos on youtube of people making green bows. As a bowyer, a green bow just seems unnatural to me. I'm sure everyone on here, if walking down the street, came upon a fellow trying to make a bow out of a green piece of wood, it would take the power of 1000 suns to keep yourselves from correcting them and explaining to them their error. So why should it be any difference in a survival situation? I mean for one, if you KNOW there is a good chance you are going to be sleeping in the wilderness already, you are gonna need a shelter and a fire fast. So why not use the fire to dry out a carved out stave while you at it? Or maybe there is a good method for finding dry standing wood, idk. Maybe even just heat treating the belly of a fresh green stave? In a design that would not be too messed up when the stave warped from the shock of so much moisture loss? (Like a circular cross section).

EDIT: I mean, in retrospect, if you don't have a knife, your gonna need to nap something to carve, so you might as well just make a spear and go fishing or something, etc. But still, I'm really wondering if there is any way to season a piece of wood fast enough to make a serviceable bow that will last verses making a green soggy sluggish 3 shot bow. 

[bubby]

First thing I'd make is an atlatl and some darts, then if you can find something for bow wood and reduce to bow dimentions and keep it close to the fire after a week reduce it more and let dry some more till you got a serviceable bow, but what do ya got for a string?

[DC]

I think I would rough out 2 or 3 bows and start hunting with a green bow while waiting for the others to dry some. Eventually I would be fat and sassy and have a couple of dry(ish) staves. Around here the humidity never gets low enough.
Actually around here I would just go to the beach, dig some clams and lay back and relax, at least in the summer. In the winter the drizzle would kill me in a few days.

[joachimM]

Bowstring: if you aint bald you grow them on your head 😵
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NNazMRnVF4Y

[aaron]

I think if I had to make a bow, I'd do as DC recommends above. But if I had a choice, I'd probably concentrate on trapping small game and finding some cattail or other starchy plant.

[Del the cat]

I made my "one hour bow" using just an axe.
I'll let you figure out how long it took
I made it to fit a string that I already had.
Del

[PEARL DRUMS]

The bow isn't the problem, its the bullets and casings that stop the train. A bow would be thee worse survival tool to spend a minute on. Not too mention the work that goes into the bow hunting itself. I like the simple snare or dead fall idea, it works while you preserve calories. And it is more effective than a bow.

[JackCrafty]

There are plenty of dead limbs up in the trees that can be used for bows.  But all wood has too much moisture to be used for a bow if it's been out in the elements.  It all needs some drying time... but dry heat works much faster on dead standing wood than green wood.  I would use dead standing wood that I tested (bent) before stringing it.

If you are near a lake or pond, it doesn't take much to make a bow and arrows to shoot fish with.  That's what I did on the weekends when I camped out for year.  Hunting mammals is entirely different ball game... and I would make traps for those, like already suggested.

[Sidmand]

I have been planning on trying to make a "father son" bow, which is just a penobscot style bow made with green saplings, just to see if it was a feasible "survival" tool.  It looks sluggish to me, but I want to try one out before I cast to much judgement on it.  The arrows would be harder of course, and I would probably be relegated to very close shots at small game and fish as jackcrafty suggested.  But, if I had to, in a pinch I'd try it for sure.  I'm going to try it with privet, cause I have a metric crapton of privet around me.

[dwardo]

Always wanted to make a serviceable weekend bow, from one branch/sapling string n all.
Decent cordage over here (UK) tends to be either from lime (basswood) willow or elm.

My plan is to split n cook a wych elm sapling over a day or two and use th einner bark for the string, which is fantastic cordage.
Have a weekend in the woods coming up and will report back. Life and work has kept me away from a sharp edge and wood for too long.
 

[Dakota Kid]

I might not go right for wood if other material was available, say from a crash site or broken atv/snow machine. You could always use your boot strings on the bow. It would sure take less time than twisting cordage by hand.

But as others have already said, if you trying to get food as fast as possible, trapping is definitely the way to go. You can cover way more area and set countless traps. It would be the quickest and most efficient way to get fresh meat. Unless of course there were casualties from whatever catastrophe got you stranded, but then we're talking cannibalism and that's a different topic entirely. 

Wait, I forgot about an overlooked plentiful food source, insects. Probably less of a moral dilemma for most of us than eating dead party members. 

[Del the cat]

Always wanted to make a serviceable weekend bow, from one branch/sapling string n all.
Decent cordage over here (UK) tends to be either from lime (basswood) willow or elm.

My plan is to split n cook a wych elm sapling over a day or two and use th einner bark for the string, which is fantastic cordage.
Have a weekend in the woods coming up and will report back. Life and work has kept me away from a sharp edge and wood for too long.

Yeah, that's on my "to do list" too.
The string is the hard bit IMO.
Del

[Josh B]

I agree that a bow is not the best choice for a short time scenario.  The longer the situation stretches out the more practical it becomes.  However, in the spirit of the questions asked, if there are ERC trees about, the lower dead limbs are pretty snappy even though they're not totally dry.  I've made several quicky bows from such limbs that perform quite well.  As far as cordage goes, if you've got ERC you've more than likely got several weeds to choose from to make a string.  Those dead ERC limbs were my first real step towards hunting weight bows.  Before them, I was trying to make bows from green willow poles and bankline string.  I bet a lot of you know exactly how well those perform.  Lol!  Josh

[fiddler49]

Here in Alaska not many good bow woods so an Atllatl and dart would be your best bet. I have killed a moose with an atlatl and salmon fishing with atlatl is easier than bow fishing, but if you really needed a bow then I would use a green spruce sapling. It' not bad till it dries too much, about 5 days, then becomes brittle and breaks. The bow string is the hard part. Spruce roots are strong enough but can't get them in the winter because of frozen ground. We have a skinny type of nettle but hard to process enough fiber for string. We have
small red squirrels that a raw hide string might be made from but the reality is a hunting weight bow and string could take weeks or months to make.  cheers fiddler49

[nakedfeet]

A good bow would be far down on my list of priorities in a survival situation. Even a long-term survival situation.

If I made it past a couple weeks I'd probably start planning to build one, but if I'm watered and fed and staying warm, why do I need to rush into making a poor weapon that will break down fast? Do it right.