Harvesting Osage Selfbow Staves with Bear Grylls wannabe!

This week we're traveling to Central Alabama's BlackBelt Prairie region to harvest Osage orange selfbow staves with my nephew Philip. But something tells me he's watched a few too many episodes of Bear Grylls! Nevertheless, you're bound to be entertained with his survival antics, and maybe learn some wild edible and medicinal plants along the way.

Osage is one or two highly sought after tree species for building primitive bows. The main range for osage is in the Midwest US from the Texas Panhandle up through Oklahoma, Kansas and north. There are also smaller, scattered populations throughout the southeast and eastern US. This week we’re harvesting bow staves in central Alabama.

This video might give you some idea of why a good osage bow stave is so expensive. You often have to look through a bunch of trees to find one worth cutting. It’s heavy as lead. The trees are often covered with poison ivy. The tops are tangled most of the time which makes felling the trees extremely difficult and often hazardous. Then there’s the thorns that cover all the smaller branches. And after all that you still get to split the logs into staves, strip the bark, seal the ends and sapwood, and put them up to dry!

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Видео Harvesting Osage Selfbow Staves with Bear Grylls wannabe! канала Clay Hayes