On the Waters Edge Part 4 Sling Spear

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Tags: On the Waters Edge Part 4,Making a Sling Spear,Pathfinder,Survival,Bushcraft

Video Transcription

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back in the woods okay guys one of the things that's really important whether you're on the water's edge or wherever you're at is that you understand the local resources for the environment one of the great trees of the Eastern woodlands for things like making fishing poles fishing Spears arrow shafts all of those types of things and even makes pretty good chords from the bark it's called the Eastern wahoo okay I have a book right here that's called trees of Ohio I found it to be a really good reference to the different types of trees in Ohio it shows very very clear pictures talks about them very concise this tree here is an Eastern wahoo and you can see how long and straight this thing grows it's got some stuff growing off of it up here but the shaft itself the first probably you know other than one sprout off to the side probably the first five feet of that shaft is almost dead straight and this is what I use to make the fishing pole with yesterday that's what we're going to use today to make a sling spear with so we're going to find one it's about six or seven feet long that's got a good straight section on it and that's what we're going to use and if you look at this leaf I'll show you what these leads look like on the Eastern wahoo they look like this they're offset they've got a very very unpronounce t' jagged edge on them I'm sure you can't see this on camera but if you look at it it's got a very small serrated edge and that's a very important feature when you're trying to identify things like this I'm going to put one of these leaves in this book and put it back in my back pocket a very good thing to understand is every little nuance of that tree what does the bark look like what the leaves look like what did the flowers look like well it's not flowering yet but it's got four red little flowers that bloom on it when it blooms so understanding this tree is very good for me on the water's edge because it will make fishing poles fishing Spears and all of those things that we need including arrow shafts if we were to boat this okay so we've got our piece of wahoo here and some Bank line now what I've done with this is you can see I've already cut pretty much a partial gig in this and this is one of the mistakes that a lot of people make if you're trying to gig small fish and frogs especially smaller frogs you really don't need that giant gig that a lot of people make smaller is sometimes better when it comes to this stuff it's easier to manipulate and this is almost like an arrow tip you can see all sides it to the knife and you can see about how big it is not very big at all now what I'm going to do with this is I've went ahead and sharpened the end of this and then I split it four ways with my knife just like this I shoved two sticks down inside tied it off and melted the bank line and then basically now I'm just going to clean some of the pith out of here this has got a little bit of pith in it now one of the things that I want to do is I want to make sure that each one of these tines first of all is good and sharp

so I'll go back through here and just do any touch-ups that I need to do to make sure that this thing is good and sharp the second thing I want to do with this is I want to barb this thing a little bit now I could have barbed us ahead of time and that's easy to do with bigger Spears I've showed that in videos past how to do that while you're making the spear but I'm going to cut some small barbs in this one after the fact and I'm going to cut them real small the reason I'm cutting these Barb's in here at all is because I want this thing to stick in the fish or the Frog after the fact so I'm just going to go through here and make real small cuts on one side of each one of these two barb it off okay now I've got Barb's on one side of all four of those prongs to the next step okay should give you a pretty close-up view of the times that I cut into this thing rotate it around a little bit for you I've got my knife laying there just so that you can or the barbs I should say and I've got my knife laying in there just for scale that you can see there's a barb on each one of these to keep it in the animal once it goes in okay so now to the next step I always tell people you should carry a spare set of slingshot bands in your pack very easy to make a slingshot very easy to make a sling spear all we're going to do is we're going to tie a knot in the end of each one of these bands you have to adjust it down a little bit get it more toward the end that rubber will roll it's a little bit and you can pull that opposite end it'll make it tight and do the same thing on this side you want those about even so you got to be careful and just kind of compare them and look at them and make sure that they're even pull them fairly tight when you're done and you're going to tie this to your spear so what I've done is I came up about eight or ten inches from the back of the spear and I put a notch in there and that notch is basically going to hold cordage that I'm going to tie in there which in this case I'm just going to use about three or four feet of bank line for this and again first thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to tie a loop in this thing that I can use for a tensioning not so I just tied an overhand knot in there and I'll put the whole string through that to make like a noose so it's self tightening I'm going to put that right over the top of my bands and my knot just like this and pull it down tighten that knot cinch those knots up in there tight just like that and then I'm just going to wrap it down just like this and when I get down to the end I'll just put a couple of half hitches in there the good thing about this bank line is it's hard so it sticks to itself really well it binds to itself really well doesn't take a whole lot to get this stuff to hold and what I want to get it off you know all I'm going to do basically is go to the back side just cut it with my knife for now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take I've got two tails there I've got one tail here and I've got one tail here then I'm going to cut off and I'll just take a cigarette lighter and melt those down on top right to it just like I would paracord it's a good thing about these nylon lines there you go now we're set okay so we've got a block target sitting here for work simulation purposes right now and what you would do with this now is you have your spear on the front bands on the back you would plant your hand your thumb in the pocket and you would draw the spear toward your body what that allows it to do is when you let go

it will spring forward so you'll hold it with your hand and let go to spring it forward then you'll tuck it behind you and you'll get as close as you can to the Frog you probably have a light on your head and you'll let go that allows you to get closer especially at night get as close as you can and shoot okay now you got bait for something else not a real big frog definitely big enough for a crayfish trap or something like that if you break the tines off on your gig it's not a big deal cut it off make another gig you got you know a six foot long pole you're working with you got to cut some of it off here and there do it I'm working around rocks I'm going to break off times there's no question about that it's just part of it's no big deal but this gives me the opportunity to get something bigger no question about it you